Uncategorized

Sep

2022

But What About . . .

In previous blogs I have stated why I am prolife. I now want to address arguments you will hear from the proabortion side.

Choice

A woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body. This is the main argument the proabortion side gives. My body, my choice. You’ll hear this a million times in the media. And, of course, I support the sentiment as a general statement. In general, everyone should have the right to do what they want with their own bodies. No complaints there.

But we recognize exceptions to the principle. We know that if what you do with your body harms someone else’s body, then you do not have the right to do anything you want. In fact, we even have laws preventing people from harming their own bodies. You can’t put heroin in your body without going against the law, even if that heroin affects no one else’s body. You can’t enroll in school without putting certain vaccines in your body, even if you don’t want them. A new mom can be prosecuted for harming her child if she does drugs or alcohol while pregnant. Many governments codified COVID restrictions (masks, vaccines) and shut down businesses. Their rationale was the opposite of bodily autonomy. They said they can force people to do with their bodies what those people might not want to do. Why? It might help save other people’s bodies.

Whether you agree or disagree with the specific laws above, you understand the rationale.

Bodily autonomy has limits, and everyone knows it. The difference between the prolife and proabortion positions then is that the prolife position says a child in the womb is a special case that limits autonomy, but the proabortion position says it is not. So even when we talk about the central argument of the proabortion position, we come back to this question: is a pregnant woman carrying a human life?

If she is carrying a human life, then she does not have the choice to kill him, even if she does not want the pregnancy. If she is carrying a human life, then she does not have complete bodily autonomy, for what she does with her body affects someone else’s body. If she aborts, the consequence is not mild. It is death. One hundred per cent of the time.[i] If, however, she is not carrying a human life, then the morality of abortion becomes more difficult to discern.

In 100% of pregnancies, we have more than one human life. This fact limits bodily autonomy, and most pregnant mothers know this. Most pregnant mothers change their habits while pregnant precisely because they know they are caring for another human being, and they want to take care of that little one. In fact, we would consider a mom morally deficient if she did not care about the little one inside her.

This is the first problem with the choice argument. It does not recognize the harm that the mother’s choice brings to another human being.

The second problem with the choice argument is that it turns out to be starkly one-sided. The woman has a choice. The child does not. Ironically, this sounds like the thinking of the proslavery Confederacy. Choice or freedom was a central argument the southern aristocracy used to justify slavery. “You live your way; let us live ours. We want the right to choose for ourselves how to live.” This thinking was central to the Confederate psyche. Today we recognize such thinking to be bankrupt because the South’s appeal to freedom ignored the freedom of millions of black men and women. The freedom of choice the southern aristocracy spoke about was only for them. If you were a slave, you had no choice, no freedom. The proabortion position is just as narrow in who gets to choose. The child has no choice. She has the same choice a slave in Louisiana had in 1844.

This is why the appeal to choice rings hollow. It is an appeal to the choice of only one person in a decision that ultimately takes the life of another person. No one has a legitimate choice to do that.

Special cases

The proabortion side talks profusely about special circumstances that it says change the moral equation on abortion. Let’s discuss some of these.

Life of the mother: Statistically speaking, cases in which a pregnancy threatens the life of the mother are so rare that they round off to zero. Authorities on all sides, from Alan Guttmacher[ii] to C. Everett Koop acknowledge that in the United States, “abortion as a necessity to save the life of the mother is so rare as to be nonexistent.”[iii]

But let’s say one of these rarest of rare cases happens. We must now make hard choices. In these situations, we are now comparing one life to another. We can save the mother or the baby, but not both. If we can save the mother only by taking the life of the baby, then it is morally justifiable to take that life. In fact, in most of these cases, if the mother dies, the baby dies too, and we lose two lives.

If, however, we have other medical options, we should pursue them first. Abortion is a last resort.

Rape or incest: This argument states that anyone who would force a woman who has been raped to have a child is utterly callous to the woman’s feelings. The woman did nothing wrong. The woman does not want the child. The woman suffers enormous emotional pain as it is. Let her abort and move on.

I want to say several things to this.

The first is that obviously rape and incest are tragedies, and the mothers who experienced them need our love and compassion. They need a shoulder to cry on. They need friends to help them through their crisis. They may need counseling or financial help. They need prayer. They need to know they did nothing wrong. They need to see justice done to the rapist. They need people to come around them and love them. These are some of the things they need, and prolife people are not callous to those needs. Healing will not be easy or quick.

But what a woman does not need is an abortion. There is no such thing as abort and move on. That thinking is naïve. Research does not show that abortion helps women mentally or emotionally. Priscilla Coleman reviewed 22 studies on the effects of abortion. This entailed more than 870,000 participants. These studies show that women who have abortions have an increased rate of mental illness of all sorts – suicide, depression, substance abuse, anxiety and more – and that a significant portion of that increase can be directly attributable to abortion.[iv]

In addition, Coleman unequivocally states that the putative benefits of abortion have no empirical basis.[v]

Abortion does not seem to make traumatic events better. If anything, it makes them harder to deal with. Abortion may seem like an easy way out, but in the long run, it appears to be detrimental to a woman’s flourishing.

Having the baby, however, seems to help. In those same research studies, the comparison groups were women who carried to term and women with unintended pregnancies who carried to term, and in both instances, mental health was better for women who had their babies than for women who had abortions.[vi] This is common sense. So many times when a woman has a baby, the baby helps bring her healing. The baby gives her purpose. The baby gives her hope. The baby helps her love again. The baby brings her joy. The circumstances behind the baby may be horrible, but the baby is not horrible.

Second, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute, rape and incest combined account for less than 1.5% of all abortions.[vii] Roughly 99% of all abortions are for some reason other than the life of the mother, rape and incest. Let’s suppose then, for the sake of argument, that I say to my proabortion friend that I will allow abortion for these 1% of abortions if he will grant that we prohibit the other 99%. No one on the proabortion side is willing to do this, which tells me that rape and incest are not the real issues for them. If we are going to deal with the proabortion position, we must focus somewhere else. Proabortion people don’t consider these issues central.

Rape and incest get disproportionate press in this debate. As often as these issues come up, one might think that they are common reasons for abortion. They aren’t.

Third, we come back to the issue of whether the pregnant woman is carrying a human being. If she is, then we do not resolve a rape by killing a human being. One tragedy does not solve another. It simply produces two tragedies instead of one. If a pregnant woman isn’t carrying a human being, however, we can look at abortion as a possible solution.

Fourth, rape involves all sorts of evil and wrongdoing, but the baby has done nothing wrong. The person who needs to be punished is the rapist, not the baby. Condemning the baby to death does no good.

Financial/Social/Emotional/Career Reasons: The proabortion argument says that many women in crisis pregnancies are not ready to care for a baby. They may live in poverty or be immature or have no husband or want to pursue a career. I’m going to lump these reasons together, not because I believe they are identical but because the reasoning behind them is much the same. The mother is in an especially difficult situation, having a child makes the situation harder, and my proabortion friend says I don’t care about her. If I cared, I would let her abort. My proabortion friend sees abortion as a solution to the mother’s problems. I don’t.

I agree with my proabortion friend that many situations exist in which the mother is not ready to have a baby. I disagree that the solution is to kill the baby. My proabortion friend insists that the mother is not killing a baby, that she does not have a human being inside her. And here we are again. We come around to the central issue. We can’t escape it. Every argument, every case my proabortion friend brings up stands only if pregnant women are not carrying humans. If, however, pregnancy involves more than one human, then my proabortion friend is fatally wrong and blatantly denies basic human rights to real human beings. Everything hinges on this issue.

If a woman in a crisis pregnancy does not want a baby, she does have a viable alternative to abortion. She can put her child up for adoption. My wife was adopted as a newborn and grew up in a loving home. I’m grateful that her birth mom chose to have her. My life is much richer because a woman I never met decided to have a child she didn’t want. If I could meet my wife’s birth mom, I would say thank you. A thousand times over.

Couples who want babies are waiting in line to adopt them. Thus, a pregnant mom in a difficult situation can provide a good home for her child, even if that home is not her own. And she can still be free to pursue her career. If she wants to see the child as he grows up, she can. If she does not want to, she does not have to. Adoption provides a viable alternative to raising a child or to taking her life. You don’t have to do either.

In a crisis pregnancy, a woman needs people to come around her and help her. She needs to know she is not alone, and my proabortion friend wants to know what prolife people are doing for the mother. To him, the prolife position cares only about babies and nothing for mothers. This accusation gets flung around again and again, but I don’t find that it has much substance.

What do Christian people do for pregnant moms?

Let’s for a moment set aside every hospital, clinic, and shelter called St. so-and-so, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, New Life, Resurrection or some other such name. If you removed those sources of help for pregnant women, you would be removing an enormous swath of the American medical system. But let’s not talk about those. Let’s talk instead about the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the nation whose sole focus is to help women in these very pregnancies that prolife people are accused of ignoring. These centers provide medical care, financial aid, counseling, support, classes, diapers, bottles, formula, baby clothes, car seats, and more. And they provide these things with little to no government support and with volunteer staff. In other words, I see prolife people giving their lives and money, and I see them working at the street level with women in difficult pregnancies. I’d like to see my proabortion friends do something like this without government funding. Give sacrificially of their own money and their own time to care for women in difficult pregnancies. That’s what prolife people are doing.

Can you still criticize prolife people for not caring for mothers? Some will. There is always more that can be done, and there are prolife people who do little. But if you choose to criticize because you see more that can be done, please look in the mirror and go start doing something about it. And if you are not doing what the prolife groups are already doing, you might want to reserve your criticism for someone else. This idea that prolife people care only for babies and not for mothers is hollow and bankrupt.

Fetal deformities: The child has Down’s Syndrome. The child has a deformed heart. The child does not have two legs. When a mother learns that her child has something like this, it is emotionally straining. The proabortion position says we can save the parents the difficulty of having to raise such a child, and we can save the child from having to live such a life . . . if only we abort.

By now, you know what we come back to. Is the pregnant woman carrying a human being? If she is, then she has a human with Down’s Syndrome. We do not kill humans just because they have Down’s Syndrome. Or one leg. Or a deformed heart.

It may be true that this child will be more difficult to raise than a normal child, and it may also be true that this child will experience a more difficult life than a fully healthy person, but avoiding difficulty is not what life is about.

We say we help the child by aborting, but are we really helping? Can people with Down’s Syndrome live meaningful lives? Chris Nikic? How about people in wheelchairs? Joni Eareckson Tada? Or the blind? Helen Keller? Nick Vujicic was born with no arms and no legs. He now travels the world giving motivational speeches and hope to millions.[viii] His life was not easy, but ask him if someone in his condition can live a meaningful life. Often the most meaningful lives are the most difficult. When we say that people with abnormalities cannot live fulfilled lives, we are making an assumption about their life that we have no right to make. Many people with abnormalities have lived meaningful lives. And what is just as important, millions of them, whose names you have never heard, have brought joy and meaning to their parents.

These special cases often bring up the phenomenon of an unwanted pregnancy, and unwanted pregnancies are central to the proabortion position. Proabortion people genuinely want most women to have their babies because most women actually want to have their babies. But this creates an odd tension in proabortion thought.

Most proabortion people talk as if the fetus is a baby . . . IF the mother wants the baby. If, however, the mother does not want the baby, proabortion people will tell her “it’s just a clump of cells.” The fetus has human value if the mother wants him but no value if the mother does not want him. The humanity of the fetus then seems to depend on the desires of the mother. This thinking is utter nonsense. Our desires are irrelevant to the facts. If the fetus is a baby, he is a baby whether you want him or not. If the fetus is not a baby, it is not a baby whether you want one or not. You can’t have it both ways. The American emphasis on freedom and choice sometimes gets this absurd. We think we can shape reality to our desires. We can’t.

[i] Statistically speaking.

[ii] Guttmacher, Alan. “Abortion Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” The Case for Legalized Abortion Now (Berkeley, California: Diablo Books), 1967, page 3.

[iii] Koop, C. Everett, M.D. “How Often is Abortion Necessary to ‘Save the Life of the Mother’?” October 19, 2012, at https://www.nrlc.org/archive/abortion/pba/HowOften AbortionNecessarySaveMother.pdf.

[iv] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/abortion-and-mental-health-quantitative-synthesis-and-analysis-of-research-published-19952009/E8D556AAE1C1D2F0F8B060B28BEE6C3D

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Op cit. www.guttmacher.org

[viii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJnJ_fTYofQ

Aug

2022

Abortion, Morality, and Human Rights

A pregnant woman is carrying a human life. Science indicates this. The continuity of the development points to this. Our intuitions imply this. Our language suggests this. Scripture shows this. The Church fathers plainly state this.

But the prolife argument is stronger than merely the humanity of the fetus. I see specific ethical factors inherent in a pregnancy that strengthen the moral obligation a mother has for her unborn child. Here are four:

The fetus is completely helpless and vulnerable, and those who are strong have a special moral responsibility to care for those who are weak.
The fetus is dependent upon her mother, and people have a special moral responsibility to care for those who depend upon them.
The fetus is the offspring of her parents, and parents have a special moral responsibility to care for their offspring.
The fetus is innocent, and it is morally unjust to kill the innocent.

Thus, while I do believe that a pregnant woman is carrying a human being, I do not believe she is carrying any human being. She is carrying her helpless, vulnerable, innocent son or daughter. She has the ordinary ethical responsibility we all have to care for human life, but she also has the special ethical responsibility to care for the weak, for those who depend on her, for the innocent, and for her own child. Abortion, thus, does not violate life merely in some generic sense. It violates a mother-child relationship and special moral obligations to care for the helpless and the innocent.

If you say we should care for the oppressed, you should be prolife.

If you say we should care for the weak and the vulnerable, you should be prolife.

If you say we should stand up for the innocent, you should be prolife.

Human Rights

If you believe in human rights, you should be prolife.

Human rights belong to humans. All humans. If you are a human being, you have human rights. The unborn is a human being.

We humans have justified all sorts of cruelty by denying full humanity to certain groups of people. In the antebellum South, Americans justified slavery by saying that black people were not fully human. In Nazi Germany, Hitler justified the Holocaust by saying that Jews were an inferior race. In many Muslim countries today, Muslims justify special taxes on and mistreatment of nonMuslims by saying that they are dhimmis. When those in power want to violate the human rights of the vulnerable, they often justify their actions by claiming that the vulnerable are not as fully human as the rest of us.

This is precisely what the proabortion position must do. Abortion requires people to deny the humanity of a certain class of human in order to justify the practice. The proabortion position cannot stand if the fetus is a human life. I’m sure that my proabortion friend does not endorse slavery, but she thinks of the unborn the same way the antebellum South thought of its black population.

We play a dangerous game when we begin to say that only certain humans are real people. We become the antebellum South without ever knowing it and grow outraged if someone points out the likeness.

Today we abort about 20% of all unborn children in America.[i] Can you imagine the outcry if we killed 20% of the women in our country? Or 20% of the Hispanics? Or 20% of our two-year-olds? Or 20% of any group? The unborn is the most vulnerable and most oppressed group of people in America. There is no other group of people that we kill at a rate of 20% per year. And with abortion, we have actually sanctioned it.

As a society, we have come to recognize the full humanity of all races, religions and genders. Those were long, hard fights, and we may not be where we would like to be, but we are certainly not where we were. It is now time for us to recognize the humanity of all stages of development. Maybe we need to see that the unborn are like a vulnerable race. They may not look exactly the same as those in power, but they are just as human. They are the same as we are but at a different stage of development. They are human beings. They have human rights, and abortion denies them those rights without ever giving them a choice.

[i] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-abortions-rose-in-2020-with-about-1-in-5-pregnancies-terminated

Aug

2022

Christianity and Abortion

Up to this point, in my discussion on abortion, I have said nothing about religion. I do not believe you need religion to know that a pregnant woman is carrying a human life.

But I want to shift and now talk directly to the Christian who honors the Bible as holy. So to the Christian:

Christians do not abort their children.

All humans are created in the image of God (Gen 1:27). This doctrine is the foundation for human rights, and human rights belong to all humans. Here are some Scriptures that speak of the unborn as humans or having human capacities.

The unborn can be filled with the Holy Spirit: For he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb (Lk 1:15).

The unborn can rejoice: And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy (Lk 1:41-4)

God knows and calls the unborn to serve Him: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations (Jer 1:5)

The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name . . . And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant . . . (Is 49:1, 5)

But when he who had set me apart before I was born . . . (Gal 1:15)

God is the God of the unborn: Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God (Ps 22:9-10).

God knows the unborn and is with them. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (Ps 139:7-16).

In this psalm, David speaks of God forming him, knowing him and making him within his mother’s womb. The idea is that God is with David even there. The flow of ideas runs like this. Where can I go to escape God? If I go to heaven, God is there. If I go to hell, God is there. If I go to the other side of the sea, God is there. Darkness can’t hide me from God (Psalm 139:7-12). Why, God was with me even in my mother’s womb (Ps 139: 13-6).

Unborn twins can struggle together: The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided . . .”(Gen 25:22-3).

Scripture says that children are a gift of God (Ps 127:3). Abortion destroys that gift. You cannot say that a child is a gift from God and then abort her.

Scripture commands the human race to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). Abortion negates that command.

The Bible considers the unborn to be people. It describes them experiencing things only people experience – the filling of the Holy Spirit, joy, struggle, being called to be a servant or a prophet. It refers to them as babies and children, and the pronouns it uses are personal: I, me, he.

Biblically, a fetus is a human being.

The Early Church

Early church tradition also is quite uniform in opposition to abortion. Here are a few quotes on abortion from early church fathers.

The Didache (1^st cent): “You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” [i]

Barnabas (late 1^st/early 2^nd cent): “Never do away with an unborn child, nor destroy it after its birth.”[ii]

Athenagoras (2^nd cent): Athenagoras is writing to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and senator Lucius Aurelius Commodus. Here he is defending Christians against the charge that they are murderers.

“Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it . . .[iii]

Tertullian (2^nd cent): “In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.”[iv]

We could continue and quote Clement of Alexandria (2^nd century), Mark Minicius Felix (late 2^nd century), Hippolytus (early 3^rd), Cyprian (3^rd), and Basil, Ambrose, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and the Apostolic Constitution (all from the 4^th). The early church was united in its strong opposition to abortion. And the church didn’t stop. Throughout history, Christian opposition continued through Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, John Piper, and a host of others.

If you respect the Bible, the unborn is a human being. If you respect the teaching of the early church fathers, abortion is a sin.

As a human being I oppose abortion because it kills human beings. As a Christian, I oppose abortion for the same reason, but as a Christian, I have extra reasons for doing so, namely Scripture and the historic church teachings.

[i] “The Didache.” http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html, chapter 2.

[ii] “The Epistle of Barnabas,” Early Christian Writings. New York: Penguin Books, 1981, p. 217.

[iii] Athenagoras. “A Plea For Christians.” https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/early-church-fathers/ante-nicene/vol-2-second-century/writings-of-athenagoras/a-plea-christians.html, chapter 35.

[iv] Tertullian. Apology. Ch 9. https://carm.org/tertullian/tertullian-the-apology-chapters-1-to-23/

Aug

2022

A Fetus is a Human is a Baby is a Child

In my previous blog I argued from science that a fetus is a distinct human life. I now want to appeal to something entirely different. I propose that we humans intuitively know that a fetus is a human is a baby is a child. Our language and our emotions give us away. Let me tell a story.

When I taught English, I gave my students each year a persuasive essay assignment in which they could write on any topic they chose. Abortion was by far the most popular topic, and every year I found myself reading scads of essays on abortion – pro and con. And every year I had multiple students who took a proabortion stance and argued for “aborting the baby” or “aborting the child.” It’s just the way they talked.

I would point out to these students that their language hurt their argument, for if the fetus is (as they admit) a baby, then abortion kills a baby, but if the fetus is not human, you can do with it as you please. This “baby” language was so common that it often made it into my generic comments to the class on common errors or weaknesses I found across many essays.

One year I was pointing out this pattern to the class and told them that if you want to take a proabortion stance, you weaken your argument by referring to the baby. Babies are human. Babies are children.

When I had finished, a young man in the front row (who did not write on abortion) replied, “Of course it’s a baby! What else could it be?” He then went on to say that he believed a woman should be able to abort that baby. I was stunned not at the gross contradiction in his moral reasoning but at how confidently he stated it and how strongly he believed it. He was utterly convinced that pregnant women carry babies. He had no doubt that a fetus is a baby.

You can write off that young man as being a high school kid who simply hadn’t thought through the issue, and you certainly would be correct. But that’s precisely my point. When we are at the dinner table describing what a pregnant woman is carrying, “baby” is the normal word we use. And we don’t think twice about it. It’s just natural. I’ve never heard anyone address a pregnant woman and say, “How’s the fetus today?” No. You greet your pregnant friend and say, “How are you and the baby doing?” The mother tells her husband, “I felt the baby kick today.” Or she says, “The baby is hungry today.” Or “we heard the baby’s heartbeat today.” Or they see the ultrasound and say, “It’s a girl!”

We talk this way all the time, and our language says something about what we think. We intuitively know that a pregnant woman is carrying a baby. Or a boy. Or a girl. Or a child. Those are the words we use. And when we use those words, we don’t mean baby dog or baby fish or baby bird. We mean baby human.

That young man in my class is not alone. What he intuitively understood is what most people intuitively understand. The overwhelming majority of pregnant women intuitively know they are carrying a baby. They don’t need scientific arguments. Just ask them what they are carrying. Or try this. Try telling a pregnant woman that she is not carrying a baby and see how that goes.

And here’s the thing. Most proabortion people talk this way. They may avoid “baby” language in formal arguments, but in personal settings they still revert to it. I’ve heard this with my ears. Our language communicates something about what we believe deep down.

But so do our emotions. Recently, a woman I work with announced that she was pregnant. We all rejoiced. We congratulated her. We high fived. And this reaction is the normal human reaction to a pregnancy. Why? We are not rejoicing over a clump of cells. We are rejoicing over a human life. And proabortion people do the same rejoicing in most situations.

But our emotions don’t have to be joyful to betray us. Even when we face a crisis pregnancy – an unwed mother, a rape – and our emotions may be sad at the situation or we may feel a sense of loss, these emotions also suggest that the mother is carrying something more than a clump of cells. If the fetus is just a clump of cells, why do we feel a sense of loss? Our emotions need not get entangled with a clump of cells. We have no reason to be sad over a clump of cells. The mother has an easy way out. What is in her body is no more special than a wart. Just remove it and move on.

But that’s not how we feel. There’s no tragedy in having a clump of cells that you can easily remove with no harm done. The fact that we consider crisis pregnancies tragic betrays the fact that deep down, we know we are dealing with more than just a clump of cells. Deep down, whether we are happy or sad, we know what a pregnant woman is carrying.

A fetus is a human is a baby is a child. This is the intuition most of us have. Now I understand that intuitions are not formal arguments. Intuitions can be wrong. But neither are they nothing. Intuitions do push us in a certain direction, and that direction is toward the humanity of the fetus. If you want to say that the fetus is not human, you must argue against the way most people naturally think and feel. In other words, the burden of proof is on you.

Aug

2022

Abortion and Human Life

When I was in the army, a young sergeant in my unit worked as secretary for the central office of my company. She was pregnant and grew large so that her time to deliver was upon her. One day she did not show up for work and remained absent for maybe a week. When she finally did show up again, she was not pregnant, and when I saw her, I was so happy for her that I said, “Sergeant so-and-so! Congratulations! You had your baby!”

“Actually,” she said. “I had an abortion.”

I did not know what to say. I had been so deeply and genuinely happy for her, and one second later I was numb. The swing of my emotions was extreme and instant. I don’t remember what I said to her, but I do remember going into my office, closing the door, and weeping.

If you’ve seen the news lately, you’ve seen that the United States Supreme Court recently overturned Roe v. Wade in the case Dobbs v. Jackson. For those of you who are not Americans, this decision is an earthquake to American culture. I never thought I would live to see this day because I never thought the Supreme Court would have the guts to make this decision. The major networks, news outlets, magazines, and newspapers are up in arms and overwhelmingly in opposition to Dobbs. They make no secret about it. They don’t pretend to be neutral and are working overtime and doing everything in their power to discredit this decision and the court that made it.

But as a Christian, I stand with the justices who voted to overturn Roe. The Dobbs decision is a step in the right direction and a reason to rejoice. Abortion is America’s greatest social justice issue today. In this blog, I want to explain why.

But before I do so, I am aware that abortion stokes people’s emotions. On both sides. Given this fact, it is difficult to have an intelligent discussion about the topic. But I actually want to have an intelligent discussion. I believe that an intelligent, reasoned discussion will be more fruitful than name-calling and social media sound bites. This does not mean that I wish to abandon my convictions in the name of reason. Instead, I wish to explain my convictions in a reasonable way.

Let’s begin with some facts. According to the research wing of Planned Parenthood, in 2020, there were over 930,000 abortions in America. That number is an increase of about 8% from 2017, when there were about 862,000.[i] Since Roe v. Wade, there have been more than 63 million abortions in America.[ii] Sixty-three million.

This means that if a fetus is a living human being, we have chosen to kill 63 million human beings since Roe v. Wade. Those are not numbers to shrug off. Those numbers are a Holocaust. If a fetus is a living human being, then the results of abortion on demand have been horrifying, and abortion is the greatest social justice issue of our day.

But that’s only if a fetus is a living human being. If a fetus is not a living human being, then we’ve killed 63 million nonhumans, and the Holocaust comparison is unfair.

Thus, you have to decide whether a pregnant woman is carrying a human being. In simplest terms, that is what the abortion question comes down to. It’s not about difficult cases like rape, incest or poverty. I can acknowledge the difficulty of every special case but still end up opposing abortion – if the fetus is human. If the fetus is a human being, then abortion kills a human being. If a pregnant woman is carrying a human life, then the sanctity of that human life trumps those special cases, for we all know that we can’t go around killing human beings just to get ourselves out of a tough spot.

Please hear me. I am not saying this to minimize the tragedy of crisis pregnancies. I am well aware of the tragedies. And the mothers in those tragedies need our help and compassion. But if a pregnant woman is carrying a human life, then abortion is also a tragedy, and we must weigh tragedy against tragedy.

If you see this, then you see why the central issue in abortion is the question of whether the fetus is a human being. Therefore, I want to focus on this central issue. Is a pregnant woman carrying a human life? In answering this question, I will say nothing new or original, but I hope I will be kind, simple, and clear.

Yes. A pregnant woman is carrying a distinct human life.

Life

The fetus is alive. From the moment of conception, from zygote to embryo to fetus, we see life. We see constant growth. We see cell multiplication. We see movement of arms and legs. We see a heartbeat, blood flowing, brain waves. This is not merely potential life. This is life. Abortion, thus, kills life. This is a fact, and it is not debatable.

Human Life

But does it kill human life? Yes. It does. The DNA is human. The mother is human. The father is human. What else could their offspring be? The body parts are the body parts of a human. The eyes are human eyes. The fingers human fingers. The toes human toes. The heart a human heart. The blood human blood. The fingerprints human fingerprints. The fetus learns, dreams, has emotions, feels pain, and has a unique personality.[iii]

If the fetus is not human, what is she? She is not some kind of plant. She is not some kind of dog, cow, bird or monkey. She is not just cellular bacteria multiplying. Scientifically, everything points to the fetus being human. If the fetus is not human, I don’t know what she is.

Distinct Human Life

The fetus is distinct from his mother. He is not a mere extension of the mother’s body but is unique and distinct. A fetus is a separate person from his mother. Science tells us that the fetus has a different DNA from his mother. He often has a different blood type from his mother, and about 50% of the time, the fetus is a different gender from his mother. The fetus has two distinct eyes and ears, and they are not the eyes and ears of the mother. Two distinct arms and legs, not those of the mother. A separate heartbeat and a separate breathing rate from those of the mother. When a woman is pregnant, we do not have merely one body but two distinct bodies. We do not have one person but two people. The mother is responsible not merely for her own body but for another unique body inside her.

Thus, a pregnant woman is carrying a unique, living human being distinct from herself.

Please note that so far, I have made no religious argument to conclude this. I’m appealing to science, and I believe science is real. This, thus, means that abortion kills a unique, living human being. This is why I am prolife.

And sixty three million human lives later is why abortion is the greatest social justice issue of our day.

[i] https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2022/06/long-term-decline-us-abortions-reverses-showing-rising-need-abortion-supreme-court

[ii] http://www.numberofabortions.com/; https://christianliferesources.com/2021/01/19/u-s-abortion-statistics-by-year-1973-current/

[iii] https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/probing-question-can-babies-learn-utero/; https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199809/fetal-psychology

May

2022

Contentment

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” (Ph 4:11)

“But godliness with contentment is great gain.” (I Tim 6:6)

Father, let my heart rest in you, my eyes feast on Christ, my soul enjoy your eternal pleasures.

If we are going to talk about money, we have to talk about contentment. The central reason money brings the heart such great problems is that the heart is not content. People think money is a source of contentment, and many people who would tell you it is not a source of contentment still live as if it is, which means that even they think it to be a source of contentment despite what they say.

Contentment is the vaccine against greed, the antidote to the poison of materialism. People pursue money in order to be content, but God created us to find contentment in Him. Money is, thus, a rival god to the Lord Almighty. If you are content in Christ, you feel no need for reams of money. It can’t give you anything you don’t already have. In fact, if you pursue it, it can steal what you do have. Many people trade away contentment in Christ so they can have money, and the irony of it is that they do so in the pursuit of contentment.

It is crucial for us to see how interrelated contentment and money are. When Paul says he has learned to be content in all things (Ph 4:11), the context deals with his material situation:

“I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.” (Ph 4:12)

When Paul tells us that godliness with contentment is great gain (I Tim 6:6), he begins a conversation on the desire for riches:

“. . . for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (I Tim 6:7-10)

Scripture ties contentment to the desire for money. You can be content or you can desire to be rich, but you cannot be both. You can be content or you can love money, but you cannot be both. You have to choose. Will you be content? Or will you pursue riches?

If you choose contentment, you will pursue Jesus. You will love Him with all your heart. You will honor Him, serve Him, rest in Him, and enjoy Him. And when you enjoy Jesus, money fades into the distance. But if you pursue riches, you will know many senseless and harmful desires that plunge your soul into ruin. You will pierce yourself with pangs and may even wander away from the faith. You may gain great riches and know an outward and transitory happiness, but it will prove to have no foundation and will crumble at the slightest threat of loss. True contentment is deep-seated and can endure trouble and lack. Ask Paul. Money will never give you that.

If I had only one thing to say about how to relate to money, it would be this: Be content in Christ. If you will do that, so much else concerning money will fall into place.

May

2022

The Christian and Money

Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

Everyone uses money, and we use it for just about everything – food, clothing, a place to live, transportation, entertainment, communication, energy, you name it. Therefore, if the kingdom of God affects how you live, it should affect how you view and handle money. In fact, if you are a Christian and you view and handle money no differently from the world, the kingdom of God has not yet captured your heart. How you relate to money is a good barometer for how you relate to God.

We, thus, need to talk about money, for the Bible talks about it. A lot. So over the next several blogs, I want to talk about topics like greed and contentment, poverty and riches, debt and investment. In other words – money. Today will be a general intro.

Because many earthly items depend on money, we all know we need some amount of it. We need to eat and to live somewhere. We need clothing for our bodies and heat in the winter. We need some type of transportation and some medical care. All of these needs come through money. Thus, money, itself is not evil. In most instances, it is how God provides our needs. And our Father knows our needs (Mt 6:31-2).

The normal way God provides the money for our needs is through work. Honest work is a good thing. God has ordained it to be the means for our provision. He told Adam that man would eat bread by the sweat of his face. We work. We earn money. We eat. That is how God intends earth to operate for now.

Thus, money is not itself evil. People err when they judge others purely on the basis of their bank accounts. Poor people are not more spiritual just because they are poor, and rich people are not necessarily corrupt because they are rich. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Nehemiah, Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea were all wealthy, but I dare say we will see them in the kingdom. And many who live in poverty reject Jesus and live for themselves. On the flip side, riches are not a sign of righteousness nor poverty a sign of unrighteousness. James says of the rich, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you . . . the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you.” (5:1,4). Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, and more all have had great wealth but spiritual poverty. And many who are poor flock to Jesus because in their poverty they more clearly see their need. Sometimes riches have a way of blinding us to our weakness. So money itself doesn’t tell you anything about someone’s spiritual state or character. Money itself is merely a tool. However.

Money is still quite dangerous. The danger of money lies not so much in the money but in our hearts. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Make no mistake. Scripture is abundantly plain that you and I must guard our hearts against money. For many people, money is their idol, their God. They live as if their purpose in life is to make money, as if God created them just so He could give them stuff. For these people (and there are many of them) money eats away their soul. They have traded their soul for earthly riches. It’s like Esau trading his birth right for a bowl of stew.

And Christians are not immune to the dangers of money. Money can steal your peace and joy. Money can come between you and God. Money can render your ministry ineffective. Money is ever calling you to look away from God and to the “good life” here. It calls you to compromise a God focus so that you can have that three-bedroom house on the lake.

The overwhelming emphasis of the Bible’s teaching on money is not on its moral neutrality but on its danger to the soul. If we run around convincing ourselves that it’s OK to love money because money is not sinful, we have already lost the battle. Here’s how Paul put it:

“. . . those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (I Tim 6:9-10)

Jesus put it this way: “You cannot serve God and money” (Matt 6:24).

So then. Put your eyes on Christ. Love Him. Work your job. Provide for your family. Be content in Christ with what you have. Don’t look for great riches. If they come, be grateful to God who gave them and be generous to the work of the kingdom and to those in need. But keep your heart free from money, for if you don’t, it will destroy your soul without your even being aware of it.

Mar

2022

Warning Signs When Dating

If you are in a dating relationship, you want to know if it is healthy. I’ve already given some positive principles to follow, and if you follow them, you will greatly increase your chances of having a healthy relationship. I now want to give some warning signs. Think of these as you might think of a warning light on your car dash. If you see these, you need to either make some changes or end the relationship.

Warning Signs:

You make time for each other, but you don’t make time for God. How you spend your time reveals your priorities. If you have no time for God, He is not a priority to you. He is not first, and keeping Christ first is the most important thing you can do toward maintaining a healthy relationship.

You pull away from God’s people. When a couple pulls back from God’s people, they are in danger of living in their own little world.

You have no time to serve God’s kingdom. If the relationship is pulling you out of ministry altogether, you have a problem.

The other person begins to cling to you. Clinginess shows an unhealthy need for you. It reveals a soul that is not content outside the relationship. Contented people are not clingy, and discontented people are miserable to live with. Thus, when you see clinginess, you are seeing someone you don’t want to marry.

The other person is more interested in you than in God.

The other person is not free from the control of his or her parents. I’m not talking about someone who merely lives with her parents. I’m talking about an unhealthy control that the parents exert in this person’s life. I’m talking about parents who interfere excessively in the life of this person. In marriage you must leave the parents and cling to the spouse. Parents who want to control their adult children are one of the biggest problems married couples face. If your love can’t say “no” to parents now, he or she won’t be able to do it later either. Of course, consider age here. Parents should have more control over a sixteen-year-old than a thirty-year-old.

At least one of you talks about living together before you are married. Living together unmarried harms the integrity and purity of the relationship usually for the sake of convenience. Even speaking about living together is a warning sign. It says something about how the person thinks. People who maintain the integrity of the dating relationship are also more likely to maintain the integrity of the marriage. This issue by itself is serious enough to consider ending the relationship.

The other person prioritizes the pursuit of money or material goods. These priorities will not change after you marry.

The other person is not content in Christ.

The other person makes sexual advances. When this happens, draw the line immediately. If the other person ignores the line you’ve drawn, end the relationship now.

The other person is romantically involved with someone else.

The other person is caught up in the broader culture. One of the big problems with being caught up in the culture is that the culture informs how you think. Thus, when you marry, this person will not think from a godly mindset but from a cultural one. That will hurt you in the long run.

Godly people tell you they have concerns about the relationship. Many people will want to give you advice on your relationship. Not all advice is equal. But when godly people speak, you need to listen.

Disagreement on fundamental spiritual issues. Disagreement itself is not a warning sign. All healthy couples disagree on many things. But if you are a Christian, there are some basic spiritual issues you and the other person must see eye to eye on. Those agreements will help you resolve your disagreements. They give you common ground on the most important things. Examples of fundamental spiritual issues include the basics of the Christian faith: the authority of Scripture, the Incarnation, grace, the Trinity, the Atonement and bodily Resurrection, the presence of a heart relationship with Christ. This doesn’t mean you have to agree on every spiritual point. A believing Baptist and a believing Lutheran can have a healthy relationship. They may have to talk through some of their disagreements, but those disagreements are minor compared to the centrality of Christ.

Dysfunctional resolving of your disagreements. You will disagree, and you do not have to resolve those disagreements perfectly. But pay attention to how you handle them. How you handle your disagreements often says more about the relationship than the actual disagreements themselves.

If either of you tries to sweep conflict under the carpet, you have a problem. Conflict avoidance is not conflict resolution. When people avoid conflict, they add underlying pressure to their relationship. Over time, that pressure builds, and the long-term cost of conflict avoidance is much steeper than dealing with the conflict in real time. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

If either of you consistently deals with conflict by using verbal abuse or strong anger, you have a problem. The key word here is consistently. There will be times when healthy couples out of anger speak words they regret. Regretting those words and seeking forgiveness for them is a healthy sign. But if someone is blind to his consistent abuse and anger, he will be difficult to live with, and he is not walking well with God.

To the Christian: the other person is a nonChristian. If this is the case, end the relationship now.

To the guys: a girl caught up in her looks.

To the guys: a girl who wants to take the lead in the relationship. Here we are looking at the big picture, not an event or two.

To the girls: a guy who wants to dominate whether it be physically or verbally.

To the girls: a guy who won’t lead or move.

To the girls: a guy who views pornography.

These are just a handful of warning signs I have seen in romantic relationships. Think of them as symptoms. If you see them, something is wrong. They do not all mean you need to end the relationship now, though some signs are more dire than others. This is not a complete list.

Mar

2022

Unequally Yoked

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers (II Cor 6:14).

If we are going to talk about dating, then at some point, we have to talk about the concept of being unequally yoked. This is the idea that a Christian should marry a Christian.

But before we talk about that, let’s talk more broadly about saying “no” to a potential date. Perhaps you have had to do this and know what it is like. The reality is that I have never met a person who would date anybody. If you are single, you can think of people whom you would never date. When I was single, I remember girls saying “no” to me. And I remember girls interested in me whom I would never ask out. The fact of the matter is that everybody has criteria to determine whom he or she can and cannot date. If you are single, this is you and you know it. Maybe you haven’t thought deeply about what your criteria are and, thus, can’t list them out, but you know you wouldn’t date just anybody. I bet you could give me names of people right now whom you would never date. You might even be able to give me reasons, and the moment you give me reasons, you are giving me criteria by which you make distinctions between eligible and noneligible dates.

What I am describing is universal. I say this to point out the fact that the business of excluding potential partners is something you already do, and you have no problem with it. You have your criteria.

Now the Biblical position on being unequally yoked simply says that one of the criteria for a Christian needs to be that the other person is also a Christian. This is pretty basic. So let me tell a story.

When I was a teenager, I remember hearing a youth leader speak about dating, and he advised Christians not to date nonChristians. Inside me arose this visceral reaction. I wanted to shout, “No!” I felt that this leader’s advice was smack full of arrogance and that it communicated to most of the world, “I’m better than you.” I genuinely believed that everyone was equal and that equality in dating meant that I must be open to anybody.

Two things then happened to me. The first is that I proceeded to walk with God. I don’t mean I didn’t sin. I had plenty of that. But I immersed myself in the Scriptures. I prayed daily. I plugged into a church. And I did these things from the heart. I genuinely wanted to know God better.

The second thing that happened to me is that I began to pay closer attention to the lives of girls, and I noticed a big difference between Christian and nonChristian girls. It wasn’t that Christian girls were holy and nonChristian girls were sinners or that Christian girls were more fun to be around. It was that Christian girls genuinely desired Jesus and nonChristian girls did not. Here was the one thing in life that mattered most to me, and the Christian girls understood, but the nonChristian girls could not. It’s not just that they did not understand. They could not understand.

By the time I had graduated from college, I had completely changed on this issue. I knew Biblically, and I knew from life that as a Christian I could never marry a nonChristian. I knew it. And I understood that this new position was not the least bit arrogant. In fact, it required me to humble myself before God. I had to say, “I was wrong.” I had to listen not so much to America but to Scripture. I also realized that I already had seen many girls I could not date for reasons other than faith, and I did not consider myself arrogant for having those reasons. If I was willing to say “no” to a girl because she smoked, then I also should have been able to do so because she had no faith. Her lack of faith was a far deeper and more central issue than her smoking or her looks or even her personality, and I didn’t think myself arrogant for considering those things. Marrying a Christian simply became one of my criteria.

That’s my story, and I tell it to say that this is not a mere theory to me. It’s real life. I think it’s helpful to understand that before we look at the Scriptures.

So let’s now look at the Scriptures. Let’s begin with marriage itself. I’ve already written about marriage, so I’m just going to summarize. In marriage, “a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:28). That is the definition of marriage Jesus gives. If the two are one, they need to be intimate on the most important and deepest issues, they need to be one in their finances, in their priorities, in their child rearing, and in their service to God. This is what marriage is. In addition, the purpose of marriage is to reflect Christ and the Church (Eph 5:22-32). This definition and purpose of marriage do not directly forbid a Christian from marrying an unbeliever, but they lay the foundation for understanding why.

Elsewhere, however, Scripture does directly forbid a believer from marrying an unbeliever. Here is Paul:

Do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God . . . (II Cor 6:14-16)

Do not be unequally yoked. I imagine you have seen pictures of a yoke or have heard perhaps of a yoke of oxen. A yoke is a heavy wooden bar that connects two animals together, usually for the purpose of plowing or pulling a cart. The yoke takes the two animals and makes them one. It allows them to pull together as a team. The yoke also inextricably binds the two animals together. This is the picture Paul gives.

Paul says to Christians not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. The idea is that the Christian should not enter a relationship with an unbeliever in which the two are bound together as one. He then gives his reason for the command through a series of questions. What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Light with darkness? And so on.

Paul is not forbidding ordinary friendships because ordinary friendships do not require that the two be bound as one. Marriage, however, is a different type of relationship. If ever there was a relationship in which the two are bound as one, marriage is that relationship.

But the concept of being unequally yoked is not restricted to II Corinthians. In the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelite men not to intermarry with the daughters of the peoples around them (Ex 34:16; Dt 7:3; Mal 2:11). In Judges the Israelites took wives from the other peoples around them and wound up serving the gods of those wives (Jg 3:6). In Ezra and Nehemiah the Israelites took wives from the nations around them and had to repent of it (Ez 10:2; Neh 13:23-7). Paul instructs believing widows that they are free to remarry, “only in the Lord” (I Cor 7:39). And, of course marriage portrays Christ and the Church. The Church is the Bride of Christ. The concept of an unbelieving Church is nonsensical.

Thus, when Paul commands believers not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, he is not communicating something new or strange. He is simply repeating the consistent Biblical message on this topic.

But why? Why should believers not marry unbelievers?

The main reason deals with your spiritual life. When God forbade Israel from intermarrying, He says that the reason is spiritual – lest “you take of their daughters for your sons and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.” (Ex 34:16). Significant time bound as one to an unbeliever will make it harder for you to walk intimately with Christ. NonChristians cannot understand a complete commitment to Jesus Christ. They cannot share with you the deepest, most important desires you have. They will never understand your faith.

But marriage involves more than just understanding. In marriage, a man and woman become one. They must then live life as one. When a believer is thus yoked to an unbeliever, the two cannot move forward together spiritually. The believer will want to give sacrificially from their finances to the work of the kingdom. The unbeliever will think that is the craziest idea he has ever heard. The believer will want to raise their kids in Christ. The unbeliever will most likely oppose that desire, but even if not, at best, the unbeliever can simply acquiesce. She can never help out. The believer will want to spend significant time with God’s people and serving God in ministry. The unbeliever will not care. The believer will want Christ to be the top priority in the family. The unbeliever will push back on that priority.

Imagine two oxen yoked together, and one wants to go right and the other left. Or one walks forward but drags the other. This is a marriage between a believer and an unbeliever when it comes to spiritual matters.

Occasionally you hear people bring up the idea of evangelistic dating. You know. “What if my dating her is the only witness she has? And if she does convert, we are then free to marry.”

You are playing with fire. She may convert. She may not. You may “fall in love” with her and all of a sudden you’re making all sorts of excuses as to why you can marry her. And she doesn’t need you to date her for you to be a witness to her. In fact, you’ll be a better witness to her if you don’t date her. Follow Scripture. Not what you want.

In unequally yoked relationships I have seen the unbeliever convert. It happens. But more often what happens is that the Christian flounders spiritually and, to use Biblical language, pursues the gods of the nations.

If you are a Christian, don’t marry a nonChristian. Which means, don’t even date one.

Finally, I need to say something to the Christian already married to a nonChristian. Paul addresses this situation as well. If you are a believer but your spouse is not, remain with your spouse (I Cor 7:12ff). You are married. You are one flesh for life. Love your spouse well. Pray for him or her. You have obvious limits to what you can do together spiritually, but the story isn’t over. God is in the business of redeeming the lost. Pray for that, and above all, walk with Christ yourself.

Mar

2022

Dating and Sexual Boundaries

There once was a woman who landed at an airport in Columbia. She needed to take a cab up into the mountains where the roads were windy, narrow, and had steep drop offs with no guard rails. She approached the line of cabs at the airport, told the first driver where she needed to go and asked him how good a driver he was and how close he could drive to the edge of the road without going over the side.

The man said, “Ma’am, I am a very good driver. I can drive within half a meter of the edge without going over.”

She went to the next cab. “Ma’am,” that driver said. “I can get ten centimeters from the edge.”

She went to the next cab and the man put his hands up and said, “Ma’am, if you come with me, we are staying as far from that edge as possible.”

“Open the door,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

When it comes to dating and sex, most people think like the first two cab drivers. “How close can I get without crossing the line?”

Paul, however, commands us to “flee sexual immorality.” The idea is not to inch our way close to immorality without going over the edge but to stay as far from it as possible.

When you date, sexual sin is a real danger, much more than with other forms of courtship, and contemporary culture makes this topic difficult to talk about. On the one hand, if you look at the big picture of the Christian dating scene, it is obvious that we have a problem. I could list name after name after name after name of people who identified with Christ but who committed sexual sin before marriage. On the other hand, we have many people who, once they hear you talk about sexual boundaries, protest vehemently. They say you are being legalistic and setting up merely a list of do’s and don’ts. They often say as well that you are being judgmental and creating an unhealthy atmosphere that condemns sex.

So here I am stuck in the middle. We have a glaring problem that I need to address, but once I do, many will say I am legalistic. Oh well. I guess I can’t please everybody.

I will concede first that legalism about sex can and does exist within certain quarters, and I do wish to avoid it. But I also need to say that many people who decry legalism are really decrying holiness by calling it legalism. To them almost all righteousness is legalism. They could not tell the difference between legalism and righteousness if they had to.

The Christian pursues Christ. Part of that pursuit of Christ involves fleeing sexual immorality. But when we flee it, we do so because we are pursuing something greater. This is holiness. Legalism, however, argues about the technicalities of whether an activity is OK or not.

Now in this discussion, I will at times talk about activities that cross the line. Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid the idea of a line somewhere, but I don’t want our focus to be on where the lines are. In holiness, the focus is on Christ and on honoring Him. If He is your focus, you will not cross the lines even if you don’t know exactly where they are. But if you focus on where the lines are, you are not focusing on Christ and will be more likely to violate the boundaries, even if you know exactly where they are. Christ is more powerful than mere knowledge. Pursue Him.

The next thing I need to discuss is why. Why should dating couples care about sexual boundaries? The answer may not be what you think. Most people think that Christians avoid premarital sex because they view sex as some dirty thing. The reality is just the opposite. To Christians, sex is a beautiful and holy thing; and because it is so beautiful and holy, Christians do not consider it profane. Sex is special and is, thus, reserved for a special relationship. Christians have a much higher view of sex than the world that ironically says the Christian view is so low. When you are single, you need sexual boundaries because you are protecting something special.

I could say more about the Christian view of sex, but I already have. Go here and here. It might be helpful to read those blogs before you move on, for they lay some foundation for any healthy thinking about sex.

Sexual passion is powerful, and the farther you walk down its path, the harder it is to turn back. It is easier to avoid sexual sin by drawing boundaries early than by waiting until you are kissing. Sexual sin never begins with intercourse or even kissing. It begins with a look. That look becomes a stare. That stare implants itself as a recurring thought. Maybe a week later, that thought impels you to grab her hand and another week after that to touch her hair. Soon you are touching her waist and then her legs and then you are kissing. The exact sequence and time frame are not always the same, but you get the idea. You see the direction this is going in. Each step in the progression makes the passion roar. It is far easier to stop that progression earlier than later. The farther down that road you travel, the more drunk you become with passion, the less clear is your thinking and the weaker your self control.

So I want to talk about that progression and how to handle it in a dating relationship. You need some boundaries that you will not cross. How do you decide where they are? Some activities are clearly out of bounds: intercourse, petting, passionate kissing, taking off clothes, touching private parts, crude joking, and others.

Other activities, however – hugging, holding hands – may be appropriate. You have to decide what is appropriate, and the answer will not be the same for every couple. I don’t mean anything goes. No one will be able to go too far down that progression, but different couples may draw lines in different places in the early stages of that progression.

Here are some factors to consider. Culture will have some say about what is and is not appropriate. You might not hold hands in a conservative Arab culture but feel comfortable doing so in a secular Western one. Personal histories will affect what is appropriate. If someone has a history of sexual abuse, or if the woman has experienced rape, you will likely need to honor some tight boundaries and move slowly. If either party has a history of promiscuity, you will need to do the same but for different reasons. Personal weaknesses factor into this. Some people are more easily tempted than others. If you get sexually stimulated by hugging, maybe you need to back off. When I talk this way, I am not being legalistic but loving. If you ignore cultural and personal factors in your relationship, you are being unloving and inconsiderate.

Remember, the goal is to honor Christ, not just avoid some behavior. So walk closely with Christ. If you are doing that, here are some principles that can help with sexual boundaries.

If an action makes you feel a twinge in your conscience, don’t do it.
Don’t push the other person. If the other person is uncomfortable with something physical, back off. That is love.
If the other person pushes you to take some step physically that you are uncomfortable with, end the relationship now. That person cares more for his or her desire than for you.
Don’t live together until you are married.
Talk to one another openly about what you are comfortable and uncomfortable with.
When you draw boundaries, draw them early in the relationship and don’t go far in that physical progression. You are to flee sexual immorality, not get close to it.
If possible, think through these issues before a relationship begins. You may adjust after a relationship begins, but thinking things through beforehand will help you even in the adjustment.
To the guys: You have a built-in mechanism for determining if an action is sexually stimulating. It’s called an erection. Think of an erection as a warning light that the engine is getting too hot. It’s a sign to back off.

These principles will help you and the other person as a couple decide what is appropriate and not. Above all, let your primary pursuit be Christ and His righteousness. Your primary pursuit must not be the other person. If you win that battle, you’ll win the war.

Uncategorized

Contentment

The Christian and Money

Warning Signs When Dating

Unequally Yoked

Dating and Sexual Boundaries

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories