Pastor’s Blog

Today marks the 37th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s Roe vs Wade decision, legalizing abortion on demand. Under the aegis of that ruling some 50 million abortions have taken place in our country. Pray for God to be merciful to our country. Pray that he would convict the consciences of Americans regarding this travesty.

One encouraging sign: The National Right to Life website (http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html) reports that “After reaching a high of over 1.6 million in 1990, the number of abortions annually performed in the U.S. has dropped back to levels not seen since the late 1970s.”

May this trend continue. After all, as even Dr Seuss’s Horton the elephant knows, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

(Posted 1/22/10)

Here’s a column by Al Mohler on September 30’s being the first “International Blasphemy Day,” sponsored by the Center for Inquiry International. Interesting it should come up this week. Just last Sunday morning we studied Matthew 26:57-68, where Caiaphas takes Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah as blasphemy. Dr. Mohler also suggests some ways Christians should respond to this event. Number one? Take no offense.

(posted 9/28/09)

January 22, 2009, marked the 36th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision, striking down state laws and making abortion legal in all 50 states. That decision by no means marked the beginning of abortions in the USA. I was surprised to learn recently (World Magazine) that, in proportion to the overall population, more abortions occurred in 1860 than take place today. The court’s decision didn’t begin abortions, but it certainly pushed the discussion to a new level.

John Piper, on the Desiring God website provides the following talking points in discussing abortion.

1. Existing fetal homicide laws make a man guilty of manslaughter if he kills the baby in a mother’s womb (except in the case of abortion).

2. Fetal surgery is performed on babies in the womb to save them while another child the same age is being legally destroyed.

3. Babies can sometimes survive on their own at 23 or 24 weeks, but abortion is legal beyond this limit.

4. Living on its own is not the criterion of human personhood, as we know from the use of respirators and dialysis.

5. Size is irrelevant to human personhood, as we know from the difference between a one-week-old and a six-year-old.

6. Developed reasoning powers are not the criterion of personhood, as we know from the capacities of three-month-old babies.

7. Infants in the womb are human beings scientifically by virtue of their genetic make up.

8. Ultrasound has given a stunning window on the womb that shows the unborn at eight weeks sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound. All the organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidneys are cleaning fluids, and there is a fingerprint. Virtually all abortions happen later than this date.

9. Justice dictates that when two legitimate rights conflict, the limitation of rights that does the least harm is the most just. Bearing a child for adoption does less harm than killing him.

10. Justice dictates that when either of two people must be inconvenienced or hurt to alleviate their united predicament, the one who bore the greater responsibility for the predicament should bear more of the inconvenience or hurt to alleviate it.

11. Justice dictates that a person may not coerce harm on another person by threatening voluntary harm on themselves.

12. The outcast and the disadvantaged and exploited are to be cared for in a special way, especially those with no voice of their own.

13. What is happening in the womb is the unique person-nurturing work of God, who alone has the right to give and take life.

14. There are countless clinics that offer life and hope to both mother and child (and father and parents), with care of every kind lovingly provided by people who will meet every need they can.

15.Jesus Christ can forgive all sins, and will give all who trusts him the help they need to do everything that life requires.

Oxford professor and noted proponent of atheism Richard Dawkins is among a number of atheists working to spread their creed. Donations have been raised to place posters on 30 London buses with this uplifting message: “There’s probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The ads are scheduled to run for four weeks in January, but may run longer.

“Probably no God?”

Doesn’t exactly ring with conviction, does it? Yet readers of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion will recall that Dawkins comes to the conclusion that it is extremely improbable that God exists. He never says God absolutely does not exist; only that he probably does not exist.

Dawkins is quoted by FoxNews.com (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,443705,00.html) as saying, with his trademark vitriol familiar to those who have read his book, “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion.”

Imagine if the Christian message were, “Christ was crucified and is probably risen.” Not exactly a message to change the world, is it? But the Christian gospel proclaims not a probability, but a certainty. After Peter preaches the risen Christ on the Day of Pentecost, he declares,

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:36)

The gospel is not a possibility to ponder, but a reality to live and die for.

As people enter eternity, they do not want to go clinging to a probability, especially when part of the risk is that God the Judge awaits them. As Christians, we die with certain hope: Christ entered the grave and came out victorious, breaking the power of sin and death over those who believe in him. He has satisfied by his own death the judgment of God against our sin. When I die, I do not want to cling to probabilities—the atheist’s hope that God will not be there to meet him—but to certainties: the certainty of a risen Christ who has secured heaven for me.

The banner may make people think, but not in the way Dawkins foresees. It could make them wonder, “Why is the atheist message so wishy-washy?”

Maybe the atheists are not entirely convinced themselves?

I recently completed Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion. Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and perhaps the leading proponent of atheism in the world today. I found his book difficult, but not for the reasons you might think. I will admit some trepidation as I began the book—would it undermine my faith in Christ and the existence of God? Would it raise objections and questions I couldn’t answer? But those kinds of challenges were not the source of my difficulty. (In the event, the answer to both questions was no.)

What made the book hard to read was that nearly every page was another opportunity for Dawkins to vent his spleen against religion in general and Christianity in particular. Each page brought another barrage of straw men raised and triumphantly knocked down, weak arguments, circular reasoning, and uses of the worst examples of behavior among Christians (or other religions) to represent the whole. Even many atheists were dismayed by the book’s poor quality and distance themselves from it.

Several authors have written in response to Dawkins, a couple of which I’ve read. Alister and Joanna McGrath have written The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. McGrath (Alister) is a colleague of Dawkins’ at Oxford, a professor of historical theology. Other qualifications he brings to the table in answering Dawkins include a doctorate in molecular biophyics and once being an atheist himself. His wife Joanna’s field of specialization is psychology, with training in theology as well.

Another response to Dawkins I read was David Robertson’s The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths. Robertson is pastor of St. Peter’s Free Church of Scotland in Dundee. His response is on a more pastoral level, though he also does a good job of exposing Dawkins’ fallacies and inconsistencies. The first of the letters was actually published on Dawkins’ own website. (Because of the furor it caused, the others were not.) The last letter is addressed to the reader (not Dawkins) and gives a wealth of resources for further reading.

A couple other books I’ve recently become aware of (but haven’t read) are Al Mohler’s Atheism Remix: a Christian Confronts the New Atheists and Ravi Zacharias’ The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists Again, I haven’t read these books, but being familiar with their authors, I am confident they would also be worth your time.

But is Dawkin’s book worth your time? I’ll let David Robertson answer that:

Obviously, The God Delusion is the book I am interacting with. If you already have the book then you will know what I am referring to. If you don’t, I cannot honestly recommend that you should get it. It really is as bad as I have tried to demonstrate and I would be reluctant to put any more money into it! If you are interested in science then Dawkins’ other books are much more palatable. (Letters, p. 111)

You can always do what I did—check it out from the public library.