August 12, 2001
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Based on the book The Bible Tells Me So ~ Uses and Abuses of Holy Scripture
By Jim Hill and Rand Cheadle
I'm sure this summer series; "The Bible Tells Me So" is difficult for some of you. This is especially true if you were brought up with the idea that you needed to accept the Bible as it is, as the word of God and not question it at all. Then, each and every week would provide a challenge for you. I don't know how you felt as I was reading through Psalm 139, but I know that I went through a range of emotions. There are parts of that Psalm that I want to affirm very strongly. I love the idea of God being with us wherever we find ourselves, so that there is never a time when we are alone, when we are completely separated from everything else. When we start getting to the verses where it says that God has planned all of our days from beginning to end, then I start to grimace. That is not my understanding about what life is all about. If I believed that God had decided everything for me already, I not sure I would choose to get out of bed in the morning. Beyond that, I'm not sure that I would worry at all about what I wanted to do during the day. I would figure that I could do whatever I wanted to. If God didn't want me to do it, then God would stop me. If God didn't stop me, then it was obviously part of the original plan. That would make it pretty easy, I guess. I like it better believing that I have decisions to make, and responsibilities. I want to know that the choices that I make are real choices. This all points to the way that we understand the Bible. Once again, there are two extremes. The first to understand the Bible as the literal word of God dictated for us, with a particular message intended for readers of all times. That is one extreme. The other extreme is to understand the Bible to be a faith story. Written by humans, humans who are inspired by God's Holy Spirit, because they are people of faith, relating what it means to be involved in a relationship with the divine Creator. Nevertheless, written by humans and showing the bias that all humans have when they try to explain life.
How many times have you been in a situation where you were having a conversation about something that happened earlier on in a family relationship or a marriage? You describe something and husband or wife, brother or sister says, "It wasn't anything like that at all." It is in those situations that you can believe that there are parallel universes existing. You know what you experienced as reality, but someone who was there can't confirm your story, Instead she says, "No, it wasn't like that at all." As we go through the history of humans and their relationship to God, we have all kinds of things in the scriptures. When people are wanting to turn to the Bible, to find an answer to a problem, or to describe a reality, they can often find things that are in keeping with their view. Particularly if they choose to ignore some other parts that are in contradiction to their view.
Today's topic is abortion. The Bible has been used to speak against abortion. It has also been used to speak in favor of choice for a woman. People of faith stand on both sides of this issue. You have heard it debated for much of your lifetime. You know that the controversy sometimes reaches a fever pitch. People are killed over this conversation. Families are separated. People experience deep hurts. It's an important conversation to have, but not an easy one to solve. I'm not going to deal with every single part of the abortion issue today. I'll be focusing as much as possible on what the Bible says and how it has been used on both sides of the discussion.
The Bible does not speak directly to the issue of abortion. Because it doesn't speak directly to it, you can't turn to any page and find that abortion is outlawed. In fact there are place where you can read in the Hebrew Scriptures where God causes the wombs of the women of the enemies of Israel to miscarry children, which would now be labeled an abortion. There are a variety of conversations about what happens when a child is aborted. But, it is not anything that speaks directly to the issue of abortion and whether or not that is an acceptable thing. When those who are against abortion begin to speak, they use the Bible to make the case that fetuses and embryos have "personhood." This is exactly the same concern that we face that we are facing now in the conversation about stem cell research. Research with early cells, derived from fertilized eggs, placentas, and umbilical cords shows great promise for providing solutions to many human illnesses. But, the critical issue is, when does life begin. People of faith, not only Christians, but people of faith from other world religions, give you different answers to that question. Christians and Jews will turn to the Bible to give you different answers to the question of when life begins. Those who are speaking against abortion make a case for the "personhood" of the fetus or embryo. In order to prove this, they make a literal interpretation of a variety of passages from the scripture.
From the 1st chapter of the book of Jeremiah, we hear Jeremiah talking about his call to serve God as a prophet. Jeremiah says:
"Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, (5) 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.'"
It's much the same way in the story from the Gospel of Luke. Remember when Mary meets Elizabeth? Elizabeth is pregnant with John, who would later be known as John the Baptist, and Mary has come to share with her cousin Elizabeth what the angel said to her. Luke writes:
(1:41) "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit (42) and exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
You may have caught the verses in Psalm 139. They are similar to the words from the Prophet Jeremiah.
"For it was you, Oh God, who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. (14) I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. (15) My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. (16) Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed."
These are scripture passages that are interpreted in a very literal way. That literal interpretation leaves no room what-so-ever for a poetic understanding of these scripture verses. If you were to talk about the idea that God is present in your life, what words would you choose? How would you explain it? You might say:
"God, you have always known me. You know me when the sun shines and when it is dark. You knew me as a little child. You even knew me before I was born."
These are poetic statements, talking about the power of your relationship with the Creator. But, if they are interpreted in a literal way, they mean that God knows everything before it ever happens. Events are pre-determined by God. A fundamentalist understanding of God is a critical part of the anti-abortion debate. God is understood to be the cause of everything that happens.
In a book called, "Abortion, The Bible and the Christian," author Donald Shoemaker argues that abortion should be forbidden in cases of rape. He makes his argument on the basis that whatever happens, he believes, happens because God causes it to happen, or allows it to happen. He says: "God forbid that we should regard any situation as so tragic that God could not have prevented it if he so chose." That is an argument that I can hardly bear to read. Whatever happens in this world, he is saying, happens because God causes it to happen, or allows it to happen. No matter how tragic it is, no matter how horrendous it is, he is suggesting we should accept it because that is what God intended. He applies the same logic to cases of incest and a fetal deformity. He says, "God makes no mistakes!" He argues that God is responsible for a pregnancy by rape. God wills the pregnancy since God could have prevented it if God had chosen to.
This position compromises the goodness of God by focusing on divine power. "God controls everything, period." If you believe that God has all power, and that God causes everything to happen, then you do not to believe that humans have free will. God determines our actions. Everything that happens in the world happens because God causes it to happen.
I have said frequently, that if God causes everything to happen, I no longer want to be a Christian, or a follower of God. If God is in charge of everything, God is doing a poor job. There is too much hatred, evil, pain, and suffering in the world. If I am to be a believer, then I have to understand the world in a different way. I believe that God is love. God is life. God wants life and love for all of us. Fullness of life. The things that happen, happen because we are physical people, in a physical world, where the laws of nature apply, and where humans have free will. We make choices and there are sometimes consequences, intentional or unintentional. I don't believe God causes things to happen.
Those who argue against abortion also use the scriptures to talk about God as Creator. They refer to our genetic make-up as being a creation of God. Each egg and each sperm that comes together, is now a creation of God and has life within it. When we interfere with the egg and sperm, we are bringing an end to that life. We are then working against God's creation. Some would point to the commandments that say, "Thou shalt not kill." But, there are many exceptions to that "thou shalt not kill." In fact, if someone is involved with adultery, Mosaic Laws call for capital punishment in that situation. There are many distinctions to be made in the Ten Commandments about "Thou shalt not kill." That commandment is not particularly helpful in this conversation.
Those who are fighting against abortion believe themselves to be in the same line as those who fought against slavery. They believe that they are practicing a civil disobedience in support of a cause that is just. But, I think they distort the argument in their choice of scripture passages. There are other passages that point to both human free will and the right of a woman to make a decision about whether or not she is going to have a baby. Also, scripture passages that provide a different understanding of the beginning of life. In the Book of Genesis, we read that:
(2:7) "The Lord God formed a human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the first man became a living soul"
There wasn't a living soul in the mud but it became a living soul when the breath of life was breathed into it. Adam became human with God's breath.
There are always a variety of sources for information, books, pamphlets, magazine articles, newspapers, film, video, photographs. But, now we have the internet as a source of information. There is quite an interesting page that I came across in looking for some resources for this week called "Adult Christianity." In some ways it's a humorous web page, but it is also intended to counter many of the fundamentalist arguments that have a choke hold on Christianity. It talks very extensively about this issue of "The breath of life." There is a difference between believing that life starts as soon as the egg and sperm come together and believing that life really begins when the breath of God is taken in through the nostrils.
In Job, you can read words similar to those in Genesis:
(33:4) "The spirit of God hath made me and the breath of the almighty hath given me life."
Remember also, in Ezekiel the story of the valley of dry bones? There are bones scattered across the valley and the question is asked:
(37:3) 'Mortal.- can these bones live?"
Then God said:
(37:5) "I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. (6) I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you. I will put breath in you and you shall live and know that I am the Lord."
Let me read two short paragraphs from the "Adult Christianity" web page that speak very pointedly to the issue.
Just like Adam, who had a body before he had a soul, like every fetus in the womb, these dry bones were given sinew, flesh and skin, and after they received the body God breathed into them and then they became alive. And, as in the verses above, because of that we "know that God is the Lord." Only God can bestow life and he tells us again and again in his word how this is done.There is no trickery here. God does not breathe through an umbilical cord. We receive the breath of life, from God, through the nostrils, when we take our first breath. The concept of life beginning at birth, rather than conception, is so central to Christianity that we are "born again" not "conceived again."
Did you catch that distinction? We talk about spiritually being "Born Again," and this author says 'born again" talks about receiving the breath of life into our body, so that we are "born again" not "conceived again."
When we continue on and look for verses that talk about what it means for us to be humans, we find the scripture passages that talk about us being decision makers. We are created in the image of God. In the image of God does not mean physically to look like God, but instead, to be able to make decisions between good and evil, to be able to reflect upon our lives. That makes us responsible for our choices.
We find other passages in the First Letter of Peter. There is a concept called the Priesthood of All Believers. It is an expansion of the idea that we are created in the image of God. It calls on all people to live responsibly. Those priestly powers extend to women the right to make decisions about their lives.
There were abortions that took place in Biblical times, within other cultures. There were passages in the Hebrew Testament that talk about abortion, but do not specifically prohibit- abortion. In the Jewish and Christian faith traditions, human beings, particularly women, are held in high regard. They are understood to function as responsible people, making moral decisions in life. Even Paul, who was not reluctant to give good advice to anyone at all, said nothing at all about the abortion issue. Perhaps his words to each believer to "work out your own salvation in fear and trembling" come right to the point.
This is not an easy issue for people of faith. Not an easy issue for us as Christians. But I think that as we look at the Biblical witness, it's very clear that people of faith can stand on both sides of this issue. That means that it's not something that we can legislate in the halls of government. Instead, it is a spiritual issue that needs to be dealt with on an individual basis. Those of us who stand on the male side of the human line, need to be very careful that we don't speak to self-righteously about what a woman should do with her body. Reproduction is a spiritual decision that a woman has the right to make on her own. It's not an issue that's going to go away very quickly. There will be people that will claim to have God's word on this issue. I encourage you to read in the scriptures and to prayerfully consider all of these different perspectives. Then come to your own conclusion about how God is calling you to live your life.
May God's Spirit be with us. Amen.