Tackling Tradition (Part 8) Abortion As Child Sacrifice

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/what-trump-could-do-to-make-america-great-again.html

 “Abortion is nothing short of legal child sacrifice.”. To which god? 

As a graduate of SBTS, where Calvinism reigns supreme, surely Josh Buice knows & understands that God doesn’t hold people morally accountable for murder if their motives don’t rise to that level (Exodus 21). Surely, he also knows that in order for any act to rise to the level of pagan sacrifice, it must be accompanied by motive & intent to worship one or more pseudodeities. After all, the sacrifice to God in the hands of a Levitical priest is a prophetic act, whereas in the hands of the goat god worshippers in Lev. 17, it’s an act of idolatry & witchcraft.

This sort of wooly thinking & rhetorical language is highly manipulative in the hands & plans of Rev. Buice & a great many buffoons in the GOP like Kari Lake, Donald Trump, & Mark Robinson. It’s one reason why having an intelligent conversation with them is nigh unto impossible, especially if/when one asks questions like (1) “Where exactly in the Bible can we find the proposition that the early termination of a pregnancy is murder regardless of the motive?” &/or, (2) “Given the fact that economic concerns underwrite abortion in a society as dedicated to gluttony as ours, what exactly does the Bible teach about how we are to deal with systemic issues with an economics component like abortion?”

In my experience, when these questions are asked, these people all but jump up & down & have temper tantrums - especially when you point out that in 1 Samuel 15, Samuel commands Saul to teach the Amalekites a lesson that runs through the death of children & infants.   To hear the bevy of buffoonery that constitutes Reformation Charlotte & any number of others in the sociopolitical arena these days who argue this way, abortion is murder regardless of motive - but that is not at all what the Bible teaches. 

American Society is larded with any number of angry religious bigots, gluttons, & ill taught Christians & Judeo-Christian peoples.  In that regard, our society is very like Greco-Roman society in general & Jewish society in the 1st Century AD/CE.  

Relative to modern society, people have been taught to analogize from Sodom and Gomorrah to the present day just like Rev. Buice analogizes between Lev, 18:21 & the present day, in which Egypt and Sodom & Gomorrah are both lurking in the background.   For example, they argue that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality - but no text teaches that, although Ecclesiastical Tradition.  Likewise, Josh Buice argues that abortion is a species of child sacrifice — but no text of Scripture teaches that.   He’s just repeating Ecclesiastical Tradition.  

Genesis depicts them as warmongers, and although the lynch mob’s threats included a homosexual twist, they were not there representing the local gay community.  Judges 19 uses the same narrative with the same twist, yet a servant girl is rape-murdered.  If Sodom was destroyed because of the gays, why wasn’t Gibeah destroyed because of straight or bisexual people?  What actually happened there is an instance of the same thing that happened in Acts 19.  In each text, a mob of angry religious bigots, all of whom are either polytheists or henotheists decided to riot.  

Ezekiel 15 charges them with epic biblical gluttony, not failure to show hospitality, rather thoughts, words, & deeds (especially deeds) defined as a failure to do justice for the least of these, not just the privileged few.  Biblical gluttony results in economic conditions that make it difficult for people to thrive.  

The Bible warns gluttons. Proverbs 22:7–8 (ESV): The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity and the rod of his fury will fail. 

Against Trickle Down Theory: Proverbs 22:16 (ESV): Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty. 

Jude says they were guilty of sexual immorality and the pursuit of strange flesh and doing what demons do.  Demons do lots of witchcraft, and they gravitate toward sexual immorality.  Strange flesh is not homosexuality; it is animal cruelty, per both Leviticus 18:23 and Romans 1:28.  Leviticus 18 and Romans 1:18 to 32 follow the same outline, and in the outline, Lev. 18:23, Rom.1:28, and Jude 7b all correspond. 

Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because of the gays.  They were destroyed because of idolatry, witchcraft, warmongering, gluttony, animal cruelty, and kitchen sink immorality. That sounds like the United States today. 

They were also destroyed by and because of angry religious or quasi-religious bigotry. Today, the US is in the thrall of violent people who sometimes use their religion as an excuse for their activity. 

Buice continues, “To support abortion is to support murder and to deny equal protection and justice for all human beings. As the leader of the entire world, America can take the lead on the issue of life and put a full stop on the legal murder industry that’s being propped up by political activists, lobbyists, and the Pro-Life industry.”

Evangelicals’ response to abortion was to dismantle Roe v Wade, then, as an attempt to outlaw abortion altogether, let the states handle it.  How would that work in the Bible? Where does the Bible throw these issues to the 12 Tribes of Israel as a “tribal rights” issue? Nowhere!  

Abortion is a systemic social evil that, from a theologically conservative POV should fall into the same category as divorce and slavery.  In the Bible, laws regulating such evils were national, not just tribal.  We shouldn’t regulate these issues via the States, while excluding the Federal Government.

In the Bible systemic issues arise out of economic conditions as well as other causes like warmongering and the loss of philosophical and theological underpinnings.  How does the Bible deal with systemic problems, particularly during declension in both religious institutions and society as a whole?

Divorce is a concession to human hard heartedness, according to Matthew 19.  The Penteteuch and the rest of the Bible regulate it tightly. Chattel slavery was regulated into indentured servitude. The New Testament states slaves should seek their freedom in an orderly manner if possible. (Philemon, 1 Corinthians).  

Abortion should be regulated away just like debtors prisons and chattel slavery - but not made illegal. Abortion for any reason whatsoever isn’t biblical. However the Bible never says the early termination of a pregnancy is always murder.  In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel commands the death of infants in war, & the Bible doesn’t state that the death of infants is always a capital crime like murder. Neither does the Bible teach we should oppress women.  

Abortion laws must take all of this into account and carefully regulate abortion without criminalizing women and mansplaining abortion and Women’s Health.  We should also work to make adoption more affordable.  

How can we work together in order to stop dumbing down the American conversation? Here are six ideas: 

How does the Bible regulate systemic social evils like abortion?  By making them universally illegal from the start, or does it do so by way of regulation of evils (like indentured servitude and divorce), while society grows up? 

1. Thou shalt not emote thy way through this issue.

2. Thou shalt recognize the hardness of the human heart and look to the Scriptures.  

3.  Thou shalt learn to speak to each other and not past each other. 

4.  Abortion, in general, is murder - if/when the motives that underwrite it are invidious, failing to love God & neighbor 100 % perfectly rising to the level of murder.   The Bible does not teach that killing is always criminal murder.  That depends on motive & intent.  

The Bible never calls the early termination of a pregnancy murder.  In fact, 1 Samuel 15 says that the LORD commanded the death of Amalekite infants in time of war, establishing the principle that the killing of infants is not universally a sin, eg murder. 

If someone aborts a child, for example, because s/he values money over carrying the child to full term, then that in God’s eyes is murder.   If however, the child will be born with an ubersevere, fatal deformity, then there is no murder if the motive of the parent choosing to end that pregnancy is, for example, loving God & the child enough to send the child to the LORD.   

5. Additionally, in order to get to this point with our laws, we need to take an incremental approach.   The Bible advocates the use of incremental means to reach long term goals, like the end of indentured servitude and slavery. 

6. In order to end abortion, we shouldn’t set the bar there while failing to regulate abortion.  Regulatory practices are actually on the right track in this regard.  We should take the good and leave the bad. 

7.  Calling women who get an abortion murderers, like the Louisiana legislature, as well as those who perform them is not Christlike.    This only serves to put unconstructive roadblocks up between ourselves and people who need Christ.   Classifying physicians who perform abortions as felons worthy of 10 years to life is not constructive either.  

Perhaps someone who disagrees with me will make a good faith effort to demonstrate how any of this is unbiblical.  Time will tell.  

Until then, thank you for reading, &, as always, may God bless us all every one, & “Go & sin no more.”