Last week, someone walked into a bank in Indianapolis and shot one of the tellers, a woman who was pregnant with twins. That's right, the guy shot a pregnant woman. A few days later, the tragic news came that the twins had died. Every decent human being who heard this story was outraged. And rightly so.
However, I was especially struck by the moral outrage expressed by people who under other circumstances might have celebrated the ending of these unborn lives. For example, what if the mother, rather than the shooter, had decided to end these lives? Would there be such universal condemnation? I think the contentiousness of the current abortion debate tells us the unfortunate answer.
Sadly, many believe that these precious little ones only had value as human beings because they were wanted, planned, desired, dare I say...convenient. What kind of twisted thinking has led our society to this conclusion? I suppose that if you believe that we are merely highly-evolved lumps of matter, rather than created by God for a purpose, then the logical conclusion is that we should be able to do away with anything that interferes with our freedom, even if that means taking a life.
Doesn't it make more sense to recognize the universal value of all human life, regardless of the independent value we may or may attach to it? This is the conclusion many of us have reached. We mourn and express our anger at the murder of these unborn children of the teller not only because she lost something that was precious to her, but because someone ended two lives that were precious to the God who created them. Since He made them, only He has the right to decide when they should be taken from this world.
The universal condemnation of the bank shooter merely confirms a truth that our post-modern Oprah society does not like to acknowledge. There is an objective standard of right and wrong and the shooting of this mother and her unborn twins transgressed that standard. To deny this is to offer a false morality that is selective, arbitrary, and subject to popular opinion. In short, it is a morality based on what is convenient, not what is true.
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3 comments:
I've read this four times; it's brilliant and so well said.
J
EXACTLY! I was so angry when I heard about leaders legislating to punish those who murder unborn children. What?! How about outlawing abortion then?
I was just talking to your Dad last night about this. How come the definition of "life" can be conception in the case of the twin's death, but not the same definition when talking about abortion?
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