I will comment on this "review":
He didn’t address the problem that we are not to do a little evil that good may come. Or at least he begged the question that legislation that dehumanizes groups of people, those exceptions such as victims conceived in rape, is not evil. You cannot just assume it isn’t evil you have to show that it isn’t.
For some odd reason, it doesn't even occur to Don that both sides, both debaters, have a burden of proof to discharge. What makes Don imagine the onus lies exclusively on the prolifer?
He himself is begging the question by presuming that this amounts to "doing a little evil that good may come." But it's incumbent on him to show how that's the case.
Because there are some positive results from something does not necessarily make it right.
Same problem. He just leaves that dangling in mid-air. It's true that positive results don't necessarily make an action right. Conversely, it's equally true that positive results don't necessarily make an action wrong.
So he can't just leave it hanging there. He needs to offer some criteria for when that's right and when that's wrong.
Take military ethics. Unless you're a pacifist, you believe that some actions which are ordinarily wrong become morally permissible or even obligatory in extreme situations.
But at the same time I supported legislation and candidates that said otherwise. They were the lesser of evils as I saw it.But the problem with this you don’t really find this in the bible. In fact you see the opposite.
Many people are confused about the word "evil" in "the lesser of two evils." But that doesn't mean choosing between a lesser wrong and a greater wrong. Rather, that's choosing between bad and worse.
If I can't saving everyone in a nursing home that's on fire, I have a choice between bad (letting some die) and worse (letting all die). It's not immoral for me to rescue those I can. It's not a lesser "evil" in that sense.
And as the old saying goes, our actions speak much louder than our words.
Not to mention how the inactions of AHA speak much louder than their hifalutin rhetoric.
I would say that the incrementalist strategy is a strategy that is without faith. It assumes that God will not act, it ignores the biblical norm we see, and it allows for the person to take on actions that send a message to the world that is inconsistent with God’s word. I think that is faithless.
Honestly, that's just so dumb. It's like Christian parents who refuse to take a gravely ill child to the doctor because God can heal their child.
It's like a Christian farmer who says, "I won't plant any crops this spring because God can make food miraculously materialize on my dinner table!"
Imagine if every pro-life leader in this country said, “No more compromise!” Imagine if everyone who calls themselves “pro-life” said, “I will not support anything or anyone that does not call ALL abortion sin and call for its immediate and total abolition!” Imagine if we just said to all those who opposed immediate and total abolition, “You can throw us in the furnace if you want to but I will not bow down to your idol for I know that God can save us and even if He didn’t we will worship only God.”
"Imagine" is the operative word. Imagine if everyone was nice to each other. Imagine if all Muslim militants became pacifists tomorrow. Imagine if all military dictators suddenly renounced violence. Imagine if all Latin American drug cartels became Christian charities. Imagine if all "abortion providers" changed their minds overnight.
It's so hopelessly Pollyannaish.
I also think "faith" as employed here feels an awful lot like "presumption". God ordains ends, and He ordains the means to those ends, which is very often the faithful endurance of His people struggling for righteousness' sake in the midst of a corrupt and perverse generation.
ReplyDeleteSteve said:
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It's like a Christian farmer who says, "I won't plant any crops this spring because God can make food miraculously materialize on my dinner table!"
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Indeed, it reminded me of the old joke where the river began to flood and Bob was sitting on his front porch as the waters rose. His neighbor drove up and said, "Climb in, I'll drive you to safety." Bob waves him off. "No, God will save me."
The waters rise and he's forced to go to the second story. A man comes by in a boat. "Climb on in, I'll row over to shore!" Bob says, "No, God will save me."
The waters rise and Bob's forced to climb to the roof of his house. The Fire Rescue helicopter hovers overhead and drops a line to him. "Climb in the harness and we'll pull you to safety!" "No, God will save me."
Bob drowns. As he's going through the entrance to heaven, he asks God: "Why didn't you save me?"
"I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter," God responds. "What more were you looking for?"
And I agree with CR that AHA's attitude does seem like presumption. Like, "God must work in the way I want Him to work, or He's not really working." It's really ironic given that they can see with their own eyes how successful incrementalism has been for the homosexual lobby just over the past decade.
"I would say that the incrementalist strategy is a strategy that is without faith. It assumes that God will not act, it ignores the biblical norm we see, and it allows for the person to take on actions that send a message to the world that is inconsistent with God’s word. I think that is faithless."
ReplyDeleteStatements like these from folks in AHA just shows that they don't really understand the Bible or the culture in which it was written. What does he mean by Biblical norm? For one thing, We have the books of the Old Testament which span about 3,500 years, then about 300 years of silence, then the New Testament which covers about fifty or sixty years.
In all that time, how many people did God talk to? Moses led all the Israelite people out of Egypt. How many people did God talk to? Just Moses. None of the other Israelites. In all the other books, God communicates to people through prophets. It was never meant to be a common thing that God talks to believers. He just doesn't. He communicates to us now through his word.
It's simply eisegesis to think that because God promised, for example, that he would free all of Israel, that God will also end abortion in the United States through a "mighty act." We don't even see that looking back through human history in the year of our Lord. It took Christians 3 or 400 years to get the practice of infanticide ended in ancient Rome. It took William Wilberforce his entire life to get the slave trade ended in England. We have no reason to believe that God will end abortion today like he ended Egyptian slavery of Israel.
I think it's possible that both Don and Steve are both right, albeit in different ways. Don is correct *in theory*. If everyone who called themselves "pro-life" refused to tolerate abortion, then abortion would end. And Don isn't talking about those outside the movement (like Muslim militants or abortion providers)-- only those inside the pro-life movement. Even if pro-lifers only made a quarter of the population. Just imagine a woman deciding to get an abortion, and she would know that one quarter of the population would regard her as a child-murderer if she does, and the stigma that would result from this. She'd have the same kind of stigma that child-molestors do.
ReplyDeleteNow, while Don and the abolitionists are right *in theory*, Steve, and Clinton and all the incrementalists are all right *in practice*. As Steve said, "imagine" is the key word. We simply don't have a pro-life movement that Don describes: The majority of pro-lifers are milquetoasts on the issue of abortion, being afraid to offend moderates. Your average pro-lifer regards abortion as something far closer to a vice (like gambling, prostitution, and adultery) than to something felonious (like murder, rape, or torture). And so abortion is tolerated.