Video Transcript

John McCray - Christian Commentator

Without question the Bible is one of the most influential sources on the planet for understanding right and wrong, and billions of people look to it for guidance on how to live their lives. Politicians of all stripes, of both the political left and the right will cite the Bible in support of their policies. So when it comes to the abortion debate sometimes we hear people claim that the Bible says nothing about abortion, or we hear that the Bible actually supports the practice of abortion. But the reality is, the Bible is actually 100% pro-life. The Bible clearly condemns the killing of innocent humans, and the Bible always treats pre-born children as members of the human family.

The Central Christian belief is that God became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ and when he did so it was at the moment of conception being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother Mary. God didn’t become a human being at birth, or as a toddler or as a 5-year-old or out adulthood. Instead, God became a human being at the moment of conception.

There’s a great scene in Luke’s gospel where Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth, and both of them are pregnant: Mary with Jesus and Elizabeth with John the Baptist. Now, when Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting we’re told that John the Baptist leaped in the womb and Elizabeth filled with the Holy Spirit cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most Blessed are you among women and Blessed is the fruit of your womb,” and, “how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Now did you catch that? Elizabeth refers to Jesus as “my Lord” while he’s still in the womb, and even young John the Baptist, who is himself still in the womb, leaps for joy. The gospel tells us that John was filled with the Holy Spirit even in his mother’s womb.

Recognition of the full humanity of life in the womb doesn’t just occur at Jesus’ and John’s conception. We also see this being shown routinely throughout scripture. Psalm 139 says that, “God wove me together in my mother’s womb,” and in Isaiah 49 we read that, “God formed Isaiah in the womb to be his servant.” We also see in Jeremiah 1:5 where it says,”Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you.” Even the Apostle Paul says, “God set me apart even from my mother’s womb.”

So clearly, the Bible considers children in the womb to be human beings. And what does the Bible say about the dignity of human beings? Well in the first chapter of the Bible it tells us that God created all human beings male and female in his own image, and this was revolutionary in the ancient near East in which most cultures believed that only the King was to be called the image of God, or that the King was a God. But the Bible rejects this. All human beings male and female, of all races, all backgrounds, all physical and mental capacities, of all the nations, of all ages from conception to our elder years are all made in the image of God. Therefore, all human beings have inherent distinct and equal value in dignity.

And so the Bible says that it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings and one of the Ten Commandments that God gave to the nation of Israel through Moses is no murder, but a popular translation of this from the King James Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill,” but this is slightly misleading because killing of human beings who are not innocent - that is they are guilty of severe crimes or engaged in war - can be justified. The Commandment is not to murder, which means that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being. And even Beyond scripture, the first Christians also understood that killing innocent human beings was wrong at any stage because one of the earliest Christian documents outside of the New Testament is called the Didache, which says, “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill a child once born and in the Roman Empire it was common place for unwanted infants to be left to die in trash heaps and the Christians became known for adopting and raising these children as their own some people will still reject the idea that the Bible is truly a pro-life book because of stories and passages that seem to permit killing innocent humans the first objection comes from the story of the flood in the famous flood story God takes many innocent human lives now with regard to God himself taking innocent human lives God is the one who ultimately creates sustains and resurrects all human life God has abilities that we don’t have and so it’s not immoral for God to take human life when he sees fit I want you to consider how we Grant a surgeon permission to cut open the chest of children now it’s not immoral for him to do so because he has abilities that the rest of us just don’t have he can cut open the child’s chest and he can mend the incision afterwards so similar Illy the god of the Bible takes life but he also reverses death and resurrects all human beings as well God has decreed that all human beings will undergo a death and Resurrection process and God himself undergos this death and Resurrection process in the person of Jesus Christ but what about when God commanded Abraham to slay his son Isaac I mean sure we all know the end of the story and that God stopped Abraham from doing it but he still commanded him to kill an innocent human being right well it’s vital to understand that the intention of Abraham’s Act was not that Isaac would stay dead but that he would be raised to life from the altar Abraham had two clear messages from God in his mind that seemingly conflicted and the first was that God promised through Isaac that he would have countless descendants that would bless all nations and two that God commanded Abraham to punt Isaac to death on the altar God’s promis that Isaac’s countless descendants would bless all nations could not come true if Isaac remained dead on the altar now it’s thinking through these seemingly conflicting messages that Abraham according to the author of Hebrews considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead Abraham was challenged with this question do I have faith that God is so true to his promises that he’ll even reverse death in order to accomplish them well he did but doesn’t Abraham’s actions still violate the principle that is always wrong to kill an innocent human being imagine there’s two heart surgeons working as a team on a child and the role of the first doctor is to cut an incision in the child’s chest and the role of the second doctor is to fix the heart problem and then men the incision afterwards now considering in isolation the actions of the first doctor are deadly to the child but the first doctor is not acting alone he’s acting together with the second doctor who has promised to heal and menend the child the purpose of the ACT is not that Isaac would be dead but that he would be alive and thus Abraham’s actions of offering Isaac would not constitute as killing an innocent human being a third objection can come from Exodus 21:22 which says now if people struggle with each other and strike a pregnant woman so that she gives birth prematurely but there is no injury the guilty person shall certainly be fined as the woman’s husband made demand of him and he shall pay as the judges decide but if there is any further injury then you shall appoint as a penalty of Life For Life eye for eye the objection assumes that further injury refers to the mother and that the child died from being born prematurely and therefore the penalty of merely a fine shows that the death of the child is of less value than the injury of the mother but this is a misreading of the text the most plausible reading is that further injury refers to both the mother and the child which is why further injury is not specified so it seems more plausible that the text is saying that the mother and the child actually weren’t the same payment or punishment for their injuries or lack thereof so it actually supports the pro-life position a fourth objection might be the adultery test of numbers five and this passage says that if a husband suspects that his wife has committed adultery he might take her to a priest who has her drink bitter water and if she’s guilty then the function of the water is to make her abdomen swell and her thigh waste away some people think that this means that she’ll have an induced miscarriage once again this is a misunderstanding because it would make no sense for the curse to only apply to pregnant women I mean after all even women who are not pregnant who commit adultery could be brought before the priests so the curse would have to affect them as well if they were indeed guilty the curse is that she’ll suffer various physical ailments and be infertile and this is why if the woman is innocent then she will then be free and conceive children so this line assumes that the woman is not pregnant a fifth objection is that the Bible makes a sound as if God commands the Israelite armies to kill innocent people including non-combatants like women and children specifically during the driving out of the Canaanites the Biblical context is that the Canaanites were given 400 years warning to exit the Land on which they were both trespassing and committing extremely Wicked acts such as child sacrifice the chief intention of the Israelites was not to destroy them but to drive them out of the land on which they were trespassing studies of ancient neare Eastern Conquest accounts reveal that the language of utter annihilation of civilizations including women and children is hyperbolic language similar to how we would say that Brazil soccer team utterly destroyed USA soccer team we say these type of things all the time and know not to take it literally because of the context for example in Joshua 10 it says that Joshua utterly destroyed every person he left no Survivor in the cities of Hebron and deir but then Joshua 15 we see those exact same cities are still inhabited a literal reading of this situation is in fact impossible a sixth objection comes from the last verse of Psalms 137 which says how blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against The Rock how could a pro-life book say such an awful thing it’s vital to understand that the writer of this Psalm was a victim of the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem this was a horrific event in which the city was laid Under Siege the temple was burned thousands of Jews were deported to Babylon and thousands were killed including Jewish children who were dashed against the Rocks the riter himself was supported to Babylon and his captiv are demanding that he sing a song he remembers Jerusalem being raised to the ground and specifically the children being killed and he sings happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the Rocks The crucial subtext of this is that the psalmist is saying that he will not seek to do to Babylon what Babylon did Jerusalem namely kill the Babylonian children the writer is not saying that he’s going to take revenge even though he would like to but instead he’s trusting the Lord that Justice will be done we can clearly see that the Bible recognizes the humanity of every person from conception to death and commands that innocent human beings not be killed so the Bible is a pro-life book.