For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13)
Fathers in earlier generations usually weren't allowed to do this, but I have had the splendid privilege of watching and helping as two of my children were born.
The first time, the experience was new and overwhelming. I felt I had witnessed God's hands at work in the world and when our baby was safely delivered, I was left groping for inadequate words to describe what I had seen. The word "awesome" came to mind, it truly is an "awesome wonder" to see "all the worlds God's hands have made. How great Thou art!" (Stuart K. Hine).
That first birth left us impressed with the pricelessness and preciousness of life. The birth of our second child was different: for three weeks, we literally didn't know if he would live from one day to the next. I baptized him in his hospital crib; my wife and I took turns keeping a vigil by his bedside.
Finally, our prayers were answered and our baby survived, but that second birth left us impressed with the fragility of life. The journey from the womb to the world is just a few centimeters in distance, but it is the most difficult and dangerous journey any of us ever make in life. There is a thin line between life and death. We know the miracle of birth is incredibly precious, we sometimes forget it is also incredibly fragile.
Of course, anyone who witnesses a birth must also be awed by the mother's role! As I watched my wife in labor, I remembered the words God said to Eve and to every mother since, "In pain you shall bring forth your children, yet your desire shall be for your husband" (Genesis 3:16). That's certainly how it is in the delivery room and "labor" is the only word to describe what the mother goes through. I don't believe anyone works harder - man or woman - in this world over a concentrated period of time than a mother when she gives birth to a baby.
Many people have said (only half-jokingly) that the process of birth proves that God is "male." They reason that if God were female, She never would have put women through that kind of pain; She would have given the burden of childbirth to men.
It's true that in most cases, the Bible appears to give the image of a "male" God. But there are also many places where God's image is female and God is shown to understand what women suffer in childbirth. You see, God, too, gave birth. God gave birth to a world, a good and beautiful world, and it pains God to see what we are doing with His world. The rich oppress the poor. There are wars and rumors of war - and fears of peace! The world is flooded by tears of grief when we should be basking in the sunshine of joy. So in Isaiah, God looks at all this and says:
For a long time I have held My peace;I have kept still and restrained Myself;Now I will cry out like a woman in labor,I will gasp and pant.(Isaiah 42:14)
And Jesus also understands. As He tells His disciples about His death, Jesus talks about birth: "When a woman is in labor she has sorrow, because her hour has come. But when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born" (John 16:21). In other words, Jesus is saying that His hour to die has come and the disciples are in pain about it. But soon they will forget their anguish, for by His death, a new world will be born. The old world which pains God like a woman in labor will pass away and a new world will come. As the apostle Paul would write later in his letter to the Romans: "it's as if the whole universe is groaning in labor together, waiting for its new birth in Jesus Christ"(8:22).
I admit it still might be more fair if men also gave birth, or at least shared some of the labor! Of course, this will never happen. But we might reach the point someday where childbirth is made painless and antiseptic. Already, we can artificially inseminate "test tube babies"; someday we might be able to let the embryo gestate in a laboratory test tube and then come back nine months later to take the child home. Someday, getting a baby might be as easy as buying a car and waiting a few months for delivery.
When that day comes, we will lose something very important: a sense of the "specialness" of life. Maybe God didn't put pain into childbirth just to be mean or to punish women! Maybe the pain of childbirth is meant to keep us from taking life for granted, or treating life more cheaply than we already do. After all, we are talking about the miracle of passing from mystery into life, so maybe that passage should never be too comfortable or routine. Maybe the pain and suffering of birth should remind us of the preciousness, the pricelessness and the fragility of life.
"God's gift of life." This is the core of everything the Bible says about human life: human life is precious ... not because of anything we have done, but because life is a gift from God. It doesn't matter who you are, what you look like or what station you are born into in this world - you are sacred. Your life has dignity and worth because it is a gift from God.
This basic, Biblical truth is full of meaning and full of controversy. Pick up any newspaper these days and you will see what I mean. I remember one particularly gripping story in Wisconsin not too long ago, where a young girl and her boyfriend delivered a baby in the back of their truck; then they put the baby in a plastic bag and suffocated her. They were later quoted as saying it was better for one little person to suffer now than for several people to suffer later the burden of an unwanted child.
You have to feel pity for these two young people. They felt they couldn't go to their parents for help. They panicked when the baby was born. But I, for one, agree with the judge who sent them to jail. What they did was murder, just as it is murder when someone is shot down in the streets. You see, it doesn't matter whether the victim is sixty years old or six minutes old. All life is sacred because life is a gift from God. This is basic to the whole Christian ethic: "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13).
As gut-wrenching as that true story is, it may be even more horrifying to consider this: if they had killed their baby just weeks earlier with an abortion, it would have been legal. Think about that for a minute. Those two young people went to jail because they waited too long to kill their baby.
I realize that here I part company with the position of most of the mainline churches and probably with many of you as well. I realize that mine is the minority view in the so-called liberal church today and I've often been rudely reminded of that fact.
Yet hear me well: I am not one to condemn any woman who has had an abortion. I have no cause with self-righteous or reactionary crusaders in our land, who should be without sin on other issues of respecting life before they cast the first stone on this one. This is important to say and emphasize, because my job as minister is servant, not judge. I respect the fact that people of good will can honestly disagree with abortion.
But I believe Christians should bring something distinctive to this debate which transcends the usual battle lines and that is a wisdom born of our Biblical and church roots. We live in a culture which is "tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4:14) and every faddish philosophy. The conventional wisdom of this world changes at least once every generation, which means that we need some roots and depth of insight if we are to responsibly face up to life's complexities.
As for our church roots and traditions, the Christian church has historically opposed abortion for nearly two thousand years, even in cultures where it was widely practiced. The church in ancient Rome, for example, lived in a culture where abortions (as well as infanticide and infant abandonment) were commonplace; in fact, Plato says abortions were openly encouraged if the mother was under twenty or over forty.
Yet the very earliest church documents confirm that the New Testament church opposed abortion as murder and early Christian women went around after dark, gathering up abandoned Roman infants to find them nurse-maids and homes. The Protestant Reformation continued in this tradition, with leading Protestant theologians and teachers almost unanimously opposing abortion through the centuries until the last twenty years, that is.1
Our deeper roots and surest foundation, of course, lie in the Scriptures, which is where the church's thinking should begin on any issue. Thus, it distresses me to no end that the so-called "pro choice" churches have never offered a solid Biblical argument for their position. Many mainline churches have officially supported the right to an abortion, but they can only talk in vague terms about the Bible when they advocate for that right.
Instead, official church statements talk about science and the Supreme Court - they let secular scientists and judges decide the crucial question of when human life begins. Imagine that! A church of the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ, surrendering its moral authority to the fallen powers and principalities of this world!
In my opinion, neither scientists nor Supreme Courts, nor women nor church officials nor anyone else can decide when human life begins. God alone decides! The Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13), and it gives a reason: because God made man and woman in God's own image (Genesis 1:27). God declares that He knows us and consecrates us even before He forms us in our mother's womb (e.g. Jeremiah 1:5). And the wisdom of Ecciesiastes reminds us of our need for moral humility when approaching such mysteries as the origin of human life: "As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the world of God who makes everything" (11:5).
This Old Testament message that life in the womb is human and belongs to God is reaffirmed in the gospels with the birth of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of God in our midst. The good news of Mary's pregnancy causes an already human though unborn John the Baptist to leap for joy in his mother's womb (Luke 1:41). As for Jesus, He didn't become Jesus only in the third trimester of Mary's pregnancy! Jesus became Jesus and His mission of salvation began when Mary was told: "Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus" (Luke 1:31).
And finally, there are these words on the origins of life from our text in Psalms - words which speak for themselves:
For Thou didst form my inward parts,Thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb ...my frame was not hidden from Thee when I wasbeing made in secret,intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.Thy eyes behold my unformed substance;in Thy book were written, every one of them,the days that were formed for me, when as yetthere was none of them.(Psalm l39:l3ff)
Mind you, these are not just isolated Bible quotes I've assembled out of context to make a point. I have traced for you a basic and consistent theme running throughout Scripture, which says human life, created by God, is a developmental process of constant growth and change, from conception to birth to death and to life again. God says over and over again in the Bible in many different ways, "See, I have set before you life and death ... therefore choose life" (Deuteronomy30:19).
Not only the Bible, but human biology also suggests we are human from the start. For example, our unique, individual genetic code is in place immediately after conception. Three weeks after conception, the entire foundation of our nervous system is in place and our heart is beating. At four weeks, our eyes, ears and nose have begun to form. At six weeks, our brain activity can be measured by EEG.
At eight weeks, our fingers and toes are well formed. At ten weeks, we are very sensitive to touch and pain and we try to suck our thumb. By the end of the third month, all our basic structures are completely formed. We need the next six months of gestation simply to grow and mature until we are ready for birth.
Deep down, I think most people know the fetus (which is a Latin word, meaning "young one") is not just a "potential human," but is instead, a human with potential. The unborn baby is a potential child just as a teenager is a potential adult -- they are merely at different stages of the developmental process God has given us for our growth as human beings. It is said that a woman has the right to control her own body and I have no quarrel with that. The problem is that a pregnant woman has someone else's body growing within her own. This is especially obvious when she is carrying a male fetus - male and female are clearly not of the same body. Yes, the mother can do what she wants with her own body, but unless certain circumstances prevail (such as the mother's own life being in danger), does a woman really have the right to destroy a baby's body?
Finally, the issue is said to be one of "reproductive freedom," but this is a complete misnomer. No one is arguing about our freedom to reproduce! The question is: are we free to kill the unborn child who is the living fruit of our reproductive freedom?
The old expression is true: a pregnant woman truly is "with child," and our own experience tells us that. When a mother who wants her child is four months pregnant and visits her doctor, the doctor examining her says, "How is your baby today?" If that same four-month-pregnant mother didn't want her child, the doctor would be talking about a fetus, not a baby. Are we saying by this that the fetus is only human when the mother wants her (or him)?
This Biblical sense of the sanctity of life has been obscured of late, so shame on the liberal church today! Shame on any church which puts any part of life beyond the authority of God! From beginning to end, life is a gift from God and because it is, life is sacred. You cannot disrespect the gift of life without disrespecting the Giver of Life, who is God Almighty.
And shame also on the conservative church, for they also disrespect the Giver of Life. They shout, "Respect life! Respect life!" and they struggle against abortion. But then they want women put back "in their place." They want less government aid for poor children and more capital punishment. They want more aid for brutal foreign dictators and they want more nuclear weapons, which could lead to the abortion of the whole world! Is this really "pro life?"
It all makes me wonder today: when will liberal Christians respect God's gift of life in the womb? When will conservative Christians respect God's gift of life after the womb? When will all Christians have the moral courage to be consistent and respect life from the womb to the tomb?
I pray we Christians will someday stop picking and choosing which parts of life we will respect. I pray we will someday work to protect God's gift of life at every stage of life. It will mean bearing a cross, because we would be contradicting cherished orthodoxies and sacred cows of liberals and conservatives alike. But we would also be granted a moral power in this debate which thus far, neither side has managed to achieve.
Like many of you, I have seen my children being born. I have witnessed how precious life is and how fragile life is. I have witnessed the miracle of a child whose inward parts were formed by God, a child intricately wrought from the depths of the earth, a child whom God knitted together in a mother's womb.
But the birth of a child is more than a time for joy; it is also a time for sober questioning. Do we give our children the love and attention their sacred lives deserve? Do we give all people the love they deserve - born and unborn, friend and foe, neighbor and stranger? Do we love justice, practice mercy and walk humbly with our God, who gives each life its worth?
"Respect for life" is more than a slogan for people concerned about abortion. It is an ethic for all of life, from the womb to the tomb. Who are we but witnesses in awesome wonder to all the worlds God's hands have made? Who are we but grateful recipients of a mystery we cannot grasp? What can we do but respect with all our soul and might God's precious, priceless gift of life? Amen
Pastoral Prayer
Almighty God, whose hands have made all the worlds in awesome wonder, we thank You for blessing us and keeping us all the days of our lives: from our conception, to that difficult and dangerous journey into life, to that final, unknown journey into death. And when Your saints lay down from all their labors to rest, we thank You for the promise of everlasting life, purchased for us at great price by our crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ.
Gracious and Everlasting God, who calls light out of darkness on the face of the deep and who brings forth life from the depths of the earth to the mother's womb, we pray today that we will soon respect Your priceless, precious gift of life:
We pray for all the children of the world, born and unborn, that they may all receive the inheritance of life and love which is their birthright;
We pray for all who are poor and hungry, that they may yet receive the respect and fullness of life which belongs to all who are made in Your image;
We pray for the generations to come, that they may be given a world which is still bountiful and beautiful.
Make all of us see Your wondrous hand in the life which is within us and around us. Make us no more able to disrespect that life than we can disrespect You, who is the Beginning and End of everything that was, and is, and is yet to be. In Jesus' name we pray, for the Way, the Truth and the Life. Amen
1. Among the earliest noncanonical documents we have is the Didache (or "Teaching"), a second century church manual which says, "Do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant" (2.2). For their part, Protestant theologians from Luther and Calvin to Barth and Bonhoeffer have also opposed abortion, e.g., "The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to fully enjoy" (Jean Calvin). Thus did the church witness against a secular culture of death. Only in the last few decades, and particularly after the United States Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade in 1973, did this historic church position substantially change.
