WEDNESDAY WANDERINGS – 6/17/20

We live in a world where life is cheap! Welcome to the “brave new world”! Fifty years ago if someone took another person’s life everyone would bring up the 6th Commandment, “Thou shall not kill” (Ratsach in Hebrew). Most people today know that it means murder instead of kill. It is murder because the Bible does allow killing in “just war” and/or to save the innocent. Ratsach is never used to describe the killing of animals or plants; it deals with the murder of human beings only.
The problem today is that life is no longer sacred as a result of the secularization of America. The live-giving breath of God (spirit or soul) is the vital source of life and human life is sacred because of the life giving breath of God inside. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). Only God can give life and only God has a right to take it away because life is a part of God. God holds us all responsible to respect and protect the lives of others. “From each man I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man” (Genesis 9:5). Life has a divine origin! Humans are made in “the image of God” and no one has the right to destroy what reflects God.
There is a quote in the Jewish Talmud, “to save one life is tantamount to saving a whole world”. Human life is of infinite value to God because He is life. In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life”, where the “the-s” are fillers and do not add to the text. Jesus says that “I am life!” So to murder is to kill Jesus!
One of the real reasons that murder is so bad is that it is irreversible and does not allow the unsaved a further chance to repent or the saved the chance to make the world a better place, including helping the unsaved find Christ. Abortion is particular heinous because the unborn (or recently born) are innocent. The debate on abortion is currently entangled in all sorts of technical and philosophical questions but in it all remember that we are talking about a human life sacred to God.
The word ”euthanasia” is a Greek word which means an “easy” death. Issues of quantity verses quality of life are always involved. Yet, to allow someone who is in the process of dying to die is not euthanasia. Paul calls death the “last enemy” we have to face. But we know that death has been swallowed up in victory in the Resurrection! There is something much worse than death and that is to die without the Lord!
The job of the government is to protect the “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, the God given purpose of the state is to keep people alive and at peace because life is sacred. For the Christian the government’s number one responsibility is to keep its people alive so they have a chance to come to Christ and/or to fulfill their God given purpose. Where does the death penalty fit in this? But that is another story. Remember, all human life is sacred.
To defund the police is not a very smart thing to do. Rather than defund cops they need massive pay raises because much of what they do is hazardous work and their lives are on the line all the time. But DBC (death by cop) has to stop and better ways must be found to stop those under arrest than to kill them, often shooting them multiple times. This is the 21st Century! Surely we have better options than ending their life. But the corrupt cops, the power hungry cops and the prejudice cops have to go! A different kind of training has to be required for some (most already know and are good cops!). Again, the issues here are complex but they have to be worked through and very soon! God holds us all, including the government, accountable for the lives of our fellow humans!
We would not have many of the current social problems if America had not turned away for God and made life cheap. What did people expect when America turn from God at every angle—even Christmas! With God life is sacred; without God life is cheap! All human life is sacred because the breath of God lives inside, so be very careful who we allow to live and die in our “brave new world”. Peter Singer, Ethics Professor at Yale, teaches that human life is no more sacred than the life of an animal and that the time of domination of Christianity on society is over. Sick, old, young, handicapped and those who cannot contribute to society can be eliminated! So goes our “brave new world”!
But we do have these problems and people are not turning back to God—something not easily understood. Are people so against God and His Church that they would rather sit by and continue to watch the world crumble than to turn to the only answer we will ever have? The song “People need the Lord” is spot on!
Jim