I’ve recently been reading this book uh written by Francis Schaefer, How Should We Then Live? It’s a great look at how the history of art and music and culture have unfolded over the centuries in um relation to the way the Christian ethic and the Christian influence has devolved in our lifetime and over the uh centuries in history. One of the things that he one of the astute observations that he makes is this profound rule He gives on page 224. He says, “If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society itself is absolute.” And he’s talking about this in direct correlation to the abortion problem in America. Now, of course, this book was written many years ago. A lot of things have changed. This book was written actually not too long after Roie Wade was instituted in our country in 1973. And Francisco goes on to argue that Roie Wade itself the way it was decided was both medically arbitrary and legally arbitrary. Medically in that it provided protections uh for abortion all the way through the first trimester of pregnancy and the second trimester of pregnancy. It allowed for uh abortion in the case of the health of the mother. But that term health of the mother defined so broadly especially uh Francis does not point this out or Schaefer does not point this out but with the companion decision that was handed down with Bolton the same day as Roie Wade. The health of the mother really protected the right to abortion all the way through all 9 months of pregnancy uh depending on whether or not the doctor or the mother felt like there was some sort of physical or emotional or uh inherent risk to the pregnancy. Um if it caused some sort of unhealth or unc uncomfortableness, if you will. Yeah, you see where I’m going with that? Uh, giving birth to a baby is inherently uncomfortable and uh will cause a great deal of stress which can be medically defined as a burden that the mother should not necessarily have to bear. Um, so medically is arbitrary in that or revy way was arbitrarily decided in that uh there there really is no point at which uh personhood really can be defined. What we’re talking about is humanity and abortion always at every stage some from conception to the time the heartbeats to the time there’s sentient thought to the time uh that the there’s viability fetal viability if you will it’s always a human being. One of the things that’s really unusual about all these uh medical uh uh considerations is that the life of the baby really is never entered into the discussion. It’s only what is going on with the mother that determines whether or not the abortion is permissible. It’s funny because people who write books and and pontificate on the ethics of abortion have no problem in the same sentence saying that it’s really causes it’s really there’s no problem with the destruction of a fetus whatsoever at really especially in those early parts of uh development and even into the second trimester, maybe into the third trimester. But those same people in the same sentence will often talk about the ethical dilemma caused by creating babies in vitro in the laboratory by conjoining the sperm and the OAM together. Whether or not these fetuses are ever going to be implanted, many of them knowingly they never would be. implanted into a mother to to give it a gestational viability, gestational opportunity. So, it it seems like there’s an ethical dilemma on the one hand of creating a joined egg and a sperm for consumption, if you will, as opposed to uh just being able to wave off abortion as totally satisfactory uh in destroying a baby at any point during uh the 9month per Uh it is dissonant if you will and we live in dissonant times and without a hierarchy without some sort of moral absolute in our society or as Schaeer puts it without uh a societal absolute by which to judge society society itself becomes absolute and I think that that is uh pretty self-evident. In the case of abortion and the way we have begun to argue it in our world in this day and age, what we would work what we would argue for is a biblical ethic because uh as conservatives, as social conservatives, uh we seek to conserve that which over time in history has uh proven itself to contribute to a harmonious and a stable society. marriage, children, family, job, house, patriotic duty, uh church activity, um charitable organizations. These are things that as we as we look for those things that have contributed to harmony in our society, conservatives tend to seek out to conserve those very things over time. And abortion is one of those issues that we really want to take a moral conservative approach to a biblically conservative approach to you. If you look throughout history, abortion has always been rejected by the church. Uh throughout, you know, the many generations and the many centuries of church uh uh influence in our society. And there’s a reason for that. There’s a reason for that because God’s law, God’s nor moral and natural law, God’s written and revealed law in the Bible provides a a uh a hierarchical structure for society that gives us a stability that we can count on. It gives us a platform from which to judge what is right, what is wrong, what we can or should do and what we cannot or should not do as a society whether or not all of us subscribe to uh the lordship of Jesus Christ. God’s law is perfect. It’s good for us and we commend it to you. We commend to you if you are uh a newcomer to the PassionLife Fellowship and uh consuming these these video blogs that John and I do from time to time reading our emails, the things that we put out. We commend to you, brothers and sisters, saturate yourself with the word of God. It is the absolute by which we need to adjust our lives. And it is the absolute to which we need to adjust our culture. Otherwise, we slide down a very, very slippery slope. It’s where we have gone in these last couple of generations of sliding down the slippery slip that keeps us from being able to define many uh things that in let’s just say this, in past generations, it was pretty easy to define some of these some of these things, some of these questions that society is wrestling with at at this point. Saturate yourself in the word of God. Get to know what his will is for you and for your society and for America and for the world at large at this point in redemptive history. This is our time to uh really lean in to the good promises and the good things that he has given us. Follow us at PassionLife as we endeavor to bring the word of God into action. around the world in the lives of the unworn.