Rachel Still Weeps

The case of the boiled frog. A scientist once conducted an experiment. He placed a frog in a pan of water, which he placed on a very slow fire. The water temperature rose very, very slowly. The frog, being cold-blooded, was able to adjust to the changing temperature without feeling a shock or sudden discomfort. The frog stayed comfortable, until it was boiled to death.

The frog boiled to death because it was insensitive to the changing environment. Being a cold-blooded creature, it had no normal body temperature and no mechanism to sound an alarm when the water got too hot. In the short term, its readiness to adapt to life-threatening changes led to its death.

Individuals in society may well find themselves in the situation of the frog. While the social environment grows steadily more life-threatening and dehumanising, there are voices which counsel us to "adapt" and "change with the times." We need to be clear about what changes we can safely adapt to, and what changes actually demean human dignity and threaten our very survival.. The norm by which we decide which changes are acceptable, and which are not, is the dignity of the human person. This intrinsic dignity, or worth, is defined by certain attributes of the human race presented in Scripture.

1. Created in the image and likeness of God. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Gen 1:27)

2. Life and death are in God's hands. "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Ps 139:13?16). "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." (Heb 9:27).

3. Affirmed in the Incarnation. "The word became flesh." (John 1:14)

4. God's plan for mankind - a godly life on earth. "God our Saviour. . . wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Tim 2:3?4). "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:14, 16)

5. A divinely ordained destiny. "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ." (Ephesians 1:4, 9).

6. The ability to love and the desire to be loved. The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. " (Genesis 2:18).

The assault on human dignity. Since earliest times, the gift of life has been threatened. The Bible traces it back to the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, and even before that, to our first parents ignoring the Tree of Life, and opting instead for the course that would bring death. But beyond the incidence of caused death, is the greater threat of the culture of death. This culture of death is a mind set conditioned by a denial of the dignity of human life. The Church condemns this culture of death in no uncertain terms: "Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self?destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator." (GS 27)

The culture of death covers life at every stage. From the pre-born human to the aged, no one is safe. The abortion holocaust continues to ravage humanity. New killers like AIDS are already destroying lives, families, the economy and society. And now there are increasing demands for euthanasia, which would cover assisted suicide, and also permit family members to decide to withhold medical treatment.

Two of the most compelling questions that have been pondered by humanity, regardless of which civilisation, are where we have come from, and where we are going. Whence and whither. Our past and our future, our identity and our hope. To watch a child is to remember one's own childhood. To speak to the elderly is to recognise that one will some day be old. A generation alienated from its past and estranged from its future is a lost generation. But that is precisely what ails contemporary society. The generation gap, a fashionable trend created by divisive minds, has moved to its logical climax - a war between generations.

Today's middle generation is at war with the young - abortion, infanticide, child-battering and exploitation of children through labour and even prostitution, are common and even accepted by some as a fact of life. Man is at war with the generation he once belonged to. Today's middle generation is also starting a war on the aged - unwanted grand-parents and even parents, attitudes of rejection, and now a demand by some for "assisted suicide" for the terminally ill and those who have no more to look forward to, or are considered a burden. Man is planning a war on the generation he will himself one day belong to.

If there is a tragedy worse that the violence and widespread killing that has gripped out times, it is people's reaction to the spreading phenomenon. Some react with helplessness, others with acceptance of changed times, and still others with a willing conversion to a new way of thinking. What God wants today is men and women who will take a bold, public and active stand for the sacredness of human life, and who by their Christian witness will be "oaks of righteousness. . . for the display of his splendour" (Isaiah 61:3).

Why Rachel weeps. After narrating the slaughter of the little children at Bethlehem by the troops of Herod the evangelist recalls a prophecy from Jeremiah 31:15 "A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children . . . " Rachel, wife of Jacob, is a mother figure for the Old Testament. In the original prophecy of Jeremiah 31:15, the setting is deportation of the Jewish people to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. Many captives were detained at Ramah, and those too old or too weak to make the journey to Babylon were killed. The lamentations of Rachel in Jeremiah 31:15 were tor the old and weak who were a burden to Nebuchadnezzars. The lamentations of Rachel in Matthew 2:18 were for the young children in whom Herod felt threatened. Today, it is the mother of God's people, our Holy Mother the Church, who weeps, and beseeches her children not to remain indifferent.

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