Pro-Life: An Introduction
Violence today
Without a doubt, the outstanding mark of today's world is violence. Violence between nations, violence between communities, violence against women, violence against children, violence against the weak and the poor ...
The last decade of the 20th century has been the most violent decade in the world's history. Our hopes that the new millennium would usher in an era of peace have been cruelly dashed, as the madness of war and violence continues unabated.
The Greatest Violence
But the greatest and worst violence today is one we hardly see. It hardly assaults our sensibilities because it is kept behind closed doors, and largely kept out of the news. It is violence against the unborn human child. Abortion. The deliberate and direct premeditated killing of an innocent and defenceless human being.
In the 20th century, the total number of deaths resulting from all the wars fought is only a fraction of the deaths by from abortion. Consider these figures: USA - 1.5 million abortions a year. India: 12 - 15 million abortions a year. Worldwide, an estimated 80-100 million abortions a year. And yet, in the so-called "civilised" world, abortion has become largely acceptable, and part of everyday life. As Pope John Paul II says, the world is embracing a culture of death.
A mark of a civilisation's nobility is that it defends the defenceless, helps the helpless and speaks up for the voiceless. Who defends the unborn?
"I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers ..." (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).
How do we "choose life"?
Making a deliberate choice for life requires, first of all, a distinction between death in the natural order (illness, accident etc), and a rejection of inflicted death. "Whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death." (Prove 8:36).
The "culture of death" more than just the killing of another human being. Fundamentally, it is a refusal to accept, and a decision to oppose, the plan and purpose of God. "God created human beings to be immortal, he made them as an image of his own nature; Death came into the world through the Devil's envy ..." (Wisdom 2:23-24).
Next: The Dignity of Human Life
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Copyright © 2004 Errol C. Fernandes. All rights reserved.
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