Archive: Abortion in America

by Steve | Mar 2, 1984 | Archive - 1984

Archive: Abortion in America

By James V. Heidinger II

When abortion was legalized in 1973, many Americans—Christians included—were either neutral or in favor of the Supreme Court’s decision. Now, some 15 million abortions later, many of those same people feel it is time to rethink the issue. In this article James Heidinger looks at where we are today concerning abortion in America, how we got there, the legal battle, and how the United Methodist Church is responding.

Where Are We Today?

On January 22, 1973, just 11 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial Roe vs. Wade decision making abortion legal in America.

Since then, the number of abortions performed each year has skyrocketed. One in every four children conceived is now aborted by legal medical means. An estimated 1.5 to 1.6 million legal abortions are now performed annually. Abortion has become the most common surgical procedure in America.

The court’s decision has had a dramatic impact on how Americans view abortion. At the time of the decision, most Americans considered abortion cautiously, as a necessary evil. Soon many began to see it as a moral or religious question which should be left up to the individual. And finally more and more Americans came to view it as a positive good, a constitutional or human right that deserves public support. Millions of Americans today accept abortion casually, as one more means of birth control.

As a result, abortion has reached epidemic proportions in America. Our rate of abortion has increased 10-fold over the past decade. Some major American cities report that abortions now exceed live births. Approximately one in ten American women of reproductive age have had at least one abortion.

On the heels of this epidemic has come a cheapening of human life. Reports of fetal experimentation and infanticide are on the increase. The case of Infant Doe brought the matter to public attention. That was the case in which a child born with congenital defects died because needed medical treatment and nourishment were withheld.

In the short time since abortion was legalized, some in the medical practice have moved from using extraordinary measures to save handicapped children, to no measures, to positive action to destroy human life (i.e., administering a sedative to a newborn so it does not feed and thus dies of starvation).

But doesn’t the medical profession oppose such practice? Not always, not anymore.

The July 1983 issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in its lead editorial:

We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God. … Only the fact that the defective infant is a member of the species homo sapiens leads it to be treated differently from the dog or pig. Species membership alone, however, is not morally relevant.

In addition to infanticide, increasing cases of euthanasia or mercy-killing are reported. Some elderly in nursing homes supposedly lack a “meaningful life,” so their lives are ended by the withholding of needed medical treatment.

A disturbing aspect of all this for United Methodists is that our church has done little to help stem this life-cheapening tide. In fact, the church may have contributed to the problem by its participation in the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights—an advocacy group supporting the rights of women to choose abortion.

How Did We Get Here?

Until the 1960s there was little support for abortion, except in those rare instances when the mother’s life was in danger because of the pregnancy. Then came the urban unrest of the ’60s, rapid technological advance, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, as well as the widespread dissemination of the birth-control pill.

As women pressed for political and economic equality, they also felt they should exert new control over their own reproductive destinies. Increasingly, abortion seemed to offer a ready answer to the problems of unwanted children, overpopulation, child abuse, juvenile delinquency, and welfare costs.

Also, in the early ’70s, a new ethic emerged among some in the medical profession. This new ethic moved away from the traditional Western view that every human life has intrinsic worth. Doctors moved toward a more utilitarian “quality of life” ethic that sought the greatest good for the greatest number, even if that meant some individuals must be sacrificed in the public interest.

Thus, the groundwork had been laid to prepare Americans for the sweeping changes Roe vs. Wade would bring to the practice of abortion.

Another factor in bringing us to our present dilemma is that Americans, including many evangelical Christians, were not prepared to exert the mental and spiritual energy needed to challenge the faulty arguments of the pro-abortion movement. Consider several examples.

First, the pro-abortion movement has insisted that a woman has a right to do as she chooses with her own body. That sounded logical and self-evident when we first began to hear it. But it’s simply not true. A woman does not have the right to commit suicide, to appear nude in public places, to willfully spread a communicable disease, or to take thalidomide while pregnant. The freedom of one person always ends where the freedom of another begins.

Or again, we were told prior to Roe vs. Wade that the availability of abortion would reduce child abuse. But child abuse has climbed by nearly 400 percent since 1973! A recent study of some 500 battered children revealed that 90 percent of these children were the result of planned pregnancies.

Another popular argument from the pro-abortion folks was that abortion would reduce the number of illegal abortions. That, too, sounded good. But the facts dispute such claims, according to U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Koop attests that in every country where abortion on demand has become a legal right, including America, illegal abortions have increased rather than decreased.

And how often we have heard about our duty to protect the unwanted or deformed infant from entering a hostile world. We should distinguish, however, between an unwanted pregnancy and an unwanted child. Among Swedish women who delivered after considering abortion, 84 percent were glad they had not terminated the pregnancy. Some declared it was inconceivable that they could have considered such an option.

The pro-abortion camp continues to rely, for its argument, on the few cases which are admittedly difficult. However, these hard cases (involving rape, incest, or possible loss of life to the mother) account for only 2-3 percent of all abortions.

To argue that anti-abortion measures are an attack against the poor is another smokescreen. Abortion is not a rich vs. poor issue. Of women seeking abortions, 70 percent are white, 79 percent are unmarried, and 75 percent have graduated from either high school or college.

Finally, after 11 years and over 1 5 million abortions, Americans, both religious and non-religious, are beginning to realize they have been sold a bill of goods by the pro-abortion movement. They are discovering that the arguments for abortion on demand are weak in logic, based primarily on emotion, and utilize half-truths that don’t stand under careful scrutiny.

The Legal Battle

The legal issues in the abortion controversy are of vital importance to all Americans, especially to Christians. Why? Because the law is a primary teacher of values. Since the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973, millions have concluded that abortion is right because it has been made legal.

With this decision seven Supreme Court justices imposed their views on 220 million Americans. In his dissent, Justice White strongly criticized the abortion ruling as an exercise in “raw judicial power.” Noted legal scholars such as John Hart Ely of Harvard Law School and Archibald Cox of Watergate fame have found the reasoning of the court to be an embarrassment.

The court made a serious mistake when it first considered, then decided to reject, the precedent of the Hippocratic Oath. The Hippocratic ethic, which opposed abortion, is at the heart of all medical ethics. It came to be accepted not only by Jews and Christians, but also by Arabs, medieval doctors, men of the Renaissance, Enlightenment scholars, and scientists of the 19th century.

For the courts to rule in contradiction to the ethic of the Hippocratic Oath concerning abortion was, says Harold O.J. Brown, to reject “the very heart of our ethical tradition, of principles common not merely to Judeo-Christian religion in the narrow sense, but to Western civilization as a whole” (“What the Supreme Court Didn’t Know,” Human Life Review, Spring, 1975, p. 13).

Since 1973 the court has made other rulings concerning abortion. In 1976 it ruled that neither husbands nor parents could hinder their wives’ or daughters’ decisions to get abortions.

In 1979 the court ruled that unmarried, minor females could obtain abortions without parental consent. That same year, it ruled that the definition of “viability” would be left with the physician.

In the summer of 1983 the court, in a 6-3 ruling, struck down an array of local legislative restrictions on access to abortion. These included the Akron, Ohio, ordinance that had been a model for requirements in some 15 states. That same summer, the Hatch-Eagleton Amendment, which would have allowed the states to restrict abortions, was voted down 50-49, falling far short of the two-thirds approval needed for a constitutional amendment.

In October 1983 Congress passed the Hyde Amendment which banned federal payments for Medicaid abortions. That is expected to remain in effect at least through 1984.

What efforts to change the legal status of abortion might we expect in the near future? Most Christian analysts do not expect a constitutional amendment to emerge in this present Congress.

Congress could attempt to formulate legislation that would recognize the unborn as a person having legal rights. Such legislation, were it to pass, would bring Congress into conflict with Roe vs. Wade.

Another possibility could be an appeal, on the personhood of the fetus, from a state supreme court. On August 28, 1983, for example, the Springfield, Missouri News Leader reported a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court stating that a fetus is a “person” and that “the fetus itself has an interest in being protected from injury before birth.” Such a decision could be appealed to the Supreme Court.

However, the best chance for change may come when new justices are appointed to the Supreme Court. Whoever is elected president this November could have the opportunity of appointing several justices. A new court could vote to reverse Roe vs. Wade.

How the Church Is Responding

The sad truth is that United Methodism is doing very little to help curb the abortion epidemic in America. On the contrary, we may well be fueling the crisis. Our denomination has been involved in and helped fund the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, which is housed in the Methodist Building in Washington, D.C.

Our Social Principles statement on abortion, as generally understood, is “pro-choice.” (The Social Principles found in the Book of Discipline represent the attempt of General Conference to speak to the social issues in our contemporary world.)

In Para. 71.G, which deals with abortion, we find the phrase, “In continuity with past Christian teaching,” which is followed two sentences later with the obviously pro-choice statement, “We support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures.”

But if, in fact, our denominational stand is pro-choice, we are not “in continuity with past Christian teaching.”

We are not in continuity, for example, with the unified voice of the early church fathers. Nearly unanimous in their condemnation of abortion, they referred to it as killing and murder. Such statements may be found in the Didache. Letter to Barnabas. Tertullian’s Apology, Clement’s The Teacher, and others.

A later writer of the early church, Caesarius of Aries wrote, “No woman should take any drug to produce an abortion, because she will be placed before the judgment seat of Christ, whether she had killed an already born child or a conceived one.” Such statements are found repeatedly in the writings of the church fathers.

Neither is the pro-choice position in continuity with the more recent giants of the church like the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian and pastor Helmut Thielicke, and United Methodist theologian Albert C. Outler. All affirm the humanity of the unborn child.

Another giant in the church today is Dr. Paul Ramsey. A UM layman and professor at Princeton University, Ramsey is perhaps the preeminent ethicist in America. He claims that pro-choice is not the official position of the church as presented in the Social Principles statement.

Ramsey should know. He is the author of the original Social Principles statement that came before General Conference in Atlanta in 1972.

Ramsey included in his version the important phrase (which is still there), “the sanctity of unborn human life.” Unfortunately, an additional statement calling for removal of abortion from the criminal code was introduced as an amendment from the floor. It was done hurriedly and with too little debate. And it passed.

That amendment, says Ramsey, contradicts the meaning of his language which accords life to the unborn. That action, Ramsey claims, has left United Methodism with a confusing and contradictory statement on abortion.

Ramsey says, ” If there is unborn human life, and if there indeed is a ‘mother,’ then abortion is not like any other ‘standard medical practice.’ Not until euthanasia or ‘neo-naticide’ becomes ‘standard.’ ” He concludes, “And life-and-death decisions involving lives possessing sanctity have never before in the history of our civil community been believed to be a proper subject for purely privatized choices” (Protecting the Unborn, Testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974).

It is sobering to realize that though the intent of the author of the Social Principles statement was anything but pro-choice, United Methodist leaders have taken that statement and employed it as the basis for their pro-choice position.

The United Methodist Church’s pro-choice advocacy amidst the rampant epidemic of abortion in our country is a rebuke to us all.

We have crusaded against Nestle’s infant formula to save children in Third World countries. But we have not raised any significant voice of alarm over 1.5 million abortions per year as well as reports of infanticide and euthanasia. Instead, the church has looked with condescension upon those who have raised voices of protest.

United Methodists could play a significant role in changing the moral climate in America concerning abortion. But first we will have to be convinced ourselves that abortion is morally wrong, a few hard cases notwithstanding.

We must face squarely the fact that most abortions today are for convenience, economic reasons, or to prevent a handicapped child from having life.

We must also recognize that a society has a fundamental responsibility to protect the life and freedom of those who cannot protect themselves. A society also has the obligation to protect itself against policies which, if allowed to continue, could eventually destroy it.

Our present policy of wholesale abortion in America could do exactly that.

Archive: I Changed My Mind About Abortion

by Steve | Mar 1, 1984 | Archive - 1984

Archive: I Changed My Mind About Abortion

By Beverly A. McMillan, M.D., Former Abortion Clinic Director

Abortion – right or wrong?

The question has been tossed around by everyone from the high-school debate team to the network news commentator. But for those millions of Americans who face the decision of whether or not to end an unwanted pregnancy, abortion is much more than a topic for discussion. It is, literally, a matter of life and death. As an obstetrician-gynecologist I had my own personal struggle. My first encounter with the problem occurred in 1969. I was spending six months at Cook County Hospital in Chicago as part of my Mayo Clinic residency. I spent six weeks of this time on a ward for infected obstetric patients. My first night on call I naively thought my patients would come from the surgical wards where infection problems sometimes occur following Caesarian deliveries. I soon found out differently.

That night and every night I was on call, from 15 to 25 women were admitted to my ward with fever, bleeding, and tender, enlarged uteruses. Many of these patients were desperately ill. All night long my intern and I would admit them, start them on I.V. fluids and antibiotics, and try to keep them alive until morning. If they made it, we would take them to a treatment room and do a D&C, without anesthesia, to clean out the infected tissue. These women were the victims of Chicago’s back-alley abortionists.

Welcoming abortion

By the time my six-week stint was finished, I had become an abortionist by conviction. I concluded that if women could be so desperate about an unwanted pregnancy that they were willing to risk a bungled illegal abortion, and if orthodox medicine had the technology to perform safe abortions, then my profession should face its social responsibilities. We should offer safe abortions to such women.

When the 1973 Supreme Court decision (Roe vs. Wade) which legalized abortion was announced, I welcomed it. I was in private practice in Richmond, Kentucky, by that time. And since abortions were now legal, my partner and I bought a suction machine and began discreetly to perform first trimester abortions in our office.

In the fall of 1974 my family and I moved to Jackson, Mississippi. This was a difficult move for me since I had no family or friends in the area. I opened my office for private practice in January of 1975 and began a rather bleak year.

One bright spot came when I met a group of concerned citizens and clergy who wanted to organize a clinic offering safe abortions on an out-patient basis to the Jackson area. In fact the clinic was ready to open, except for one thing. The organizers had not found a physician willing to face the social stigma of being labeled an abortionist. Exercising the courage of my convictions, I volunteered and opened the first legal abortion clinic in the state.

I had come a long way since my girlhood days. I had been brought up a Roman Catholic and attended parochial schools through the eighth grade. I had certainly been exposed to a pro-life view during those formative years. But during my sophomore year in premedical studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, I confronted the conflict between my Catholic values and the lifestyle of the world.

I made a decision to leave behind Christianity and the claims of the Catholic Church on my life. I then went through medical school and my postgraduate training as an agnostic, believing in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and in myself as the only one to whom I was ultimately accountable.

I had come to Jackson still an agnostic. In January of 1976, as I reviewed the year, I could see my new practice was going to be successful. In fact, as I reflected on my life I felt I had accomplished everything I had ever set out to attain: an apparently stable marriage, three healthy children, a growing medical practice, a nice house, a new car, and all the clothes I could wear. With all this in my favor, I was alarmed to find myself depressed and even contemplating suicide.

In desperation I sought out something to read to help change my attitude. By chance I happened on The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in a local bookstore.

The book was interesting and encouraging to me until I reached the end of the first chapter. There Dr. Peale listed 20 things to do to develop a positive attitude. I had no problem with any of these suggestions except for number seven which asked me to affirm ten times daily, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I felt betrayed and frustrated because I could not repeat the verse, nor could I finish the book.

A strange relief

Finally, after struggling over a week with that verse, as I was driving to work one morning I just gave up and said out loud, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

At that time I had no vocabulary to describe what happened, but I suddenly felt a presence that was so real I burst into tears. I felt my heart almost crack inside me with a strange relief and joy. I must have repeated the verse over a hundred times that day.

I was able to finish reading Dr. Peale’s book and then, as it recommended, I bought a Bible and for the first time read the New Testament from beginning to end. As I read the Bible over the following months, I felt more and more uncomfortable about performing abortions. I think I was like many Christians in that I felt somehow God did not approve of abortion, but I knew of no hard facts or Scriptures to back up my feelings. Nevertheless, I stopped performing abortions personally in 1977, although I would continue as Medical Director of the clinic until 1978.

I began to attend church for the first time in the spring of 1977, and by December of that year I knew God was leading me to be baptized and to identify with His Church. Yet I felt a certain incongruity about a Christian calling herself Medical Director of an abortion clinic. I felt I must go one way or the other. When I was baptized and joined the church I resigned my position at the clinic. I’ve never regretted that decision.

As I grew in my understanding of God and His Word, I discovered why I had felt uncomfortable with my pro-abortion stand. For the past three-and-a-half years I have been actively involved in speaking to churches, civic organizations, and schools about the abortion situation in the United States. I speak from the perspective of the pro-life position, because I believe Scripture shows us that God considers unborn human life to be valuable and worthy of our efforts to protect it.

Personal accountability

Of the 1.5 to 2 million abortions performed annually in the United States, at least 95 percent of them are performed for reasons of convenience, usually as an attempt to hide or remove the consequences of sexual sin. This matter of personal accountability is one that the Church needs to be addressing today as the fundamental cause of the abortion problem.

The remaining five percent of abortions are performed for other reasons such as rape, incest, medical illness in the mother, and to prevent the births of “imperfect children.” Such cases are more difficult for people who want ethical answers to the abortion problem. But God’s Word is not silent in these areas either.

In His image

I believe the basic principle which underlies God’s pro-life position is contained in Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.” Our basic worth sterns from the fundamental fact of our creation in God’s image, and this creation I believe starts from conception.

In Psalm 139, which I like to call the Pregnant Woman’s Psalm, God voices His care and concern for the unborn: “For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them” (vv. 13-16).

Not only does God know and care about human life in the womb, but such life has a definite spiritual dimension. In the first chapter of Jeremiah, when the prophet receives his call, God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” (v. 5). So the Bible indicates that a person can have a spiritual call on his life before he is born.

For Methodists, whose heritage includes the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification, Luke 1:13-15 is a significant pro-life passage. Here Zacharias he is to be the father of John the Baptist. “But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine or liquor; and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, while yet in his mother’s womb.'” So in at least one instance, the spiritual blessing of being filled with the Holy Spirit occurred to an unborn human being.

But what strikes me the hardest on this point is the Incarnation itself. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit. “Behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit’ ” (Matthew 1:20).

Unjust punishment

I remember meditating on this verse and asking myself, What does conceived by the Holy Spirit mean? As an obstetrician-gynecologist I certainly knew how every other human being in the world was conceived—a sperm and an egg united and a new cell was formed which contained all that would become the developed human being. One day it occurred to me that what may have happened in the Incarnation was that the Holy Spirit took on the form of a human sperm and fertilized the egg in Mary’s body. From this fertilization the God-man was conceived. If Jesus Christ Himself would sanctify human life by identifying with it from its beginnings at conception, what then should our attitude be toward unborn human life?

The problem of rape and incest is a difficult area, for many people view continuing the pregnancy as an unjust form of punishment of a woman who has already been abused. However, the circumstance of the conception in such a case does not make the resulting child any less a person made in God’s image. The loving thing to do in this circumstance is to offer the woman love and support, both physically and emotionally, helping her through the difficult pregnancy and the decisions about whether to keep the child or place it for adoption. Such a solution is not an easy one, but I believe it is the right one.

In the case of medical disease where the mother’s health may be worsened by pregnancy, I would state from a physician’s point of view that these cases are very few. The correct moral decision in this dilemma reflects respect for both the life of the mother and the child, both of whom are created in God’s image.

“Imperfect” children

As the pregnancy progresses, the child’s chance for survival outside the womb increases. When the mother’s condition has reached the point where continuation of the pregnancy is truly dangerous to her health, such as in heart disease or when treatment that is going to be harmful to the baby is necessary, then an early delivery should be accomplished. The premature baby should then be given every benefit of medical science. In this way respect is shown for both lives.

In the case of so-called “imperfect” children, we are dealing with the ability of medical science to search out and destroy infants who have medical or genetic problems that may leave them mentally retarded or physically handicapped for life. The ethical question of what to do with these imperfect children is certainly addressed in the Bible. After all, we are all God’s imperfect children. We are marred by sin. We are not the kind of children God wanted. We hurt Him and disappoint Him. God in fact has a perfect right to destroy us.

But God’s response to His imperfect children was to love us, to send His own Son to suffer and die on the cross for us, and through His blood to adopt us back into His family. The Scriptures challenge us to treat our own imperfect children in a similar, loving way.

If abortion on demand were done away with tomorrow, how would I as a Christian confront the problem of women wounded in the illegal abortion mills? I know I would again be saddened by their plight, but I would not be outraged. I think the entire Christian community must be prepared to respond to the needs of these women with unwanted pregnancy, not by ostracizing them, but by going to their side to help them through the pregnancy and through the medical expenses and social problems engendered by the pregnancy. The alternative to abortion is an expensive one, but a morally correct one.

Dealing with guilt

Finally, what of those who must deal with the guilt of abortion? The good news that makes the Gospel so relevant today is that God forgives. I know from personal experience that the blood of Jesus can cover the sin of abortion.

In my own life I once thought abortion was a good thing, the answer to many social and medical problems I saw around me. Now I know that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). When I understood the sanctity of unborn human life, I changed my mind about abortion.

Dr. Beverly Smith McMillan has a private practice of obstetrics and gynecology in Jackson, Mississippi. She is married and has three sons and a stepdaughter.

Archive: Those Wretched Genealogies!

by Steve | Nov 2, 1983 | archive - 1983

How God used a motley crew to give us His Son

Archive: Those Wretched Genealogies!

by Joel B. Green

“We’ll never be able to buy a house, not with these interest rates!”

“No one can get along with him. He’s impossible.”

“Our church is past the point of no return; it will never change.”

Have you ever been confronted with life’s impossibilities? Have you ever told yourself, “It can’t happen”?

As the Christmas season approaches and we turn with renewed interest to the accounts of Jesus’ birth, we find ourselves confronted by yet another impossibility.

Thousands of years ago God made a promise, what Genesis 17:7 calls an “everlasting covenant,” to Abraham. God promised that the relationship between Himself and His people would be restored; the walls of separation would be pulled down. God said, “I will … be God to you and to your descendants after you.”

I would suggest that, by most standards, God made a promise He could not keep. He bit off more than He could chew. And Matthew 1:1-17 proves my point!

Biblical genealogies, like the one presented here in the first chapter of Matthew, are often shunned as “boring,” “meaningless,” “just a bunch of ‘begats’ that make reading the Bible more difficult.” But this introduction to Matthew’s Gospel contains some amazing facts. It provides four reasons why what God promised to Abraham was a major impossibility.

1. The people through whom God wanted to work were too sinful. In general terms, genealogies were for giving one’s roots and for proving that those roots were pure. The bloodline was traced through the fathers, not through the mothers. In fact, to be called the “son of your mother” was a slap in the face. However, in the genealogy provided in Matthew we note the inclusion of four women. And, as if that were not enough to spoil a lineage, these women had pedigrees that were anything but pure.

In verse three Tamar is listed. In Jewish tradition she is a Canaanite, not an Israelite. Further, Tamar’s reputation was that of an adulteress. In verse five Matthew mentions Rah ab, the harlot who aided Israel in the destruction of Jericho. She also was a foreigner, not an Israelite. In verse five is recorded the name of Ruth, a Moabite and a proselyte to the faith of Israel. The mother of Solomon is mentioned in verse six. This woman, whom we know as Bathsheba, was also non-Israelite. The world remembers her as the woman who committed adultery with King David.

“R” rated ancestry

Strange, is it not, that in a list which was designed to prove one’s pure ancestry as an Israelite, we find four women, all of whom were Gentiles, three of whom were known for their sexual misdeeds? The people through whom God wanted to work, so it might seem, were too sinful!

Lest we think the obstacles to God’s purpose were women only, we might note a few male sinners on the list. Jacob schemed his way into his father’s inheritance. David, whose sexual misconduct we have already mentioned, was also a murderer. Solomon, who had enough wives to populate a small town, was persuaded to compromise his faith. And less well-known but equally valid to our point are the infamous exploits of Ahaz, Manasseh, and Amon.

Our conclusion can only be that the ancestry of Jesus is made up of a sin-full bunch. Many of their lives would be rated “R” (or worse) even by today’s standards. They compose a motley crew, not the sort of people we would expect God to use to bring about His great purpose.

Isn’t that what we often say about ourselves? “My sin is too great.” “My testimony is blotched forever.” The genealogy of Christ is evidence that God can and does use the humbled, the despised, the sinful to accomplish His purpose. By our standards we would look at this lineup and say, “God doesn’t have a chance! There’s no way! It’s a lost cause! It’s impossible! ” Yet, even through these sinful people, God worked.

2. The people through whom God wanted to work were in the wrong place. Everyone knows it’s important to be in the right place at the right time. Most everybody has known someone who got a good break because he happened to be in the right place. So we find ourselves wishing: If only I had grown up there instead of here … If only I had gone to that church instead of this one … If only I had her boss instead of my own … If only …

For Israel the promise given to Abraham was very much connected to the Promised Land. But in the latter part of the genealogical record in Matthew we see that the Israelites were spending less and less time there. In exile (verses 11 and 12) the Israelites were separated from their land, their home, and—many of them thought—from their God. God’s people were “out of pocket,” in the wrong place. This was a formidable obstacle, but not as great as the next.

3. It was going to take too long to get the job done. From Abraham to Jesus were 42 generations—14 to David, 14 to the Exile, and 14 to Jesus (verse 17). Suppose we were given a great promise and then told, “It’ll be yours in just 42 generations!” What would we think?

The thought of waiting some 2000 years for the promise to be fulfilled would hardly bring us to a state of excited anticipation. It would be almost like saying to a 14-year-old, “When you graduate from medical school, I’II buy you a car.” The response would likely be, “That’ll take forever!”

Much of our generation suffers from a convenience-store mentality: “Get what you want when you want it.” We often label “impossible ” anything which will take a long, long time. After waiting a few weeks or months we so easily allow our hope to fade. “It’ll never happen!”

Is there time for God to do His thing? Many of us would have discounted God’s promise to Abraham because it would take too long.

Surely a God who can do anything could just wave a finger—Zap!—and it’s done. Why use sinners to do so important a task? After all, it’s illogical. Why use people who were in the wrong place? Why waste so much time?

But there is more.

4. The way God wanted to work included an impossible birth. In verse 16 we have a clear picture of Jesus being born in a special way, without a normal biological father. As if these other obstacles didn’t render God’s plan impossible, now there’s the problem of this birth by an impossible process. It betrays all of the laws in our textbooks. It is not written up in the medical journals. It is not logical. God’s promise had to be impossible, because He wanted to accomplish it in an illogical manner.

Of course we live on this side of the life of Jesus—His birth, life, death, and resurrection. And we know that what seemed impossible, God has done. We know that in Jesus Christ God did what He said He would do.

But do we believe that God still works that way? How do we respond when faced with the impossible? How do we respond when facing overpowering obstacles—financial, marital, vocational? Do we allow our faith to falter at the first sign of hurdles which seem too high to leap?

Are we willing to think big about what God might do? Or are we tied to our ideas of what is possible? We are (or he is, or she is) too sinful. … God cannot work here. … It will take too much time. … It is illogical.

As is evident in Matthew’s genealogy, so it may be said of our own contemporary situations. It was impossible, but God did it anyway. And He still does.

Archive: The Bible…Good Book or God’s Book?

by Steve | Nov 1, 1983 | archive - 1983

Archive: The Bible…Good Book or God’s Book?

By John N. Oswalt, President of Asbury College, Wilmore, KY
Contributing Editor, Good News

The basic difference among United Methodists today is what we believe about Scripture. Is the Bible the inspired Word of God, unique in the world? Or is it one more religious book, valuable to us merely because it describes our particular religious history”?

If the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it provides clear, divine guidance for the Church. If it is not God’s Word, then anything goes. There is no standard to guide our beliefs and practices. So society determines our values and behavior.

Reflection will show that nearly all our differences stem from differing views of the Bible. The virgin birth? Is Scripture an accurate report of God’s self-revelation or just a collection of religious legends? Ordination of homosexuals? Is the Bible the report of the Creator’s principles or the record of a people’s prejudices?

What this means is that any genuine reformation of our denomination will require, sooner or later, a widespread reevaluation of the Bible as God’s Word. Personally, I question whether it is possible to bring about that change before spiritual revival occurs. Typically the head follows the heart.

When a person has experienced the reality of God at work in his heart, it is less difficult to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. But unless that revived heart is immediately grounded in inspired Scripture, all kinds of aberrations may result. Not the least of these is loss of the ground gained and then a hardening spiritually.

So it is critical for evangelicals to know their own position and present a united front. One of the potentially divisive areas today is the discussion of the inerrancy versus the infallibility of Scripture. Here the Enemy seeks to exploit a situation where essentially the same views are held. His tactic is to make our words rallying cries by which we exclude one another.

That doesn’t mean words are unimportant. Words are our only means of communicating ideas and opinions.

The problem comes when we use words as convenient labels by which to make snap decisions. Political labels are a good case in point. Words must be vehicles for thought, not substitutes.

In discussing the inspiration of Scripture, words are very important. The issue of the Bible has never been more crucial to evangelicals. Since the evangelical surge of the last decade, everyone wants to be called evangelical.

But just because people claim a personal relationship with Christ, that doesn’t make them evangelicals. Neither does a concern for the lost. Both of these are critical, but they are not bed rock.

Biblical truth is bedrock. Apart from its teachings, personal relationships with Christ degenerate into subjective mysticism. And concern for the lost becomes mere do-goodism.

Liberal or Neo-orthodox

What is unique about the evangelicals’ view of Scripture? It’s the conviction that the Bible is the revelation of God.

Older liberal theology denied this altogether. For liberals, the Bible was just one of many expressions of the divine Spirit which has appeared in the development of human thought. But two world wars treated harshly the optimistic notions of human progress at the core of liberalism.

During this period in history a movement back toward orthodoxy began. This movement was fueled by two European theologians, Karl Barth and Emil Bruner. They saw again that God was other than humanity, and that if humanity was to be saved from itself, God must reveal Himself to us. But they did not believe that God reveals Himself in the Bible, only through it. So the movement they fathered came to be called neo-orthodoxy (or the New Orthodoxy), similar to but not the same as true orthodoxy.

How much difference can two little words in and through, make? As it turns out, a great deal. If God only reveals himself through the Bible, then the Bible itself is not factually true. God may reveal a truth through the account of Adam and Eve, for example, even though the account itself may be false.

In other words, this approach allows us to separate truth from facts. This enables a person who cannot believe the factual statements of the Bible to believe the truths of the Bible.

Here’s the great drawback of this point of view: If the truth of the Bible is unrelated to its facts, who is to say that it is the truth at all? If I say I am the smartest man in the world, but cannot add two and two, you are quite justified in saying I don’t tell the truth.

Thus the neo-orthodox movement did not last very long. Most scholars who agreed that the Bible was factually unreliable took the next logical step. They denied that it was any more truthful than any other merely human book.

In the middle and late 70s several evangelical scholars began to rediscover neo-orthodoxy. Either through childhood training or a conversion experience, they were inclined to accept the theological truth of Scripture. But they had become convinced during graduate training that the facts out of which the Hebrew and Christian people had learned their faith were false.

Barth’s and Bruner’s teachings were a god-send to these new followers of neo-orthodoxy. But, in fact, they are caught in a logical fallacy which cannot stand. As history has already shown, their position carries the seeds of its own destruction. Either the Bible’s theology is true because the facts are true, or its theology is false because the facts are false. There is no middle position.

It is crucial to understand that because the Bible is a reliable record of God’s revelation to His people then, He is able to reveal Himself to us now. The neo-orthodox position says we only know what the Biblical writers thought God was doing and saying. We don’t know what He actually did and said. This is not the historic position of the Church, nor that of the evangelical movement as it has developed over the last 60-70 years.

What evangelicals believe

Evangelicals believe the Bible is the Word of God in which God directly reveals Himself and His truth to us. To be sure, it comes to us through the medium of specific times and places. It comes through human writers who had their own styles and cultures. But this does not mean that the truth is obscured. It only means that we have to understand how the culture, style, and locale affected the presentation of the truth. This is not easy, but neither is it as hard as many would have us believe.

Some may ask why God bothered to use particular cultures and styles and locales. Why didn’t he just give us a list of statements and rules and truths? The answer is that we need a setting to help us understand a plain truth. Most of us understand stories much better than statements.

Plain statements which were quite sensible to the Jews are meaningless to us. We have to see them in their settings before we can say, “Oh, so that’s what it means.” In the same way, if God had given the Jews plain statements designed for us to understand, those people would have been completely mystified.

Granted, the matters of culture, style, and locale create some problems. First of all, when we say the Bible is factually true, we must take into account the purpose of the statements and their setting. For instance, Jesus said the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds (Mark 4:31). If His purpose were to give a botanically precise statement, then this statement would be incorrect. There are many other seeds smaller than the mustard seed. But that was not His purpose. He was making a general statement in support of his teaching about the relativity of greatness. In that context, His statement is perfectly true.

Of much more weight is whether Jesus made such a statement at all. Here would be a watershed between the evangelical and the non-evangelical. The Bible asserts in the plainest of terms that Jesus made such a statement. If in fact He did not, then the Bible has perpetrated a lie and its reliability is in question.

Here is another example of the importance of understanding the purpose of facts recorded in the Bible. About 90 percent of the information in Matthew’s Gospel is also included in Mark and Luke. However, beyond a general agreement over the order of some of the major events of Jesus’ life, each book arranges the information quite differently.

If the purpose of the Gospels were to give a biography in the modern sense, then one of them (at the most) would be true, and the other two false. But it is evident that each of the Gospel writers has arranged the facts in order to highlight certain aspects of Jesus’ ministry.

These examples explain why some who are genuinely evangelical are uneasy with such a statement as, “The Bible is inerrant.” No, the Bible is not absolutely free from any error, when judged by an absolute standard. Nor could it be. Those who use this word are aware of this, and so they carefully qualify what they don’t mean by inerrant.  

Still, evangelicals who have a concern over the appropriateness of the word inerrant are often more comfortable with such a word as infallible. They feel it lays its stress at a better point: the Bible’s function. In this sense they declare that the Bible will, without fail, lead to a true understanding of the nature of God, man, and the world.

But more important than terms is the way a person uses the Bible. Historically, evangelicals have held certain basic convictions. These include belief in the deity of Christ, a literal resurrection, and the necessity of conversion.

In addition, evangelicals have held certain convictions about Scripture:

• Though it must be rightly understood and interpreted, the Bible’s report of facts is correct and reliable.
• Direct claims of authorship and composition should be accepted at face value.
• Each of the 66 canonical books have some degree of authority over the Christian.
• Biblical statements which seem to contradict each other could be harmonized if all the facts were known.
• Biblical principles for behavior are binding for all times except where the Bible gives clear reason to believe otherwise.
• The Bible should have a prominent place in the lives of all Christians. It is ours to read and study with devotion, diligence, and delight.

Stark contrast

Though evangelicals may disagree over fine points of interpretation, their view of the Bible stands in stark contrast to liberal and neo-orthodox views. Sadly, both liberal and neo-orthodox traditions have given the Church a less-than-inspired Bible. They leave readers to pick. and choose· what seems meaningful.

Such views would have been unbelievable to John Wesley. He enjoyed calling himself “a man of one book.” Of course, this does not mean he read only one book. In fact he read hundreds, if not thousands, of others. But he did seek to base all his thinking and behavior on the Bible and to judge everything else by it. Let’s pray for a rebirth of such an attitude among United Methodists today.