Al Mohler writes in a piece how many who love Christ feel about the “Wicked deed in Wichita.” Abortion is immoral just as murder is immoral. A Christian pro-life stance is the belief that all life is valuable and redeemable. The murder of Dr. George Tiller is at enmity with this belief.
Abortion is murder. What goes on in those clinics is institutionalized homicide, often for financial profit. Abortion is a moral scandal and a national tragedy and a blight upon the American conscience.But violence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause. Now, the premeditated murder of Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church is the headline scandal — not the abortions he performed and the cause he represented.
We have no right to take the law into our own hands in an act of criminal violence. We are not given the right to take this power into our own hands, for God has granted this power to governing authorities.
read the whole article.
via betweentwoworlds
Filed under: commentary | Tagged: abortion, al mohler, Christ, dr. tiller, evangelical, George Tiller, immoral, moral, murder, pro-life
My thoughts, which ballooned into a mini-essay (sorry):
Condemning both Dr. Tiller’s killing and the act of abortion as murder is morally consistent on one level, yet doesn’t resolve the deeper, extremely unsettling question: if Tiller truly was the murderer of thousands, isn’t what Scott Roeder did at least somewhat defensible—even admirable? Though pro-life groups rightfully condemned this act, the force of their conviction is compromised by reflexively equating this heinous act with abortion in general. In any other circumstance, the ideological killing of a genocidal murderer would be celebrated—inwardly, if not openly. Why should this be any different?
This isn’t to say that abortion is not (at least in a sense) murder, or that Roeder deserves an iota of sympathy. However, it forces me to reconsider, as a pro-life Christian, the wisdom of classifying all abortion as first-degree murder. As abhorrent as late-term abortion may be, what Dr. Tiller did was legal, and gratefully acknowledged by many patients, most of whose situations were not as selfish or reckless as we want to believe. (And here’s another conundrum: if all abortion is murder, why is late-term abortion any worse than early-term? Why target Tiller?)
As a medical student, I had the eye-opening experience of meeting two women who were having abortions, then witnessing their procedures. I listened to their stories. I have also personally known Christian women, as decent and upstanding as you or me, who made secret, excruciating decisions to end their pregnancies.
Should the state forbid them this choice, and should they be punished if they proceed anyway? As a Christian, I realize I should answer—uneasily, humbly, but clearly—“yes.” But I am also increasingly at odds with crusading activists who insist this is a clear-cut issue with simple solutions, either morally or politically.