For most Christians, the concept of abortion is morally wrong and goes against God’s command to not kill.
So, why did this Christian voice say that the killing of babies can be good for them?
Philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig discussed the issue of the murder as discussed in the Bible with atheist Alex O’Connor. During this conversation, Craig’s attention was turned toward the story of Canaanite clans being destroyed in Scripture, including children and infants.
Craig notes that God has the right to take anyone’s life, and believes that these children would have immediately gone to heaven, experiencing a greater eternal life there than the life they would have known here on earth.
“So it was actually a tremendous blessing to these children for them to be killed and go to heaven and be with God,” Craig says.
O’Connor was incredibly confused on Craig’s argument, and posed the question back at him about abortion in today’s modern world.
“A lot of the time in this discussion people do talk in language which points to how this is bad for the child,” O’Connor says. “In fact, it seems like you’re committed to the view that it confers a great good upon the child when a parent has an abortion.”
This would be the point in time when most Christians would have made themselves clear that abortion is wrong, and that it does in fact harm a child.
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It is the most gruesome of deaths, whether done chemically, by ripping the child out of the womb bit by bit, or in another fashion, abortion is excruciatingly painful and wrong, and will always leave the mother with the memory of losing a child.
Yet, that was not Craig’s response.
“Yes, absolutely. I mean, what it would do, it would rob the child of the goods of this finite life that he would have enjoyed had he lived 50, 60 years or so,” Craig says. “But in place of that, it gives him an eternal life of incomprehensible joy and happiness which far outbalances the loss of those finite goods.”
Knowing that someone will go to heaven does not make murdering them correct. While Craig notes that abortion is wrong because it violates God’s command not to murder, there is much more to this than simply not killing someone because you were told it’s wrong to do so.
Abortion inflicts pain. It inflicts it not only upon the child and the mother, but the other people who would have been in that child’s life.
God says that He has good and prosperous plans for us, plans for good and not for evil (Jer. 29:11). This includes the plans and purposes He has for us during this lifetime. By robbing a child of their life, you do more than just disobey God; you take away the opportunity for the child to have an impact on the world. You take away the possibility of good plans being fulfilled through that person for the sake of the gospel here on this earth.
So, what does abortion do? Abortion plays the role of acting as God by determining someone’s future for them, a role none of us were meant to play. Perhaps this should be considered further before arguments about abortion are made by Christian advocates.
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Abby Trivett is a marketing copywriter and coordinator for Charisma Media.
Stephen Strang