Without Natural Affection
Introduction. Every year the natural affection and sympathy created by the death of others are used to change public opinion. Those who die in auto accidents resulting from drunk drivers have been used to increase penalties and lower blood alcohol levels. Few are immune from the visceral response when an innocent person is killed. That sense of loss moves us to want things changed!
It is because we are “created in the image of God,” that we feel this “natural affection” toward each other. God feels so strongly about those who cause death that He gave the death penalty (Gen. 1:26-27, 9:5-6). This is where our natural sense of empathy and pity along with our righteous indignation originate.
Yet there is one death statistic that doesn’t generate a similar empathy. Each year over one million people lose their lives. Everyone knows about it, yet nothing has been done to stop it. While 10,000 annual drunk driving deaths have created change, the annual death of 1,200,000 to abortion has changed little since 1973. 60 million children have lost their lives since abortion became legal. Yet where is the “natural affection” creating both pity and outrage?
The illogical argument: “children are not children until we say they are children” has silenced many a conscience. Yet re-labeling can’t change facts. Everything is born “according to its kind.” If a pregnant woman is murdered, two people died and the murderer is charged for both. Yet if that same woman didn’t want that same child, it is no longer human and a doctor can end its life. Do we really believe the decision of a mother changes a child into a fetus who is no longer human?
This is human sophistry at its worst! Selectively accepting or rejecting the same facts to create two conflicting truths. When a woman loses a wanted child, she grieves. If she doesn’t want the child, it never was a child, and there is no grief. Where did this come from? We were not always such a blind and calloused people.
There is a powerful cause and affect at work. The cause is sexual immorality. As fornication and adultery have become more accepted into our culture, there has been an exponential rise in unwanted children. Abortion solves the “problem” of an unwanted child. Such selfishness has destroyed the natural affection of millions.
Since “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9-10), a look at history will help us see the truth. Abortion is not new! It is just another form of an ancient yet appalling practice. In ages before us (Deut 12:29-31; Jer. 32:33-35), the same type of sexually immoral people sacrificed their infants after birth. While we may congratulate ourselves on our “newly sanitized” method, the truth is that America has now learned to sacrifice her children to sexual immorality! While they waited until after they were born and America sacrifices them while still in the womb, the outcome is the same.
Some affirm that “human life doesn’t begin until after birth.” But what does this mean to “the Father of spirits” (Heb. 12:9)? How does God, who sees “a thousand years is as a day and a day as a thousand years,” view those few months between conception and birth (2Pet. 3:8)? Was John just a fetus when “he leaped in his mother's womb” in his sixth month (Lk 1:36-41)? Was Isaac not the child God promised at the moment of conception (Gen 17:19; 18:9-14)? The truth is revealed in the Psalms: Since God “covered me in my mother’s womb,” “God saw my substance, being yet unformed,” and even the “days fashioned for me when as yet there were none” (Ps. 139:13-16), obviously the soul is given at conception, and then the body is formed. God confirmed this when He said of Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5-6).
Conclusion. When a child is given to those with the faith to believe the truth of the previous paragraph, no sophistry or human wisdom can remove the natural affection and loving anticipation with which they await the birth of their child. Only when selfish lust conquers natural affection can such reasoning be called wisdom.
God calls an age in which ‘men shall be lovers of self,’ ‘without natural affection,’ and ‘lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God’ as ‘grievous times.’ (2Tim 3:1-5) and so they are!
It is because we are “created in the image of God,” that we feel this “natural affection” toward each other. God feels so strongly about those who cause death that He gave the death penalty (Gen. 1:26-27, 9:5-6). This is where our natural sense of empathy and pity along with our righteous indignation originate.
Yet there is one death statistic that doesn’t generate a similar empathy. Each year over one million people lose their lives. Everyone knows about it, yet nothing has been done to stop it. While 10,000 annual drunk driving deaths have created change, the annual death of 1,200,000 to abortion has changed little since 1973. 60 million children have lost their lives since abortion became legal. Yet where is the “natural affection” creating both pity and outrage?
The illogical argument: “children are not children until we say they are children” has silenced many a conscience. Yet re-labeling can’t change facts. Everything is born “according to its kind.” If a pregnant woman is murdered, two people died and the murderer is charged for both. Yet if that same woman didn’t want that same child, it is no longer human and a doctor can end its life. Do we really believe the decision of a mother changes a child into a fetus who is no longer human?
This is human sophistry at its worst! Selectively accepting or rejecting the same facts to create two conflicting truths. When a woman loses a wanted child, she grieves. If she doesn’t want the child, it never was a child, and there is no grief. Where did this come from? We were not always such a blind and calloused people.
There is a powerful cause and affect at work. The cause is sexual immorality. As fornication and adultery have become more accepted into our culture, there has been an exponential rise in unwanted children. Abortion solves the “problem” of an unwanted child. Such selfishness has destroyed the natural affection of millions.
Since “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9-10), a look at history will help us see the truth. Abortion is not new! It is just another form of an ancient yet appalling practice. In ages before us (Deut 12:29-31; Jer. 32:33-35), the same type of sexually immoral people sacrificed their infants after birth. While we may congratulate ourselves on our “newly sanitized” method, the truth is that America has now learned to sacrifice her children to sexual immorality! While they waited until after they were born and America sacrifices them while still in the womb, the outcome is the same.
Some affirm that “human life doesn’t begin until after birth.” But what does this mean to “the Father of spirits” (Heb. 12:9)? How does God, who sees “a thousand years is as a day and a day as a thousand years,” view those few months between conception and birth (2Pet. 3:8)? Was John just a fetus when “he leaped in his mother's womb” in his sixth month (Lk 1:36-41)? Was Isaac not the child God promised at the moment of conception (Gen 17:19; 18:9-14)? The truth is revealed in the Psalms: Since God “covered me in my mother’s womb,” “God saw my substance, being yet unformed,” and even the “days fashioned for me when as yet there were none” (Ps. 139:13-16), obviously the soul is given at conception, and then the body is formed. God confirmed this when He said of Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5-6).
Conclusion. When a child is given to those with the faith to believe the truth of the previous paragraph, no sophistry or human wisdom can remove the natural affection and loving anticipation with which they await the birth of their child. Only when selfish lust conquers natural affection can such reasoning be called wisdom.
God calls an age in which ‘men shall be lovers of self,’ ‘without natural affection,’ and ‘lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God’ as ‘grievous times.’ (2Tim 3:1-5) and so they are!