Calling abortion a “blessing” is a sure sign of spiritual death:
If someone murders innocent human beings, and then celebrates and promotes it, that tells us all we need to know about that person. And when such a person claims to be a Christian leader and says “I felt no guilt, no shame, no sin” then you really do know all about that person – they are spiritually dead.
In fact they are 110 per cent spiritually dead, and only the living God can break through to a sin-hardened and conscience-dead person such as this. Anyone that far gone cannot be easily reached by persuasion, but is in desperate need of a supernatural heart transplant to come back to the land of the living and the world of the right.
Here I refer to an American Presbyterian pastor, Rebecca Todd. The North Carolina cleric seems to love abortion and death as much as she hates God and life. Yet somehow she seems to have folks who actually go to hear her preach her diabolical sermons each week.
As the article states, she is the author of the 2018 book Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice. That also should tell you everything you need to know. Whenever you see the phrase “Progressive Christian” you should head for the hills. These folks glory in trashing Scripture and reinventing God in their own radical image. See more on this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/01/23/progressive-christianity/
Here are the closing words of the article I linked to above:
“As a woman who has borne two children, I can affirm that I felt something sacred happening in my gestating body during those pregnancies. I can also attest that I felt God’s presence with me as I made the decision to end two pregnancies. And I felt no guilt, no shame, no sin,” she shamelessly confessed.
Todd claimed that one can simultaneously celebrate the “gestation and birth of a child” and deny life to some of the unborn, arguing that this is “theologically consistent with the belief that prenates are not yet human beings … ” The pastor concluded that pro-abortion activists need to counter pro-life language with their own rosy descriptions of abortion: “The statement ‘abortion is health care’ is right and true … please don’t stop saying this. But we also need to say abortion is a blessing, abortion is an act of love, abortion is a moral good, abortion is an act of grace.”
Good grief: “abortion is a blessing, abortion is an act of love, abortion is a moral good, abortion is an act of grace.” That is straight out of Orwell’s 1984 and the Ministry of Truth:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
And more to the point, that is straight out of Isaiah 5:20:
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
Talk about total deception and blindness. We expect those who hate God and his word to push this demonic nonsense, but when someone claiming to be a minister of the gospel does so, you know that Satan is alive and well on planet earth, and has far too many churches and church leaders firmly in his grip.
One commentator said this about Todd: “And I will bet a million dollars that she is an anti-death penalty extremist as well. It’s a sick fact that the overwhelming majority of these kind of monsters are appalled at the idea of executing a serial killing child molester, but have sweet dreams about rending babies to pieces.”
Yes quite so. Leftists, including religious leftists, who deny the plain teachings of Scripture, usually fall into this mental and moral confusion. They do not seem to mind one bit the glaring double standards and rank hypocrisy they are enveloped in. They clearly are singing from Satan’s song-sheet, not God’s.
As I say, unless God breaks through this hardened heart and deadened conscience, there is no hope whatsoever for this woman. So we can and should pray for her. If God can break through and turn around a raving Christophobe like Saul, he can change the life of anyone.
And as one partial illustration of this ability to change, another recent article found in LifeSiteNews discusses one woman not exactly known for godly values or pro-life convictions: Lindsay Lohan. After years of a rather debauched and reckless lifestyle, it seems she has had a bit of a turnaround, and is now rejoicing in motherhood. She recently said this: “Having a baby is the greatest joy in the world!”
The article concludes this way:
A decade ago, she also reportedly suffered a miscarriage that, although she kept details private, appears to have impacted her greatly. Then, in April 2022, she married financier Bader Shammas, with whom she welcomed their baby a year later. Lohan has moved further away from the Hollywood scene and now runs a platform on which she discusses and shares insights on lifestyle, including the subjects of healthy habits, fashion and food through podcasting and social media.
So if a Hollywood wild child can have a bit of a transformation, there is hope for others. So we should pray that Lohan finds a complete and eternal change by coming to know Christ as Lord and Saviour. And we need to pray for Todd as well. She may well seem like a lost cause right now, but so were all of us at one time.
God is in the change business.
Postscript
Just in case anyone reading this actually believes the errant nonsense that Todd is spouting about the Bible somehow supporting abortion, you need to think again. Indeed, the second half of my 2015 book The Challenge of Abortion offers a very lengthy and detailed look at just what the Scriptures have to say about this matter.
21 Replies to “This Is What the Spiritually Dead Look Like”
I know, horrible, isn’t it? However, in the United States, there’s even a pseudo-“Catholic” pro-abortion group, “Catholics” for “Choice”. Apparently, it belongs to a coalition of liberal Protestant, Jewish and secular humanist groups called the “Religious” (?) Coalition for “Reproductive Choice.” These organisations scandalously distort historical Christian teaching about the sanctity of life when it comes to abortion (although paradoxically, they also take strong positive positions when it comes to other pro-life concerns, like an end to the death penalty; although thankfully, there are now many social conservatives who agree with them over the wrongness of capital punishment. I am thankful that at least in Australasia, the death penalty has long been abandoned… except for unborn children and the poor, vulnerable and disabled under threat from euthanasia sadly). What concerns me is the pragmatic turn when it comes to pro-abortionists (at least in New Zealand) recently. They’ve become highly welcoming when it comes to pro-abortion people of “faith”.
Thanks Rhona. Of course I – along with so many others – am a social conservative and biblical Christian who fully agrees with the rightness of capital punishment. I have made the moral, political and biblical case for that often enough. See these pieces for starters: https://billmuehlenberg.com/category/ethics/capital-punishment/
Nor do I – along with so many others – buy the faulty “seamless garment” argument that some push which claims that we should oppose abortion AND capital punishment. The two could not be more different: Abortion involves the unjust murder of the innocent while the death penalty involves the just killing of the guilty. See here for more on this: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/02/21/difficult-bible-passages-james-213/
Speaking of Isaiah 5:20, Bill have you or any other commenters on your blog seen this?
Greenbelt 2023, an `inclusive Christian’ festival.
“Get out your notebooks and sharpen your pencils because the School of Drag is now in session! Through quick drag catwalks, arts and crafts, and Drag Story Time, the School of Drag is the perfect introduction to queer art for youngsters, giving them a chance to enjoy LGBTQ+ stories, meet Drag artists and express themselves creatively in a safe space.
Duration 60 mins”
Thanks for that Kevin.
Just when I think I have used up all of my mouth hanging open saying “oh, my!”, I read her comments. While I can easily get infuriated at people like her, my heart also breaks for her. These people have been given over to delusions and their hard heart that you can’t reach them. Only God can and we have to pray that he does. Their reality will be very different if they don’t repent and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Thanks Susan.
The fact that these people delight in death (and other abominations) is proof of the spirit working through them.
Quite right Michael.
Although some forms of abortion are known to have been practiced in biblical times, there Is nothing in the Bible that either explicitly condemns or supports it. The same goes for the claim that life begins at conception.
Essentially any individual’s view on these matters seems to be entirely based on their personal beliefs or political persuasion.
Thanks Yvonne, but I really must call your bluff here. You apparently have never read the Bible, nor any standard text on embryology or human biology. As to the former, the Bible throughout fully affirms the sanctity of life, and the case for the personhood and value of the unborn is made repeatedly. I offer just a small sampling of that biblical data here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2012/11/04/selling-lies-and-death-for-jesus/
Much more on this is found in my 2015 book, The Challenge of Abortion.
As to when life begins, there is not a serious textbook on these matters that I am aware of that does not fully insist that human life begins at conception. Two widely-used and standard texts can be quoted here (among many). One says this: “human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell – a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” Or as another puts it, “The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
All this and much more is fully documented and referenced in my book. Only the scientifically illiterate – or those merely pushing pro-death agendas – will seek to deny this basic reality.
So please forget this baloney about ‘personal beliefs’ and ‘politics’. God has fully and clearly told us where he stands on the matter of abortion, and science has fully and clearly told us when human life begins.
I was referring to conscious life, requiring a mind and therefore a functioning brain, which only starts to happen after 3-4 months of pregnancy. That’s well after the time when most abortions occur.
No one has any problem with “turning off the machines” when a loved one is no longer conscious and has no functioning brain. Same logic applies to a foetus.
The biblical references in your articles don’t make this important distinction either.
Thanks again Yvonne, but sorry, you continue to get things wrong. And I find it interesting how folks try to shift the goal posts when they are caught out. You got it patently wrong in your initial claims, so now you bait and switch, swinging to ‘consciousness’. But that will also get you nowhere fast. The idea that various types of functionality determines the worth of life not only has been a key belief system of the eugenicists and Nazis, but it is also fallacious. Full consciousness, awareness, or the ability to look after oneself can never be the determining factor in who should live or die. An unborn baby is not fully developed in these areas, but neither is a new born, or all sorts of other folks.
If you are trying to argue that anyone who is not fully conscious or sentient can be disposed of at will, you have just signed your own death warrant. Any time you are deep asleep, or in a coma, or in similar situations, you are of course not fully conscious and aware. So by the faulty logic of the pro-aborts – and seemingly you – it should be no problem to bump you off when you are in such a state. But the value of a life is NOT determined by mere consciousness or functionality. Scripture certainly nowhere makes that case, and sound science and medical ethics do not either.
And the brain is almost completely formed by 21 days after fertilisation, with brain waves recorded at 43 days. But again, those mere utilitarian concerns do NOT determine the worth of a human being. A person’s life is important not because of what he or she can do but who he or she is.
And of course had you should know that many folks deemed to be ‘brain dead,’ comatose, or in a ‘vegetative state,’ and have been written off, eventually regained partial or even full use of their facilities and lived long, productive lives. This too I carefully document in my book.
So you are just grasping at straws here as you seek to justify killing the unborn – and the elderly as well. Sorry, I will stick to tried and tested things like the Hippocratic Oath, and not politicised ideology.
Bill, I’d point out that your exchange above demonstrates just what I discussed in my opening post. Pro-abortionists are a lot more sophisticated in their arguments these days. They definitely tend to aim for the widest possible constituency, with appeals made to the libertarian right (which unfortunately tend to succeed- remember, Ayn Rand was ardently pro-abortionist herself and criticised Ronald Reagan for being pro-life) within nominally conservative parties (like the New Zealand National, Australian Liberal and British Conservative parties); and, disturbingly, to mainline Protestant churches. Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Abortion Law Reform Association is full of affirmative comments about people of faith, social justice and are clearly trying to appeal to non-evangelical Protestants.
Thanks Rhona. Although thankfully the whole world is more than New Zealand. I would put NZ in my top five – maybe even top two – most secular left nations on earth! So we expect all this from there sadly.
One pro-abortion acquaintance of mine has even taken to reading the work of Aquinas, Augustine, Robert George, John Finnis, Scott Klusendorf, Patrick Lee and Francis Beckwith to try to ‘deconstruct’ their pro-life arguments. On the one hand, it’s flattering to the strength of argument of these stalwart defenders of the right to life of the unborn that they’re taken so seriously, but it also implies that our adversaries should never be underestimated. And yes, he knows what natural law theory’s about too. When I dropped in for tea with him, I was startled to see a copy of the Cambridge Companion to St. Thomas Aquinas on his desk!
Thanks again Rhona. As I often say, when I get lots of secular lefties coming to my site, I am always hopeful and prayerful that the truth they are being exposed to will sink in at some point. So pray that this fellow will be turned around as he exposes himself to these folks.
He’s been doing this for about twenty years, though. Although I did succeed in changing his mind about euthanasia, to the point where he voted against the legalisation of euthanasia three years ago. No such luck when it comes to abortion, sadly. However, it does make me wonder whether we similarly need to make a detailed and continous analysis of the pro-abortion side’s arguments from a pro-life perspective. I dearly wish we had a series of classic pro-life philosophical and theological works tracing the development of our movement’s philosophy, arguments, strategies and tactics over the course of time. How much work from our movement’s pioneers has been lost to us already? I wish a Catholic or evangelical publisher would undertake that task.
Well, keep at him Rhonda – he may yet come around! As to books, given that I have written volumes on both abortion and euthanasia, I would have perhaps 100 volumes on abortion on my shelves, and perhaps 60 on euthanasia. Many of these do carefully interact with the pro-death arguments. So such books do exist, but yes we can always use more.
As long as we’re discussing life issues, do you have any plans to revise your excellent book opposing the unnecessary deathmongering practice of euthanasia now that you’ve had personal experience of concerns associated with end of life palliative care and the medical and spiritual needs of those passing to glory- like our respective spouses and partners in doing God’s work? I’d certainly encourage you to do so.
That is a possibility Rhona.
I’ll pray for your strength and fortitude in such vital and important work, Bill.
I know, horrible, isn’t it? However, in the United States, there’s even a pseudo-“Catholic” pro-abortion group, “Catholics” for “Choice”. Apparently, it belongs to a coalition of liberal Protestant, Jewish and secular humanist groups called the “Religious” (?) Coalition for “Reproductive Choice.” These organisations scandalously distort historical Christian teaching about the sanctity of life when it comes to abortion (although paradoxically, they also take strong positive positions when it comes to other pro-life concerns, like an end to the death penalty; although thankfully, there are now many social conservatives who agree with them over the wrongness of capital punishment. I am thankful that at least in Australasia, the death penalty has long been abandoned… except for unborn children and the poor, vulnerable and disabled under threat from euthanasia sadly). What concerns me is the pragmatic turn when it comes to pro-abortionists (at least in New Zealand) recently. They’ve become highly welcoming when it comes to pro-abortion people of “faith”.
Thanks Rhona. Of course I – along with so many others – am a social conservative and biblical Christian who fully agrees with the rightness of capital punishment. I have made the moral, political and biblical case for that often enough. See these pieces for starters: https://billmuehlenberg.com/category/ethics/capital-punishment/
Nor do I – along with so many others – buy the faulty “seamless garment” argument that some push which claims that we should oppose abortion AND capital punishment. The two could not be more different: Abortion involves the unjust murder of the innocent while the death penalty involves the just killing of the guilty. See here for more on this: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/02/21/difficult-bible-passages-james-213/
Speaking of Isaiah 5:20, Bill have you or any other commenters on your blog seen this?
Greenbelt 2023, an `inclusive Christian’ festival.
https://www.greenbelt.org.uk/artists/school-of-drag/
“Get out your notebooks and sharpen your pencils because the School of Drag is now in session! Through quick drag catwalks, arts and crafts, and Drag Story Time, the School of Drag is the perfect introduction to queer art for youngsters, giving them a chance to enjoy LGBTQ+ stories, meet Drag artists and express themselves creatively in a safe space.
Duration 60 mins”
Thanks for that Kevin.
Just when I think I have used up all of my mouth hanging open saying “oh, my!”, I read her comments. While I can easily get infuriated at people like her, my heart also breaks for her. These people have been given over to delusions and their hard heart that you can’t reach them. Only God can and we have to pray that he does. Their reality will be very different if they don’t repent and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Thanks Susan.
The fact that these people delight in death (and other abominations) is proof of the spirit working through them.
Quite right Michael.
Although some forms of abortion are known to have been practiced in biblical times, there Is nothing in the Bible that either explicitly condemns or supports it. The same goes for the claim that life begins at conception.
Essentially any individual’s view on these matters seems to be entirely based on their personal beliefs or political persuasion.
Thanks Yvonne, but I really must call your bluff here. You apparently have never read the Bible, nor any standard text on embryology or human biology. As to the former, the Bible throughout fully affirms the sanctity of life, and the case for the personhood and value of the unborn is made repeatedly. I offer just a small sampling of that biblical data here:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2012/11/04/selling-lies-and-death-for-jesus/
And here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/01/05/the-bible-and-abortion-challenging-the-revisionists/
Much more on this is found in my 2015 book, The Challenge of Abortion.
As to when life begins, there is not a serious textbook on these matters that I am aware of that does not fully insist that human life begins at conception. Two widely-used and standard texts can be quoted here (among many). One says this: “human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell – a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” Or as another puts it, “The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
All this and much more is fully documented and referenced in my book. Only the scientifically illiterate – or those merely pushing pro-death agendas – will seek to deny this basic reality.
So please forget this baloney about ‘personal beliefs’ and ‘politics’. God has fully and clearly told us where he stands on the matter of abortion, and science has fully and clearly told us when human life begins.
I was referring to conscious life, requiring a mind and therefore a functioning brain, which only starts to happen after 3-4 months of pregnancy. That’s well after the time when most abortions occur.
No one has any problem with “turning off the machines” when a loved one is no longer conscious and has no functioning brain. Same logic applies to a foetus.
The biblical references in your articles don’t make this important distinction either.
Thanks again Yvonne, but sorry, you continue to get things wrong. And I find it interesting how folks try to shift the goal posts when they are caught out. You got it patently wrong in your initial claims, so now you bait and switch, swinging to ‘consciousness’. But that will also get you nowhere fast. The idea that various types of functionality determines the worth of life not only has been a key belief system of the eugenicists and Nazis, but it is also fallacious. Full consciousness, awareness, or the ability to look after oneself can never be the determining factor in who should live or die. An unborn baby is not fully developed in these areas, but neither is a new born, or all sorts of other folks.
If you are trying to argue that anyone who is not fully conscious or sentient can be disposed of at will, you have just signed your own death warrant. Any time you are deep asleep, or in a coma, or in similar situations, you are of course not fully conscious and aware. So by the faulty logic of the pro-aborts – and seemingly you – it should be no problem to bump you off when you are in such a state. But the value of a life is NOT determined by mere consciousness or functionality. Scripture certainly nowhere makes that case, and sound science and medical ethics do not either.
And the brain is almost completely formed by 21 days after fertilisation, with brain waves recorded at 43 days. But again, those mere utilitarian concerns do NOT determine the worth of a human being. A person’s life is important not because of what he or she can do but who he or she is.
And of course had you should know that many folks deemed to be ‘brain dead,’ comatose, or in a ‘vegetative state,’ and have been written off, eventually regained partial or even full use of their facilities and lived long, productive lives. This too I carefully document in my book.
So you are just grasping at straws here as you seek to justify killing the unborn – and the elderly as well. Sorry, I will stick to tried and tested things like the Hippocratic Oath, and not politicised ideology.
Bill, I’d point out that your exchange above demonstrates just what I discussed in my opening post. Pro-abortionists are a lot more sophisticated in their arguments these days. They definitely tend to aim for the widest possible constituency, with appeals made to the libertarian right (which unfortunately tend to succeed- remember, Ayn Rand was ardently pro-abortionist herself and criticised Ronald Reagan for being pro-life) within nominally conservative parties (like the New Zealand National, Australian Liberal and British Conservative parties); and, disturbingly, to mainline Protestant churches. Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Abortion Law Reform Association is full of affirmative comments about people of faith, social justice and are clearly trying to appeal to non-evangelical Protestants.
Thanks Rhona. Although thankfully the whole world is more than New Zealand. I would put NZ in my top five – maybe even top two – most secular left nations on earth! So we expect all this from there sadly.
One pro-abortion acquaintance of mine has even taken to reading the work of Aquinas, Augustine, Robert George, John Finnis, Scott Klusendorf, Patrick Lee and Francis Beckwith to try to ‘deconstruct’ their pro-life arguments. On the one hand, it’s flattering to the strength of argument of these stalwart defenders of the right to life of the unborn that they’re taken so seriously, but it also implies that our adversaries should never be underestimated. And yes, he knows what natural law theory’s about too. When I dropped in for tea with him, I was startled to see a copy of the Cambridge Companion to St. Thomas Aquinas on his desk!
Thanks again Rhona. As I often say, when I get lots of secular lefties coming to my site, I am always hopeful and prayerful that the truth they are being exposed to will sink in at some point. So pray that this fellow will be turned around as he exposes himself to these folks.
He’s been doing this for about twenty years, though. Although I did succeed in changing his mind about euthanasia, to the point where he voted against the legalisation of euthanasia three years ago. No such luck when it comes to abortion, sadly. However, it does make me wonder whether we similarly need to make a detailed and continous analysis of the pro-abortion side’s arguments from a pro-life perspective. I dearly wish we had a series of classic pro-life philosophical and theological works tracing the development of our movement’s philosophy, arguments, strategies and tactics over the course of time. How much work from our movement’s pioneers has been lost to us already? I wish a Catholic or evangelical publisher would undertake that task.
Well, keep at him Rhonda – he may yet come around! As to books, given that I have written volumes on both abortion and euthanasia, I would have perhaps 100 volumes on abortion on my shelves, and perhaps 60 on euthanasia. Many of these do carefully interact with the pro-death arguments. So such books do exist, but yes we can always use more.
As long as we’re discussing life issues, do you have any plans to revise your excellent book opposing the unnecessary deathmongering practice of euthanasia now that you’ve had personal experience of concerns associated with end of life palliative care and the medical and spiritual needs of those passing to glory- like our respective spouses and partners in doing God’s work? I’d certainly encourage you to do so.
That is a possibility Rhona.
I’ll pray for your strength and fortitude in such vital and important work, Bill.