Abortion
RO78-01

So, what Paul is speaking about here applies not only to gross and loathsome sins, but it applies to the things that nobody considers gross and loathsome – things that people do not consider as matters of evil, but actually consider as things that are good. These, in other words, are socially acceptable evils, but they only show how enslaved the unbeliever is to the sin nature without seeing his own true condition.

The Christian, who is now a slave of divine viewpoint righteousness, has the capacity to see these cultured evils for what they are in God's sight. That's what makes the difference between those who are unregenerate, who are slaves to the sin nature, and those of us who are born-again, who now are slaves to divine righteousness. So, as we, as Christians, grasp how far our society has come from biblical reality, we will be overwhelmed with a spirit of gratitude to God that we have indeed been made slaves of absolute righteousness.

Child Abuse

Abortion

Sociological Law

The Constitution

Well, child abuse is indeed a real problem, and it is an example of man's enslavement to the sin nature. The Supreme Court created a low esteem for the life of the unborn child, and therefore, we now have a jaded generation relative to the life of the children who are alive outside of the womb. The bureaucrats who created the frame of reference of evolutionary humanism for our American value system today are responsible for the rise in child abuse. It has risen precipitously since abortion was made legal, because abortion inevitably had the effect of lowering the esteem for human life – lowering the esteem for a human being as something which is of value because it was created in the image of God.

Pagan societies, for centuries, have been plagued by a low esteem for human life because of their paganism. They had no basis (no frame of reference) for operating from the ground that a human being is important and of value. Certainly this explains why, in communism, life is so cheap, and why they slaughter people without mercy and without any reason but sociological and political reasons, because life is of no importance, because they say there is no God. And if there's no God, then nothing is forbidden. And if nothing is forbidden, then everything is permissible. Then right is what the state says is right, and wrong is what the state says is wrong, even if it's completely opposite to what the Bible says.

The trouble with us today is that the same disoriented bureaucrats who anchored American thinking to evolutionary humanism, and who, by steps, led to the Supreme Court decision relative to abortion, and who now, out of that, have found the results of child abuse are the same people who are telling us now how to solve the problem that they created in the first place. And they're seeking legal authority to enforce these human viewpoint solutions. Most of you do not realize how big the movement is on the part of child welfare bureaucrats to invade the authority and the rights of parents, and the privacy of your homes, in order to solve what they consider a great sociological problem – the child abuse syndrome.

Corporal Punishment

Proverbs 23:13 (just to anchor ourselves to what God thinks) says, "Withhold not correction from the child, for if you beat him with the rod, he shall not die." The Bible says that the life of the child is not endangered because you used the rod upon him. Obviously, anybody with an ounce of judgment, and an ounce of rationality, will realize that God, because of His character, is not telling parents here to brutalize their children in some irrational, violent rage. He is not telling you to use the rod so as to knock your children's teeth out; so as to gouge their eyes out; or, so as to break their bones in some way. He is not at all telling you to do that. He is telling you, in an orderly fashion, in an appropriate way, to apply physical pain as a point of communication to the rebellious will which is within the child. That's what he's telling you.

The Bible is very clear. You can look this up in all kinds of translations, and it'll come out just the same way it is right here in the King James. Proverbs 23:13: "Withhold not correction from the child." This is for correction. This is for straightening out an evil. And the basic evil in every child is that he has a rebellious will which has to be broken early in his life cycle: "For if you beat him with the rod." Now, that's strong language: "He will not die."

Now that very statement recognizes that you may leave marks on the gluteus maximus, but he will not die. And it is not an act of abuse. Breaking a child's rebellious will with physical pain is divine viewpoint, and it is actually required by Scripture, and it is in no way to be construed as mistreatment.

Proverbs 22:15 may be added to this to explain why this is important. The wisdom of God says, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. And that foolishness is a rebellious will. A rebellious will is bound up in the heart of a child (in the nature of a child). He is born with that. But it is the rod of physical pain that will break that rebellious will – not talking to him; not pleading with him; not promising to give him an ice cream cone if he'll be nice; and, not asking him to be as nice as his sister or his brother – but just using the rod of correction. That's very clear. It's very simple. It's the way God set up the human race. This is reality. And anybody who resists this is connected with unreality. That is the problem. To break a child's rebellious will – that's what it's all about.

Now the State Department Child Welfare Services equates these biblical principles of applying physical corporal punishment and pain in order to achieve correctional goals as being child abuse. You must decide whether some beady-eyed bureaucrat, with that bamboozled baloney that he's putting out, or whether an Almighty and a Holy God knows what he's talking about. Now, that's your option, because you're talking about an inerrant Scripture. You're talking about a God who created us, and Who knows how we function, and Who knows what our problem is, now that sin has entered. And you're over against a bureaucrat who's sitting around with this human viewpoint disorientation, cut off from the God who is out there, and not listening to the God because he doesn't think that God is saying anything, trying to tell you how to solve this human problem. Make your choice.

Violence

"'In the case of boy children, the lesson often includes the precept that it's manly to be able to take and inflict violence,' the researcher added. 'You have to realize that the rules of the game are very different in the family,' Strauss noted. 'Violence is not acceptable in society generally. In the family, it is not only permitted: it's expected.'

"The University of New Hampshire sociology professor shared the results of the National Institute of Mental Health-funded study done by his Family Violence Research Program. The 2,143-family study included a representative sample of races, religions, ages, geographic areas, and socio-economic groups. Strauss found that 14 of every 100 American children, six-and-a-half million are being abused every year. "Abuse," as defined in Strauss's study, is a violent act carried out with the intention of causing physical pain or injury. It ranges from slapping through kicking or beating up, to actual assault with a knife or gun. 'If the lesser forms of violence, such as slapping, grabbing, shoving, or throwing things are not counted, there still are two million American children (four out of every 100) being abused each year,' the sociologist said.

"Child abuse isn't the only kind of family violence by any means. In fact, spousal abuse turned out to be even more prevalent in the family study. The data showed that 16 of every 100 American couples engage in some kind of physical violence to each other, and six of every 100 are the victims of serious abuse. 'The rate of attacks by husbands and wives on wives and husbands is just about equal,' he said. 'However, although women may initiate violence as often as men, they are much more likely to end up as its victims.' He told of the man whose wife threw a coffee pot at him because he had been stepping out on her. The man felt he deserved it. 'That's a product of that lesson about it being morally right to use violence, but that didn't stop him from beating her black-and-blue for throwing it at him,' he observed.

16 factors which contribute to child abuse appeared as the study data was analyzed. Among them are the parents' experience of violence when they were children; the socio-economic status of the family; whether the wife worked; how long the family had lived in its present community; and, whether they were active in any organization such as a church or club. Child abuse was essentially nonexistent in families where zero to two of the factors were present. In families displaying ten or more of the factors, violence reached the rate of 33 per 100."

There is another article from a consultation sponsored by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, D.C., January 31, 1978. It's entitled "Battered Women Issues of Public Policy." I want to quote from a section under the heading "Family Socialization and Violence." And by the way, you notice the use of emotional words that have a bad connotation to create a false image. In all of this, the child who put something dirty into his mouth had his hand slapped. That was an act of violence, and it taught the baby to be violent – like maybe the baby who reached out to touch a hot stove, and that taught him to be violent, because the parent reached out and slapped him before he could touch it. Now, of course, you could just let him just touch the coal, and he'll learn it that way, I guarantee you.

Over in the parsonage, we used to have floor furnaces in our early days, and the grill on the floor furnace was a little (like half-inch) grill, like waffle grills. When that floor furnace was on those grills were hot. And I remember my number one son one day came running through the house and we had warned him about that floor furnace, but he came running through, and he stepped right on it – and then he stepped right off of it, with one bounce, floating up in the air. Well, the bottoms to the poor guy's feet bear waffle marks much to this day. No, I'm sure they've healed up. But the bottoms of his feet we're all covered with these waffle marks. Thereafter, we noticed that he would run through the house barefooted; he'd come around the corner, up to that floor furnace, and then he'd stop, . . . and he would shudder to a screeching halt, and then he would gradually work his way around it. Now, he learned the hard way not to run across the hot floor furnace grill. But it sure was a lot easier to grab him, and to maybe slap him on the leg, and say, "That hurts. Don't do it." And if he believed us, that would have save him a lot of trouble in an easy way.

However, that's called an act of violence to keep that baby from picking up that hot coal and putting it in his mouth. Well, let him learn that way. This is a cute way of using words that have bad connotations: "violence."

Well, here's what this article says, "One of the most fundamental of these other factors is the fact that the family is the setting in which most people first experience physical violence, and also the setting that establishes the emotional context and meaning of violence. Learning about violence starts with physical punishment, which is nearly universal. When physical punishment is used, several things can be expected to occur.

"First and foremost, obviously, is learning to do and not to do whatever the punishment is intended to teach. Less obviously, but equally or more important are three other lessons that are so deeply learned that they become an integral part of one's personality and world view. The first of these unintended consequences is the association of love with violence. Physical punishment typically begins in infancy with slaps to correct and teach. Mommy and daddy are the first, and usually the only ones to hit an infant. And for most children, this continues through childhood. The child therefore learns that those who love him or her the most are also those who hit."

Now that is the bureaucrat, human-viewpoint, psychiatrists' and psychologists' viewpoint – that love is associated with physical punishment.

Well, let's go back to the Word of God for just a moment, and let's test that concept out, and see whether that is human or divine viewpoint. Proverbs 13:24 says, "He that spares his rod hates his son, but he that loves him chastens him early." "Chastens him early" in the Hebrew means "careful to discipline him:" He that spares his rod haters his son, but he that loves him is careful to discipline him." To discipline him how? In the way the first part of the verse just told you: with a stick.

Now there you are again – the beady-eyed bureaucrat with his bamboozled baloney over against the inerrant authority of the Word of God. Which one of these are you going to believe? You've got a choice to make. This article, an official statement by these intelligent authorities, says that when you spank children, they learn that love is associated with violence. Well, the thing that child learns that it's associated with is protecting him from personal injury. It is protecting him from destroying himself. That's what a child learns. He does not learn to be violent because somebody has protected him from some act of self-destruction.

The Department of Human Resources here in Texas are a bunch of bureaucrats who are now trying to solve the child abuse problem by devising ways by which they think they can identify potential abusers. This is in the same pattern as those who are engaged in deciding who does not have a worthy quality of life: whether the aged; the infirmed; the retarded child; or, the deformed – and that therefore they should be put to death in some way. You would be surprised how many authorities (medical, religious, and social workers) have actually now gone on record that some people, for these various reasons cannot have a quality of life that is worthy of being sustained, and that therefore they should be put to death. They should be evaluated at the point of birth. Some of them have suggested that a child should not be declared as a living human being for three days so that he may be carefully observed and evaluated, and then the parents can decide whether they want to keep him or not.

This is not somebody who's way out. These are the leaders of your nation, folks, and they are saying it in increasingly multiplied numbers. Someplace along the line, in the Philippians series, on the subject of abortion, you will hear that we pointed out that one of the greatest problems and the gravest serious consequences of abortion is that it changes the doctor's whole attitude toward life. He has been trained, and his very Hippocratic Oath that he takes is to save and to preserve life. Now he is called upon to deliberately destroy life. And once you put yourself in the position of deliberately destroying life, the sanctity of life is just a little less important to you. And the more you do it, the less important it becomes.

So, men, who would never have thought of giving up on anybody, now find it legitimate in conscience to give up on certain people that they don't consider to have a worthy life to live. Yet, how many children have been born with congenital diseases, and modern surgery and modern technology has corrected the problem? And we have had vast advancements. I mean, we have in just the matter of the last decade, come up with something like 90 to 95% of what we know in medical information and knowledge. That's how vast our progress has been. And these people have been given a very significant life. And you can't go to any one of them. Would you have wanted your parents, when you were born with this problem, to simply tell the doctor to just let you die? Would you have wanted, as you grew older, and they discovered how serious was the difficulty, to have you put to death? Few would want that, and they have become significant human beings. And instead of being a burden, it draws off the finest qualities in those who must care for them – the families who must cherish these children that have these problems. It ennobles these parents. It does not degrade them. It does not degenerate them, as our modern sociologists are telling us.

Here we have the bureaucrats of the Human Resource Department coming up with how they're going to solve this problem of child abuse. And I'm talking about legitimate abuse of children. Well, one of their solutions is to remove children from parents – parents that they suspect by some criteria. Now this is before you've done anything. This is just coming up and evaluating you. How would you like to have some of these beady-eyed bureaucrats come in to evaluate you as to your potential violence as a parent, and to your being a potential child abuser? On what basis can they make that decision? On what basis do they have that kind of omniscience if that's what they're claiming?

They're going to educate parents. The oldest ploy in the world of the liberal has been sin as the problem of lack of education. If people will just be educated, they won't be bad. Here they're applying the same thing. We must go into homes and we must educate people on how to be parents. They are completely ignoring the real reasons people act with this kind of violence and heartlessness. We must teach people how to be parents – to love their children. Well, even an animal knows how to love its child. Surely human beings know how to do that. We don't need a bureaucrat to come in and teach us how to love and to esteem our children – not unless our minds have been cut off from the anchor point of God and the revealed Scriptures.

That's where the problem lies. That's where American society has come. That's why people are doing what they do to their children. It is because the sin nature, without the divine viewpoint control of the Word of God, changes a person into an animal. It is this which these humanistic bureaucrats are ignoring as the real problem. They can't cope with that. They have no solution for that. That's why parents drive screwdriver's through the eyes of their children. That's why they have the battered youngsters that you've been reading about in the newspapers. It is the sin nature without the restraint of a God Who is there that permits them to do that?

Well, it's not bad enough that we had this on the state level. The federal government is getting into the matter, too. I have a letter here signed by President Carter. It's a memorandum for the Secretary of Defense; the Attorney General; the Secretary of the Interior; the Secretary of Agriculture; the Secretary of Labor; the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare; the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; the Director of the Action Agency; the Chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights; and, the Director of the Community Services Administration. Now listen to this noble-sounding aspiration: "Each year, three to six million acts of severe violence occur in American homes. Victims who represent every race and socioeconomic status are often seriously injured. This administration is committed ultimately to the cessation of such violence, and immediately to the relief of those who suffer its consequences.

"To address this growing crisis, I am asking the secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to chair an interdepartmental Committee on Domestic Violence to coordinate a review of federal programs which currently provide or could provide assistance to victims of domestic violence, and to formulate a work plan by June 15 to guide our future actions. Please designate a policy level member of your department or agency to serve as a member of this committee with Secretary Califano. This directive manifests my personal concern that the tragedy of domestic violence be eliminated, and its victims be comforted and assisted wherever possible. Jimmy Carter."

Now, can you imagine the federal government being able to come up with a solution to the enslavement of man to a sin nature which expresses itself in these acts of child abuse? Well, here it is: H.R. 2977. You can come up here and read the whole shebang. They've got it all worked out line-by-line. They have a program. And that program is going to go storming into your homes, and is going to jerk you out by your eyeteeth, when a federal bureaucracy decides that you are a threat to your children. And all you have to do is put a mark on your child; send him to school; and, have a teacher look at him and say, "How did you get that mark?" He'll say, "Well my dad hit me," and have you reported.

We have one parent within the circle of Berean Academy who is on a rampage, and who is in a running legal battle in bringing the state of Texas to sue for that very fact that happened to him through his child in the public school. And I hope he tears the Texas Department of Human Resources to shreds. The audacity; the gall; and, the insanity of these people that government could ever think that it could solve a problem like child abuse, when our society created it in the first place by its evolutionary humanistic frame of reference. So, our humanism (our humanity) has been degraded so that we are just a mechanical machine. We're just something that functions in a closed system of natural laws, which God can in no way affect. These human viewpoint mentalities are incompetent to deal with the problem of child abuse, and they are a threat to the legitimate biblical application of corporal punishment by divine viewpoint parents. This is a real serious problem.

Abortion

So, you have a vicious system. The reason the abortion was brought into being is because this is the lifestyle that Americans now live. They need this. The reason Americans live this lifestyle is because they've cut themselves loose from the frame of reference of a God out there who acts in judgment, and a revealed Scripture that tells us what God expects you to do in matters related to sex. On the other hand, because abortion is available, one does not have to be restricted in the illicit sexual activity.

Now, there are very grave and traumatic effects which are experienced by women who have had their motherliness depraved and undermined by an abortion. And make no mistake about it. A woman who has experience an abortion has had the quality of her motherliness seriously violated. While she may push it down in the subconscious, it is becoming increasingly evident that she never gets over it. And it crops up in a variety of expressions that you wouldn't even think are related to that. But there is a gnawing problem deep within her soul, because a woman who bears a child cannot just cast it off as some blob of living matter that is meaningless as our human viewpoint society would have us believe. There is a sense of moral guilt. There is a sense of cruelty, and it dehumanizes a woman. There's a certain dehumanizing effect on a woman when she has an abortion.

Let's make it clear that abortion is not a religious issue. We can certainly approach it from that ground, and there is a good basis for opposing abortion on religious ground, but it not basically a religious issue. Abortion is an issue of preserving our humanity. It is the right of life as human beings. Either human life is worth something, or it is not worth something.

Part of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take used to include their oath to preserve life from the moment of conception. Now that has been removed from the oath that doctors take in many places. They're called upon to perform abortion, which now is asking them to murder a human being that once was viewed as a human being from the moment of the conception of life, which of course, is true. From the moment of that conception, that living cell is destined to be nothing but a human being, with a soul, and ultimately (upon generation) with a living human spirit. It is made in the image of God from the moment of conception. It is never going to be a dog, and it is never going to be a cat. And all the discussion, as to when it becomes a bonafide human being in a false sense of body, soul, and spirit is all beside the point. The issue of abortion is the issue of our humanity and our right to life. It is not basically a religious issue.

So, when people try to attack it on this basis, they're out of line. Very often they try to even degrade it to the point of saying, "Well, it's only the Roman Catholics that are arguing about this, so separation of church and state demands that we don't even discuss the matter from a religious point of view.

Abortion also has nothing to do with the feminist movement. It is the fate of the human race that is at issue. It is the fate of the human race as non-animals that is the issue. That has nothing to do with the feminist movement. The feminist movement has just grabbed onto this thing as supposedly a woman's right to her privacy and that sort of thing. But that's because the feminist movement is something that catches on to anything that it needs in order to promote its disoriented cause.

The name "feminist" is well-taken, because that's what these women are. They are females. They are not women. They are merely females. And there's a great difference between a female and a woman, and the abortion issue is not intrinsic to that movement whatsoever.

You might be interested to realize the basis upon which the Supreme Court did make this decision concerning legalizing abortion. Justice Blackmun was appointed as the one to make the presentation of the court's decision on this matter. He defended, in part, the decision for abortion on the fact that ancient attitudes in ancient Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn. He went back and he said, "Now let's go back to Greek and Roman law. Let's go back to ancient times. In ancient times, little protection was afforded to the fetus. Abortion was a legal activity."

He argued, therefore, that ancient religion did not bar abortion. What he's talking about is pre-Christian paganism. That's what's being cited. And indeed, it is true that pre-Christian religions did not bar abortions. But anybody who is a student of history, and any high school kid that's ever studied ancient history, and knows anything about the lifestyles of ancient Greece and Rome, also knows that, indeed, they did practice abortion. But it was also legal to do something else, which is equally justified, therefore, on the basis of Justice Blackmun's argument. And that is that these ancient cultures also permitted you to kill your babies after they were born. This was particularly done if you wanted a child of a certain sex, and you discovered that what you got was not what you wanted. Therefore, it was your right to simply take that child out and to kill it. We call it infanticide.

Therefore, on the basis of Justice Blackmun's logic, when will we also say we go back to ancient religions and we find that they did not forbid infanticide? So, we may decide that we can slaughter our infant children? That is exactly what we're coming to. That is exactly what leaders in various areas of life are telling us relative to babies that they do not feel will have what they call a quality level of life. So, when will American society, enslaved to the sin nature, accept the killing of infants as it does now the killing of infants through abortion?

There is a very great difference (again I stress to you) in the matter of letting a child who is dying die – , letting a person who is dying die, and not trying to keep that person alive with machines and technology. There's a great difference between that and actually killing a live child who is perfectly capable of living.

There's no difference to the social welfare humanist who wants to kill a child. There is no difference to him whether you're permitting a child who's dying to die, or whether you kill a child that you don't want. That's the issue that is at stake here.

The United States now murders one-and-a-half million unborn babies each year, resulting in the steady dehumanization of American society. No nation in history has gotten away with abortion, and neither will the United States. All of this, of course, revolves around the sexual mores that American society has come to in our day. And the enslavement of man to the sin nature is nowhere more illustrated than where Americans have come relative to the matter of sex.

The Bible Forbids Sex outside of Marriage

Leviticus 20:10: "And the man who commits adultery with another man's wife, even he who commits adultery with his neighbor's wife; the adultery and the adulterous shall surely be put to death." Under the order of the theocracy of ancient Israel, adultery was a capital crime. It was serious with God. The reason I'm reading these Scriptures is because all of you are constantly bombarded directly and indirectly with the fact that illicit sex is what most everybody does now, and therefore, it's accepted. Therefore it's no longer objectionable.

Deuteronomy 22:22 says, "If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then show both of them die. Both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman. So shall you put away evil from Israel." The reason capital punishment was inflicted for adultery was because it brought upon the nation a divine condemnation which could only be put away just like murder. The shedding of blood brought condemnation and divine judgment upon nation which could only be put away by the execution of the guilty parties.

Jeremiah 5 has some very strong language. Jeremiah 5:7-8: "How shall I pardon you for this? Your children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods. When I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery and assembled themselves by troops in the harlot's houses. They were like fed horses in the morning. Everyone made after his neighbor's wife."

This is God the Holy Spirit talking, folks, and saying that the people of Israel, who had been so prospered by God and monumentally blessed by Him, had devolved to the point where they were a bunch of animals like horses in heat, neighing at one another in the adjoining stall." That is describing the people who had been made in the image and likeness of God. And we're describing American society.

Galatians 5:19: "Now the works of the flesh (that is, the sin nature expressing its animal level capacities) are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication," and so on.

Sexual immorality violates the character of God Who is faithful. Adultery violates faithfulness. It violates the character of God, and that's why it's a serious sin. It violates the divine institution of marriage, which has been established for the preservation of mankind in a world which is ruled by Satan. It violates the way man was created to function happily. People who engage in illicit sex do not function happily. They think they are happy. They think they experience certain joys. They even think they experience certain freedoms, but in time, down the line, and ultimately in eternity, the price to pay will be horrendous.

It violates, worst of all, the illustration that marriage was designed by God to illustrate. Marriage is a visual aid that God gave to help us to understand something about His relation to us, particularly the relation of Jesus Christ as the bridegroom to the church (His body), whom we constitute as the bride. We have this and many Scriptures. And again, as you read these Scriptures, you can see how sexual immorality violates this picture that is important to God.

Ephesians 5:21: "Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let their wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it.

In Romans 7:4, we read, "Wherefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the Law by the body of Christ that you should be married to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." We have been married to the Lord Jesus Christ in this age of grace, as Israel of old was married to God.

2 Corinthians 11:1-2: "Would to God you could bear with Me a little in My folly, and indeed bear with Me, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." That is the image that marriage is supposed to present – a chaste virgin coming to her husband. And every time a person is sexually immoral in this world, during this age, violating that divine institution of marriage, he is violating the divine picture that God has created, and it reflects as an insult and blasphemy upon His Son. That's what sexual morality does. It's a blasphemous insult reflecting upon Jesus Christ.

The Christian, in contrast, is enslaved to God, and thus to sexual righteousness, and cannot violate this standard without discipline by his slave master, God.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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