Ok, there is an event that occurred that has to be faced even though it is horrible. Benjamin linked to the news story in his comment to this post.
The quick summary is that a woman went to have an abortion of a 23 week old baby. The clinic messed up. A live baby girl was born. A live baby girl was summarily disposed of by being thrown into a “biohazard” bag.
Vitamin Z posted a link to an interview with the baby girl’s mother.
Here is that interview. you have to go read it, but it isn’t easy to read.
here is the worst part. here is the part that has to be seen by people like Jesurgislac who commented at length in response to this post defending a woman’s right of complete control over her uterus as if there wasn’t a baby in there. Who told me that calling a fetus a “baby” fatally weakens my pro-life argument.
Make yourself read this:
Williams recalls grabbing the armrests of her chair and elevating herself to a squatting position, heels at the edges of her seat. The receptionist and staff kept telling her to sit down and close her legs, but she couldn’t comply. “There was just no stopping it,” she said.
Williams said she delivered her baby, Shanice, onto the recliner almost immediately after squatting. First amniotic fluid spilled out, then the baby dropped onto the cushion.
“When I saw that happen, I jumped off the chair and turned away, facing the wall,” Williams said.
Shanice’s body slid on the blood and amniotic fluids into the rear corner of the recliner because she was still attached to Williams by the umbilical cord. “When I jumped off I pulled her like into the back of the chair because she was still attached,” she said.
According to Williams and the lawsuit, the receptionist and the staff began screaming and rushing, trying to figure out what to do. Williams said she stood against the wall, glancing in horror at her newborn baby. “She wasn’t moving much. Twitching, gasping for air. She wasn’t crying though, just hissing. Hissing sounds only.”
The sight of a fully formed baby was a complete surprise to Williams.
“I thought it would be a blob thing, but bigger, not a baby,” she said. “She looked like a Water Baby. Like those dolls you fill up with water. She was really little, like this,” she said, holding her hands about 12 inches apart.
(Water Babies are sold in stores such as Toys ”R” Us. A product description on the Toys ”R” Us online store reads, “Water Babies are water-filled dolls that replicate the warmth, weight and feel of a real baby.”)
According to the lawsuit and Williams’ recollection, Gonzalez, the clinic’s owner, who has no health care licensing, came into the waiting room, cut the umbilical cord, and scooped Shanice’s body into a red biohazard bag, sealed it and tossed it into a trash can.
emphasis added.
Now take a look at another “fetus” who survived an attempt on her life by her own mother.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPF1FhCMPuQ&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
part II
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8B1nKGIAeg&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Actually, I think you mean Renaissance Guy – he’s the one who was so indifferent about what happened to this poor girl.
By poor girl, because I sincerely wish to interpret you generously, I’ll understand you to mean Shanice, the baby that was literally fled from by her mother who dragged Shanice about in the most disgusting display of depraved selfishness in some time. You do still stifle your indoctrination enough to accept what even NOW of all organizations is willing to admit, that this was a baby, or is your heart a completely frozen rock?
No, I don’t mean the 23-week fetus: I had no idea what gender the fetus was. Given that the fetus never lived to be a baby, I don’t see that that’s particularly important: the low oxygen levels in fetal cerebral cortex, make it improbable to a high degree that the fetus ever felt anything in 23 weeks of development.
By “the poor girl” I meant, obviously, the person to whose suffering Renaissance Guy – and you, too – are completely indifferent: the young woman, Sycloria Williams, who went through such a traumatic experience in the health clinic where she went to have an abortion.
The reason you didn’t know the gender of the child is because you refuse to read or accept what even Williams herself expressed regarding Shanice, her baby, who was murdered. You can write her name, jesurgislac. It’s Shanice…
Can you write Sycloria Williams’ name, Benjamin? It isn’t spelt “even”.
The poor girl had a traumatic experience, and the people who claim to oppose abortion, who ought (you’d think) to be supporting her, appear supremely indifferent to her suffering….
I don’t have any problem writing the name of another human being precisely because I fully profess their humanity. This is what separates the two of us, among other things. Ms. Williams (Ms. Sycloria Williams) is, at the very least, an accessory to murder and I give her the same consideration that I give any and every murderer, all of whom regardless of whatever they have done, are still made in the image of GOD like those they killed.
She hired someone to murder her baby, she was horrified by the reality and, when it did not work as she intended, she retreated from her victimized child and would not lift a finger to save Shanice from the doctors while she watched them suffocate her in a bag and thrown this precious baby in the garbage. Nor did she press charges against them afterward:
“Williams said in the immediate aftermath of the abortion, she did not have much time to digest what had happened. ‘I was very busy with everything.’
She does recall the most startling part: Her 23-week-old pregnancy looked like an actual baby.”
And why did all this take place? Because the baby was inconvenient. Was this abortion “needed,” jesurgislac? Your reaction to all this is sickening and reveals a great deal. Not once, not even in the slightest degree, have you shown any regret here about what happened to that child when even rank extremists in the pro-abortion camp believe this was wrong.
Of course, the hypocrisy of this invites a few questions. What traumatized Ms. Williams was her shock at coming face-to-face with the humanity of her victim, not the fact that she gave birth or that the procedure hadn’t taken place. She admits that it was precisely this that so horrified her. Why then, according to your ever-shifting rhetoric, do you express such sympathy for her?
The abortion was performed inexpertly and the drugs had too profound an effect upon Ms. Williams’ system. The doctor did not arrive on time — which is hardly unheard of — and Ms. Williams unexpectedly gave birth without him. This is a common enough experience. The owner of the clinic then snuffed out what was not even, according to you, a baby’s life (what was killed, according to you, I do not know), tossed what was not a baby in the garbage, and the purpose of the procedure was achieved successfully, even if messily.
So why should Ms. Williams be traumatized, according to you? Why the sympathy for her deluded and shocking conclusion? The truth is you don’t really care about women like Sycloria Williams because you don’t hear them when they tell you that abortion is a nightmare. You ignore their simple-minded fears and refuse to listen when they insist that, “This was a baby,” and that it was a baby who died for nothing.
That can’t be true for you as you continue to parrot your completely arbitrary dates of division, even when you know that Ms. Williams was within days of the 24 week mark at the time of this incident. I believe you also know that these dates are never exact because every pregnancy is different.
None of this matters though when it isn’t what you want to hear.
“[Williams] also has changed her mind about abortion.
‘No one should lose their life if you get pregnant,’ she said. ‘If I got pregnant again I would have the baby. . . . I would tell [mothers who want an abortion] not to do it. I’ll say whatever to make them have second thoughts so they don’t do it,’ she said. ‘There is help out there.'”
But, of course, although we should sympathize with her, we shouldn’t take her opinion seriously at this point. Perhaps she’s completely misguided as she continues to recover from the shock of her experience two years ago, right, jesurgislac?
By the way, I would honestly like to know from you, jesurgislac, whether anyone at the abortion clinic should be prosecuted for their treatment of Shanice? Should they have tried to save Shanice’s life and labored to keep this premature baby girl going? Or was it right to throw the baby in the trash as a non-person?
Ms. Williams (Ms. Sycloria Williams) is, at the very least, an accessory to murder
Ah. So, while you pretend to care about the death of a 23-week fetus, you think Sycloria Williams should be faced with the choice between lethal injection and the electric chair: that’s the penalty for first-degree murder or felony murder in Florida.
Of course, it doesn’t apply, since the law in Florida makes abortion legal up to 24 weeks pregnancy, and, even if this were somehow redefined as an assault which killed an unborn child, rather than as a requested medical procedure to perform an abortion which went horribly wrong – Florida law counts the death of the unborn child only as manslaughter, whereas had Sycloria Williams been killed, that would be murder.
To be plain: your valuing a fetus above a woman is not supported by the law.
By the way, I would honestly like to know from you, jesurgislac
Well, the honest truth is: I suspect that Sycloria Williams was traumatised by a truly appalling experience – fortunately, a rare one – into believing that she saw the 23-week fetus she miscarried “move and draw breath”. She admits herself she was sitting on a chair, and the nurse who was trying to help her knocked the fetus off the chair. A 23-week fetus doesn’t draw breath: the lungs are not developed. I won’t say she’s lying, because I’m sure she believes what she’s saying she saw: but it’s medically not possible that she did see what she says she saw.
Now, having said all that:
Pro-life terrorists in the US have ensured that abortions – even late-term abortions which constitute medical emergencies by anyone’s standards! – are not carried in big hospitals where all the resources are available: where a 23-week fetus delivered alive – if this is what happened – could be got onto a preemie baby’s ventilator, rushed to the paediatric intensive care ward, and cared for by specialist paediatric nurses/doctors. The odds of survival, even presuming the fetus was alive when delivered, are very bad.
But, because a hospital in the US that performs abortions is under threat of attack from pro-life terrorists, is unable to receive funding for other activities from state or federal agencies because of pro-life political activists, and because staff and patients in a hospital that performs abortions are subject to harassment from pro-life nutcases with nothing better to do than picket health care centers, Sycloria Williams’ fetus was delivered in a specialist clinic: and so, nothing of the kind was possible. Pro-life terrorists, pro-life political activists, and pro-life nutcases, ensured that a fetus delivered at 23 weeks will not stand even the remotest chance of survival.
If you don’t like what happened, start a campaign to ensure that any woman who needs an abortion can get one at any hospital, without threats from terrorists, threats to de-fund health care from activists, or harassment from nutcases.
You miss me entirely, jesurgislac. I do not, as you say, think “Sycloria Williams should be faced with the choice between lethal injection and the electric chair.” To think so would mean that I would have to adopt the position that political action or a movement toward active and consistent litigation is entirely appropriate for Christians. My position, rather, is that we are merely able to argue the various aspects of this issue short of prescribing political and legal action. Whatever happens politically or legislatively among those who do not know Christ is up to them. I have little interest in what non-Christians are up to politically. I do not believe that righteousness can be legislated and law without Christ is empty, even repugnant. I am much more interested in reasoning with the people actually involved in having or performing abortions and with those who encourage others to have them.
That is why I am arguing far more importantly that both Sycloria, as a person, and her actions are morally despicable and self-absorbed and that she will be judged by the LORD who is the Judge of us all. I’ve said many times that the legal matter is, for now, closed so any conclusion that she has a legal “right” to do as she has done is easily established while it remains equally uninteresting. What we are debating is the nature of what she has done and others like her are doing and the ethical implications of these decisions.
Unfortunately, you do not consistently understand this and are always itching to leap into activism before you’ve even established what anyone should be advocating or protesting in favor of. This kind of willful blindness is always loudly advanced by those that currently enjoy legal backing and always loudly opposed whenever the same group loses its influence.
When abortion was illegal, you would never, ever, have accepted the sort of miserly suggestions you throw my way from above all the time. You would have become impatient with offers of educational, medical, economic, political and legal measures intended to put abortion beyond the reach of any woman while encouraging and supporting women to accept and love their children or, at most, to give them up for adoption and quit their inherently self-absorbed ideals… and you would have fought these measures, not because they do not work (as they are working and have worked in many benevolent cultures that cooperatively run on such principles) but because you find them and the civilization they envision ethically distasteful.
You want liberated sex without consequences, as far as possible. You want a legal and economic system that reflects your moral attitudes. I do not and I know that your views are malleably pragmatic and, therefore, prejudiced and selfishly contextual. That is why when you keep prescribing to me absurd measures that you think make sense in light of my moral hatred of abortion, I reject them and then listen as you subject me to childish insinuations that I only “pretend” to care for these children. I suppose you think that if I really cared, I would champion the funding of abortion clinics and the like for the sake of saving the lives of the rare children born prematurely on their recliners. This is the kind of mongrel treat you toss like a bone to a beggar while afterward pretending to have said something helpful and generous. If it is meant to be funny, it demonstrates a great deal about how much you’ve hardened over the years.
Until we are discussing these profound questions on a level that rises above your private intuitions, flexible tastes and the vile notions you’ve simply learned to stomach over the years, this will always prove a waste of time. As an illustration of this, I noticed that you really do think that the clinicians were not culpable and should not be punished for what they did to Shanice.
What you have not explained very well is how you can sympathize with Syncloria Williams, given her position. Of course, I understand that you feel some small sympathy with her for suffering the travails of her own ignorance which were made more piercing by the inept treatement of the clinicians. Yet, from what you have said, you should be deploring publicly her lawsuit against the clinic and its owner. Given that her horrific experience stems almost entirely from what you have explained is a pure illusion (for an illustration of that nearly 24 week old illusion, go to http://www.babycenter.com/fetal-development-images-23-weeks) and that this illusion was driven by her supposedly woeful ignorance of the development of a child in the womb, I am surprised you haven’t publicly denounced her as a “pro-life nutcase.” After all, she is legally protesting what was done to her child and giving interviews wherein she discourages in the strongest terms any woman from an abortion. Yes, I think she fits the protesting “nutcase” category you’ve set up like a glove.
So, at the end of all this, just to be sure I actually understand your point of view, it seems by implication at least that Syncloria Williams is an sad case of a girl who, due to her own extremely ignorant overreaction to what merely appeared to be a baby, has now become one of the embittered nutcases out there frustrating the lives and efforts of heroic clinical experts who have to work under increasing pressure, causing them to use whatever methods they can so that they rightly extinguish the lives of organic products like this so-called “Shanice” and dispose of them as they could never survive outside the womb anyway, like any organ of the body. All of this is actually the fault of the nutcases who should support this kind of thing so that it all goes much more smoothly.
Is that basically it?
I do not, as you say, think “Sycloria Williams should be faced with the choice between lethal injection and the electric chair.”
She lives in Florida. You are accusing her of either felony murder or first degree murder. If convicted of murder in either of those degrees, the death penalty in Florida is the victim’s choice of lethal injection or the electric chair.
Own the consequences. If you had your way, and a woman who got an abortion was accused of murder, there are multiple states in the US where that would mean she would be killed by the state for doing so. If you don’t like the idea of having women killed for having abortions, don’t throw around accusations of murder so lightly.
You want liberated sex without consequences, as far as possible.
Heh. It’s always rather revealing when pro-lifers, who pretend that concern for fetuses is their motivation, reveal that what they really want is for pregnancy to be a punishment imposed on women for having sex.
Because your heart is full of stereotypical conceptions of those whom you’ve either debated or heard about before, you cannot quit until you’ve placed me within one of those boxes you like to shuffle people off into to make them easier to manage. This rather sadly makes you either incapable of understanding me or unwilling. I prefer to believe it is the latter.
I will say again that I am not in the least afraid of the consequences of referring to Ms. Williams as a murderer, for that is precisely what she is and a rather callous one she proved to be in many ways as well. She didn’t help her child. She just slipped away and went home and returned to her life as usual and became too “busy” to bother about it. When the police arrived, her response was, “Oh, I know why you’re here.” Her lawsuit, in many ways, appears like an effort of self-interest. Yes, I accept the consequences of my accusation and, if the secular state believes that she deserves the death penalty, then that is what she should, by law, receive. However, if the state believes that she deserves nothing but a sympathetic pat on the back, then that also is what she should, by law, receive.
It is the same for me when it comes to Christian persecution. In the past, in certain contexts, Christian belief and practice was guilty of treason and punishable by death, and in such contexts, by law, Christians should be executed, including me and everyone I care most about. Of course I wouldn’t want this and I would argue against it, but we’re not talking here about what I want. We’re not talking about “having my way” precisely because what I “like” or want is simply unimportant to the larger context of this question.
When I speak of Syncloria as a murderer, I am speaking of her according to the most important aspect of her existence I know: who she is before GOD and in relation to Him. Who she is before the state, I hardly care at all. It is simply a non-issue for me in comparison with vastly greater concerns. I do not promote the death penalty, not because I believe it to be irrational or hateful in itself (it isn’t), but because there are complex theological issues involved in the idea of legislating Christian ethical doctrines. Your lack of familiarity with this issue should not become for you another means to coerce those whom you oppose into subscribing to an erroneous point of view so that you can attack it with greater ease.
The same is true, of course, for the loathsome clichés you barter in lieu of a real argument, describing my position as basically a desire for “pregnancy to be a punishment imposed on women for having sex.” The rewarding preciousness of pregnancy as a “punishment”? This truly reveals the cruel nature of your attitude toward children. I hesitated at the first but I believe now my wife was right. You hate your own womanhood as GOD fashioned you and disdain some of the best things about being a woman. If this is your attitude, you are truly a bitter person.
What is there left to say to you? That you are every bit as principled as I am but that the ultimate driving factor in your principled life is yourself? That you are every bit as passionate as I am but that you appear embittered at the thought of anything that threatens to remind you of the inevitable consequences of the whole disposition of your life? That in approving the high authority of your own opinions while your cherished desires and private notions of happiness provide the absolutely final word, you have effectively discovered a virtual goddess in the mirror? That this is why there is no room in your life for Competition? That children, like everyone else, serve where they must as a means to your ends and that this is the reason you champion the “cause” of these women, no matter what it does to them or anyone else? That you deplore justice and purity and holiness where they impose upon the heart that you ultimately treasure? That you are a secretly degraded woman — as Christ has said, a spiritual worm — and that GOD’s righteous judgment is hateful to you?
Will you listen to any of that or are you past hearing? Perhaps I am not the one to tell you and all this will have to come from someone who cares about you a lot more than I do… But if you laid all that on me, if I really thought you believed this about me, I’d listen. I would hear you because I’d know that, even if you were exaggerating, you weren’t likely saying it purely to be spiteful. I’d discuss it with you and work out where it was coming from.
I can say only that I have certainly not said any of this purely to be spiteful.
Yes, I accept the consequences of my accusation and, if the secular state believes that she deserves the death penalty, then that is what she should, by law, receive.
So, as I said earlier: your reaction to the traumatic experience reported by Sycloria Williams is that she should have to choose between lethal injection or the electric chair.
Yet you presume to lecture me on what you perceive as my moral lack of worth? To quote someone whom you obviously do not care for: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you don’t see the beam in your own eye?” You lack compassion; your “principles” drive you to rhetoric urging monstrous cruelty: yet you believe yourself to be a person entitled to lecture others.
You refer to pregnancy as “consequences” which women mustn’t be allowed to “escape”, yet expect me to believe you regard pregnancy as a “rewarding preciousness”? You’re really not very good at this. You don’t convince me that you think highly of pregnancy, or of pregnant women, or indeed of anyone much but yourself, in your high moral tower looking down on everyone.
Bena
Bena, as I said, perhaps I am not the one to tell you any of this and it will have to come from someone who cares about you a lot more than I do…
Please, stop mishandling the words of Christ who spoke of the Brethren (of whom you have no part). You do not understand the context of this oft abused teaching. I am not accusing you of anything which I am foremost guilty of myself. I can see that you skim everything I write with an eye to spotting whatever you can use impoverished of its original setting.
Pregnancy and childbirth and everything involved will certainly prove to be a set of “consequences” — in the straightforward sense of this term — for the woman who does not want any of this but who did all that was required in order to bring it upon herself. In other words, pregnancy is a “consequence” of her activity like any effect is in relation to a sufficient cause. If that term has negative connotations for you, then I can always choose another.
Bena, do you have any children? My wife and I have two beautiful daughters. We both hope that we can have another child soon. Pregnancy is rewarding and precious, every bit the treasure that GOD has described it. I do not have to prove this to you or convince you of this and it doesn’t matter to the reality of it that you have hardened yourself against it.
If I “lecture” you from a “high moral tower,” I do so only insofar as the revelation of GOD uncovers the evil of us all. These remarks of mine are not merely my own sentiments and I am not arguing, as you do, from a foundation of private moral intuition that has no real force. How does it finally connect to the greater ethical meaning of our choices in life to point out that I am in grave conflict with your feelings?
Your feelings are in conflict with every rational moral sense precisely because your statements serve an ultimate moral agenda that is not of intrinsic value. They serve you, and this is simple enough to demonstrate, for the same LORD whom you quoted earlier said:
“My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory. . .” (John 7:16-18)
Speaking on your own ultimate authority (you certainly haven’t been speaking on the authority of the Father) is a solid description of the essence of your every contribution to this discussion on the ethical nature of abortion. Your entire ethical position is self-derived and self-imposed and that means that it is ultimately about you, your own prestige, your honor.
I needn’t sit in a “high moral tower” to say such things. One who rightly sits above us all has already said them first.
I have sincerely listened to you regard me as a proud hypocrite and a liar who does not really care anything for Christ and these are, of course, serious accusations. Unfortunately, it would have been more helpful to me if you had actually given instances which illustrated and, finally, proved the point. I have done this with you, but I don’t think pushing me in the direction of a better character was your intention precisely because your notion of “better” is not, in the end, very realistic. It is all about you.
Your feelings have no moral authority even over your own life. Christ, on the other hand, has. If you truly wish to take His words seriously, then I know you’ll consider these deeply.
Iam not accusing you of anything which I am foremost guilty of myself.
Well, I’d agree with that: you do come across as a bitter person whose ultimate driving factor in your “principled” life is yourself, and that you have elevated your own desires and private notions to an absolutely final word, effectively setting your own beliefs up as a god that you worship: that in your view children serve where they must as a means to your ends and that this is the reason you champion the “cause” of these fetuses, no matter what it does to them or anyone else. That you deplore justice and purity and holiness – and kindness, which both Jesus and Paul said was more important than any of these – where they impose upon the heart that you ultimately treasure – your own? That you are a secretly degraded man — as you yourself quoted, “a spiritual worm” — and that the righteous judgment you believe in is hateful to you. All of this, which you have now asserted is true of you, I can sadly believe, because everything you have said elsewhere leads me to that conclusion.
Learn to love yourself, Benjamin. (My name is not Bena, btw – sorry for the confusion, that was a typo for “Benjamin” which I did not notice until I’d posted.) If your embittered nature and feelings of secret degradation lead you to this belief that you yourself are as a “spiritual worm”, worth nothing but to attack other people – such as myself, such as this poor girl Sycloria Williams – I think you need to apply Paul’s judgement that “the greatest of these is love” to yourself.
Hatred such as you have expressed is, in my belief, the real spiritual degredation. Self-hatred, worst of all. I am sure you are not really such a bad person that you need to be continually attacking others to make yourself feel better.
Jesurgislac, go back and read the sentence you quoted and read it carefully. It does not contain the word “not” before “foremost,” which you asserted into it in your mind as you were skimming along and after you decided to ignore much of the rest of what I had written. I was not agreeing with you, I was disagreeing. The quote from Christ regarding the beam in my own eye is in the context of two spiritual brothers and/or sisters, outside of which no such relationship exists… and I am not accusing you of anything of which I would be foremost guilty of myself, hence I am not correcting merely a supposed “speck” in your eye while possessing a “beam” in my own.
Of course, some of the things which you have listed would serve to describe me as well, in so far as I leave the path of glorying in Christ and adoring Him in order instead to adore myself in sin, but this is not the general tenor of my life as it is yours. If I am a Christian at all, I live in general to His honor and to His good pleasure. That is not the general tenor of your life. You do not honor His Word, you do not love what pleases Him and you have no interest in being faithful to His representation of Himself.
I am certainly not saying that I live in honor of the “Christ” or the “Paul” you have contrived in your mind. I live in honor of the Christ whom you love to misquote. To every Christian who studies the Scriptures and takes them beyond the merely superficial stage of tossing out anachronistic platitudes about “kindness” or “love,” there is an actual coherent message there that offers a relational context for the meaning of such terms (as is true of all language to one degree or another).
I needn’t, for instance, “learn to love” myself, as you put it. If I needed instruction in loving myself, it would be difficult to make sense of Christ’s injunction that we must all love our neighbors as He presupposes we love ourselves. Every human being is born loving themselves. The Bible is literally full of descriptions about our natural self-love and the concomitant wickedness which springs from it. It nowhere encourages self-love as you have and love of GOD is always the “first and great commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38) which makes genuine love for anyone else possible.
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.” (I John 5:2)
As for “hatred,” the Bible is full of references to GOD’s hatred for sin and even for sinners [“. . .You hate all evildoers.” – Psalm 5:5] and to the hatred of “every evil way” that any righteous person should have [“O you who love the LORD, hate evil!” – Psalm 97:10; “I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.” – Psalm 26:5].
This is why you don’t understand Jesus’ remark that all the law and the prophets, including these references to hating evil and evildoers, hinge upon two commandments of love. If you understood this, then you would not reference the topic of “love” so superficially as though it does not include a hatred for evil. You would not talk about “kindness” being “greater” than justice and purity and holiness and demonstrate that you do not understand what Paul meant by “the greatest of these [of faith, hope and love) is love” in I Corinthians 13.
Even Jesus Christ said to the church at Ephesus, regarding a certain heretical sect, “you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” (Revelation 2:20) Our LORD had plenty of harsh words for those who hated what was righteous and the testimony of the New Testament about Him was:
“You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” (Hebrews 1:9)
Of course this is the way of love, for love hates whatever is hostile to all that is good and holy and is opposed to proud people who live primarily for their own glory. Love will seek the good of wicked people, not by remaining indifferent to their wicked state, but in reasoning with them and calling them and challenging them to leave forever their worthless spiritual and moral decay.
You have called others, including Sycloria, merely to a further enslavement to self-gratification. No one needs to love themselves more. We are all stuffed with self-interest to the point, with some of us, of murdering our own children. Your encouragements are not a “kindness” to them and they will serve only to destroy them in the end, as even Sycloria apparently believes today. Please, stop using her name to further an agenda that she wholeheartedly disagrees with. She is not on your side. She is against you on this.
More than this, please stop abusing Christ’s name by wielding it to support whatever self-defeating notions you’ve invented for your own sake. His teachings have little or nothing to do with your desire to read back into history whatever you feel in your heart.
And you never answered my question… Do you have any children?
I needn’t, for instance, “learn to love” myself, as you put it.
I’m sorry that you think it’s impossible for you to learn to love yourself. I wish you could.
And that’s that, really: I accept that your self-hatred drives you onward in this way, and I feel genuinely sorry for you, but someone who believes it’s impossible to learn to love themselves, is someone it’s not possible for ordinary people to get along with.
Did you read anything I wrote? I never said it was impossible to love myself, I argued that it was basically impossible not to love myself. I don’t need lessons because I already know how to love myself just fine, as the Bible everywhere teaches.
How can Christ command us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves unless He presupposes that we already do love ourselves?
And, again, you avoided my question… Do you have any children?
You’re right, I did misunderstand you. When you launched that tirade of anger and hate at the sins you were convinced I was guilty of, I thought in a later comment you were acknowledging, with Christian humility, that you yourself were guilty of those sins too, rather than asserting, with Pharisaical pride, that you could afford to denounce me since you were guilty of none of them.
Jesus told a parable which you may remember. He outlined the situation of a wounded man lying by the road, and four men passing: three morally superior, upright, thoroughly respectworthy people: people very like you, no doubt: conscious of their own worth and their own virtue. Those three walked past, just as you are walking past Sycloria Williams, ignoring the wounds. (As Jesus also asserted, when you condemn Sycloria to the electric chair, you thus condemn Jesus to the electric chair… )
A fourth person, morally despicable, a social outcast, a heretic, stopped when he saw the wounded man, and helped him. When Jesus asked his first disciples, who wanted to know “who then is my neighbor?” they were forced to answer: not the morally upright, the respectable, who had ignored the pain and suffering Sycloria Williams was going through: but the morally despised, the disreputable, who had seen her suffering and been moved to help.
So when you say you “love your neighbor as yourself”, unless you mean you subject yourself to the same condemnation and abuse as you have subjected Sycloria Williams to, you are lying: you have asserted that you love yourself far more than you love Sycloria Williams….
Sorry, I didn’t mean to end the comment quite there.
You’re right that I haven’t been responding to your comments line by line: neither have you been responding to mine. Our moral values are utterly different: I believe in kindness, respect, trust, honor: I believe, though I’m an atheist, that the values expressed by Jesus – of caring for your neighbor, looking out for the least powerful, trying to do good without making a big show of it, and the basic charities: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked – in 21st century terms, that means doing what you can to make sure people don’t go to bed hungry, people don’t go cold and unsheltered: all these things strike me as good things to do.
When I hear someone ranting on as if the chief function of Christianity were to condemn gay people, or attack women for having abortions, or support the conservative values of the rich get richer, the poor get poorer: well, I just don’t recognize that as anything derived from gospels at all. Which I’ve read with close attention, and paid attention to context.
You disagree. And sad to say, I do think you’re a bitter, angry person: incapable of feeling kindness or compassion. But that’s just how you’ve come across based on arguments here and elsewhere on how to behave towards a specific young woman who’s suffered so much, or how to behave towards the hundreds of thousands of women round the world who needed help and were told, by the US government, they couldn’t have it, because of people like you…
I’ll try to keep this brief as it seems to be your preference…
1. Thank you for admitting that you woefully misunderstood. It is of some encouragement to me.
2. Like most theological liberals, atheists tned to spend almost all their time in the Gospels around the parables they prefer and do not take the unified nature of Scripture seriously. This means that no other part of the Bible is allowed to qualify the parts they like to interpret as they wish and, of course, this also means they wind up with a Jesus who looks an awful lot like them and not at all like the LORD among first century Jewish skeptics.
3. Did you pay attention carefully when you were reading Christ’s statement to His disciples that He spoke in parables (like the parable of the Good Samaritan) so that those who were not followers of His who try to interpret Him to their own ends might misunderstand Him and not seek or receive forgiveness (Mark 4:11-12)? This would include you, jesurgislac. Does that fit into your private morality and notions of “charity”? I’m assuming as an atheist you accept that morality is a purely subjective question.
4. Did you also notice that Christ’s teaching about feeding or clothing “the least of these, my brothers” had nothing to do with Sycloria Williams because, if nothing else, she is not a Christian and therefore, not one of His brothers or sisters in the technical sense in which Jesus used that term? According to Christ, His brothers and sisters are those who love to do the will of GOD and this “love” of the will of GOD is defined throughout Scripture, including especially the Old Testament which Jesus quoted authoritatively as a source for the whole pattern of His teaching and choices. This means that your application of His statements to Sycloria Williams is simply another instance of an anachronistic revision of His actual ministry…
5. Did you also catch that clothing Sycloria Williams and feeding her would not preclude telling her that she was a dreadful sinner and a murderer of the child GOD had give to her? Did it occur to you that Jesus taught the highest form of love and forgave His enemies and yet still referred to them as “blind,” “liars,” “hypocrites,” “children of Satan,” “fools,” “serpents,” “whitewashed tombs. . . full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness,” “lawless,” “sons of murderers” and… guess what… He also called them “murderers” because He knew they were seeking to kill Him.
Jesus also taught that no one is good but GOD alone (Mark 10:18) and He could do this while still forgiving because forgiveness does not dismiss the Truth about a person or ignore their sin. Genuine Love can never ignore sin.
6. Once again, no one (including yourself) is bound to uphold or honor your own private notions of what is right and good. That would be to hold over the head of others what is merely personal taste or today’s fashions. Your feelings don’t represent divine revelation. They have no moral authority even over your own life… which is one reason why they are not stable and you can change your mind about them.
7. Lastly, I have tried to respond to everyone of your major points and most of your minor ones. If I have missed any, it wasn’t because I willfully ignored them.
Now, again I ask, do you have any children?
P.S. – One other thing… You show yourself to be a hypocrite once again by your fury at my calling Sycloria a murderer when you call her a murderer as well. Sycloria speaks out against abortion and it’s “people like her,” according to you, that are indirectly responsible for the deaths of 67,000 women a year. Sycloria has done more against the cause of abortion with her public stance than I have done, so she must certainly be a “murderer” to you. She has done more to encourage others not to fund abortion clinics than I, so she must be guilty in your bizarre reasoning of the deaths of children who are born prematurely by accident and cannot be cared for after the clinicians failed to kill these children themselves.
I certainly accept your charge that, if I had been in the room with Sycloria when she underwent the ordeal she had been instrumental in creating for herself, a fact you continue to ignore — she had unprotected sex, she chose to eliminate her daughter days before the 24th week for no reason beyond expediency and she did not inform herself — I fully profess that I would have stepped right past her on my way to seeing to the well-being of the child who is every bit a part of Sycloria herself. Have you forgotten that Sycloria feels the same way, today? Only later would I have been concerned over Sycloria, who was not significantly injured, and I believe its obvious that Sycloria would agree with me.
I once dated a young, beautiful African-American woman who had chosen to abort her baby girl a couple of years before I had known her. This young woman’s name was Valerie. She had a large dreamcatcher tattoo on her back with the name “Indigo Wynter” woven intricately through the netting. It was the name of the daughter she had put to death and which she now regrets deeply. The memory of her daughter hung sadly over her, even as I tried to love her.
This issue is arguably a bit closer to my heart than it is to yours, so I say with perhaps a greater insight into Sycloria’s pain, please stop bringing her up hypocritically as though you are on her side. You are not and you know it. You do not sympathize with what it was that traumatized her.
Sycloria does not agree with you, Valerie does not agree with you, and I doubt either of these women would care for your condescending sympathy and implicit message that their daughters, Shanice and Indigo, were not really human beings at all. You are a fool if you think you have any moral ground to stand on and the more you press the matter and the more you call them, like the hypocrite you are, “murderers” for arguing against abortion, the more obviously wretched you become. Rather than honestly being a friend to these women, you just use them. Let them go and stop sullying their names for your own agenda…
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