Abortion Is About God: Reframing a Moral Issue

The Bethlehem Institute announces a new, six-week fall course entitled Abortion Is About God: Reframing a Moral Issue. The course title takes its cue from a message John Piper preached a decade ago:

To leave God out of the picture of abortion is to trivialize it. All things are trivial without God. God is the ultimate reality over the universe. All other reality is derivative and dependent and has no ultimate meaning at all without reference to God the ultimate reality. In him we live and move and have our being. If we leave him out of account, we know nothing of any lasting significance about ourselves or the world. Therefore the message that I have to give is that abortion is about God. And therefore it is not trivial. Motherhood is about God, therefore (and only therefore) it is not trivial. Fatherhood is about God, and therefore it is not trivial. Sexual relations are about God, and therefore they are not trivial. Children – inside the womb and outside the womb – are about God, and therefore they are not trivial.
Abortion is about God. The most important things to say about abortion are how it relates to God and how God relates to it. So let me mention four ways that abortion is about God. The first two I deal with briefly not because they are less important, but because they tend to be more commonly dealt with, and John Ensor has dealt with them beautifully this weekend. The fourth I bring in because of the turmoil our President is in at this moment and how it relates to abortion. But the third is from our text and will receive more of our attention.

The sermon went on to observe:
1. Abortion is about God because the child in the womb is created by God in the image of God.
2. Abortion is about God because only God can forgive the sin of killing unborn children.
3. Abortion is about God because the root cause of abortion is a failure to be satisfied in God as our supreme love.
4. The political and cultural events that will make abortion unthinkable and illegal are in the hands of God.
John Ensor would go on to write a book in 2003 entitled Answering The Call: Saving Innocent Lives, One Woman At A Time. I wish to also commend another short book which calmly and carefully makes the pro-life case and deals with numerous objections. The author is Stephen Wagner (whom I heard speak on the topic). Wagner works with Stand to Reason and his book is called Common Ground Without Compromise: Twenty-Five Questions To Create Dialog on Abortion.