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Protecting the Unborn Because Christmas Begins Today

waterhouse_the_annunciationIt's the feast of the Annunciation. Today we remember Gabriel's announcement to Mary:

"You will conceive and give birth to a son" (Luke 1:31).

To be honest, the date's probably out by 3 months. It's more likely that Christ was conceived on a date around December 25th and born at the feast of tabernacles in September (cf John 1:14), but let's go with the church calendar... March 25th is 9 months before "Christmas" and so today we remember the conception of Christ.

Now, think about it. The beginning of Christ's life as man (and for man) was conception. That's a vital christological truth. If you can't affirm it, you will fall into all sorts of errors. You see, there isn't an independent humanity to Christ. It's not as though there might have been a Jesus of Nazareth who wasn't chosen to be the vehicle for the Son's incarnation. The Word did not look upon a pre-existing bunch of cells and say "That'll do, I'll jump in."

No, "the Word became flesh" - He didn't adopt some flesh that looked promising. And the point at which He became flesh must be conception. You can't have the Word slipping into a pre-existing flesh without altering the gospel. All orthodox Christology demands it and Luke, the doctor, confirms. At conception God the Son became a man. To deny this is to embrace all sorts of heresies condemned down through the years (adoptionism or apollinarianism for instance). 

With all that said, the feast of the annunciation ought to be the day we value the unborn more than any other. Yet today we are reeling from the revelation that thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals.

The world recognises that this is wrong. When confronted, the Department of Health immediately put a ban on the practice. But then why is it wrong to dispose of these remains as "clinical waste"? In cases where parents have chosen to rid themselves of their little ones, "clinical waste" is exactly how such lives have been treated. Yet over the last 24 hours there has been an outcry about such practices. Well, rightly so. But let's think about why it's wrong.

Surely it's wrong because we recognise the humanity of the unborn. They are not remains to be incinerated - or, worse, fuel for our central heating! They deserve respect in death. But if they deserve respect in death, then surely - please! - they deserve protection in life? Our hearts cry for it and Christmas demands it.

 

4 thoughts on “Protecting the Unborn Because Christmas Begins Today

  1. Cal

    On this side of the pond, this issue is far too easy to be accepted and becomes a usual in American political conservative vote whipping. Of course, nothing gets done anyway.

    But instead, very few seem interested in life beyond conception. So-called Christians here tend to be first to line up for war, and I don't see rallying cries to found orphanages and other healthy places for parentless children to grow up.

    I'm all for protecting the unborn life, and to take it is a form of murder, but so is the butchery of war. Jesus People are called to value life, all the time.

  2. Glen

    On this side of the pond there are nearly 200 000 abortions a year allowed for by a 1967 act of parliament intended to allow abortion in the case of severe harm coming to the mother. In so many ways it's a debate the public has never had and it's an issue few UK Christians have thought about very deeply.

    In other words, it's *very* different over here! But I hear you about the standing for life at all stages.

  3. Michael Brittain

    A very thought provoking article,Glen. The great mercies of the Saviour TO us are great because they are OF us!
    (You have certainly confirmed my reservations about the invention of the so-called "Church Calendar" mind you!)
    More importantly, the shocking news from the hospitals; When we (as a society)read of such Pagan practices as the sacrificing of the lives of our own children in order to make our lives - somehow - more comfortable, we are horrified. (Jer 32:35, 1 Kings 23:10, Leviticus 18:21 etc)

    Yet what else is the motivation for most of the thousands of children aborted today? Our material prosperity, our life opportunities may be diminished if we keep this child, we say, but that motivation was also what lay behind the disposal of a child to the Pagan mind.
    Their material prosperity or life opportunities were also thought to be at stake! Against such priorities the child was thought to be expendable. "Oh but THEY killed the child when it was ALIVE!" we say. And so do we. What is in a mothers womb is alive before an abortion or else we would not be trying to abort in the first place!
    If we are "fueling" our baby-free lifestyle, our post-abortion futures, on the sacrifice of the child we were entrusted with, to carry and nurture, how are we better?
    How is this physical burning, this "passing of your child through the fire" not simply one more stomach-turning image of the sacrifice that has already been offered to the "gods" of our expediency and lifestyles?

    On what possible, rational, consistent moral ground is the burning of the child-body wrong but the slaying of the child right?
    The baby has already been treated as expendable hasn't it? Why is s/he now to be treated with reverence? The pompous hypocrisy of our current attitudes lie exposed here! We are, in a sense, already using these babies as comfort-fuel for our living standards, these fire and furnace scenes only rub the truth in our indignant faces!

    It is simply the perfect blood-curdling picture of what we are already doing.
    It makes you wonder if there were any who found the turning of Jewish skin into lampshades to be morally repugnant but had no problem with a gas-chamber.......
    Perhaps our conscience about the baby- body should give us more of a conscience about baby himself.

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