Thoughts on the deaths of innocents

 

Innocent is a word thrown around in our society that has a very separate meaning than what we find in the Bible. Generally speaking, the Bible teaches that in the grand scheme of things, no one is truly “innocent” as all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 8:28). It is quite hard to seriously read and take in the book of Romans without coming away with this perception that the Bible presents: namely, all are evil according to God’s standards.

However there may be a conundrum within this statement when we look at the wider scope of Scripture. For example, when God talks to Jonah when He is sending him to Nineveh to preach repentance, He says (Jonah 4:11):

"Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"

Equally, we see in Deuteronomy (1:39) where God is saying who will and will not enter the promised land:

“'Moreover, your little ones who you said would become a prey, and your sons, who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, shall enter there, and I will give it to them and they shall possess it.”

It seems clear to me that God views children (and those unable to fully understand good and evil) as in essence a type of “innocent” being. Personally, I would interpret this as they are not truly innocent as are born in sin, and it is woven into their nature (as all are in Adam), however God’s grace through Jesus’ sacrifice covers them until an age of accountability. David implied this with the death of his son (“I will go to him” after his son had died).

This has great relevance to what is going on in the world today. We see 1000s of people dying in conflicts ironically right where all of this was taking place before. The Israeli conflict with the Palestinians goes back to that verse in Deuteronomy and even in the news at the moment, radical Muslims are slaughtering and scattering out people from Nineveh itself, in an ironic opposite fashion to Jonah’s time.

What saddens people the most in the west are the images of little children injured, and killed from these conflicts. Rightly so when we consider the words of the Bible and also human emotion I believe is designed to have an affinity to compassion towards children as seemingly innocent. Another story in the news recently here in the UK has been an Australian couple who found a surrogate mother in Thailand for them to have a child and upon birth of twins they apparently took the healthy one home and left the Down’s syndrome baby there. There are conflicting reports on this story but the point is more about the reaction – and a right reaction of anger if such an event was true.

The deaths of little innocent children from the conflict of war and human selfishness anger those in the west greatly.

The abandonment of a new-born child with a mental impairment shocks and outrages those in the Western world.

However, I call hypocrisy - staunch, ignorant hypocrisy. Shame on us in the west, for pointing out the chip in others’ eyes and ignoring the Amazonian rain forest in our own. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I agree with the moralistic anger at those events, but let us take a step back and consider some hard and cold facts:

• ~92% of babies diagnosed in utero with Down’s syndrome are aborted in the UK (>90% for EU)
• In 2011, there were 190,000 abortions in the UK (that is 520 babies aborted per day)
• Medical grounds for abortion are often based on unknown outcomes and risks, rather than of danger to the mother
• Abortions can be routinely offered by medical staff for potentially minor medical issues (cleft palate, club foot, etc)

How often do you see social media filled with such statistics? A few hundred people die in a war over a few weeks and it is tragic and horrible to see the images, yet >500 babies per day in the UK are legally terminated and no one bats an eyelid over this act. Science has fed us the lie that an unborn child is not a “real” life. It is just a ball of cells. I think anyone who has seen how complex a 12-week child is on a scan knows that this is not true. That is a human being and it has a right to live where human hands are concerned. To terminate a child because it may be a burden on you is not a choice you should be given to make.

I recognise that there are tragedies that happen. Mothers die in labour, victims of rape fall pregnant, etc. But why do we continually feed ourselves the lie that an abortion is simply a choice and not the taking of an innocent life? Why do we ignore this issue and simply come to accept it in our modern world? Oh the irony – people fight over religion and we have those on social media saying, “Come on, this is 2014 for goodness’ sake – we are sophisticated and beyond this behaviour” whilst all the time gladly accepting you can suck an unborn baby out of the womb and shred it to pieces and claim we are beyond barbaric acts? This is madness and yet it is saddening to think about. Yet to Christians it should be of no surprise to us, as I started this post making the point that man is inherently evil then we should not be surprised to find apparently intelligent and sophisticated people seeing nothing wrong with taking unborn children’s’ lives. Sadly, abortion has become so accepted in our society that it creeps into our thinking even as Christians where we do not engage with the severity of this act.

I will finish with a quote from a great Michael Card classic song – “Spirit of the Age”:

“Now every age has heard it,

That voice that cries from Hell.

‘Sacrifice your children and for you it will be well’

The subtle Serpent’s lying,

His dark and ruthless rage.

Behold it is revealed to be the Spirit of the Age.

Soon all the ones who seemed to die for nothing,

Will stand beside the Ancient of Days.

With joy we’ll see that Infant from a manger,

Come and crush the Spirit of the Age.”