floods

here is a difficult topic--one i was discussing with j. and his mom the other night.

having grown up in an avidly pro-life home--traveling to D.C. every year to stand with signs in front of the white house--i find this debate difficult. a few years back, having realized that my understanding of faith was no longer simply that of my parents (but not knowing what it was) and in order to avoid any pretense, i cleared the table of all i'd once believed so that i could start from the beginning and build from that which i knew as truth. i've been adding to the table ever since. basic tenets, like: god exists. jesus was god. without jesus i could not have a relationship to god (not only in the whole sacrificial/substitutional way, but in a more personal way: In the midst of all this human pain, if god hadn't come to earth and experienced it, how could he relate to us, and how could we respect him?).

since i went back to such basics, abortion really hasn't been an issue i've thought long and hard about in recent years. and, anyhow, it's not an issue i've had to deal with personally. (side note: why is it that people who don't have to personally deal with issues like abortion or homosexuality have such strong opinions about them? why is it that these are the issues that bring them out marching or cause them to vote a certain way? why don't these same people who get so mad about abortion or gay rights or whatever deal with their own issues, such as greed, pride, self-righteousness, etc?)

but j. and mom B. and i were talking about abortion the other night. i guess because of an episode of E.R. where it seemed every woman on the show was dealing with different aspects of the abortion issue. one of them was a teenage girl who was raped.

i hate the idea of killing a baby. who likes that idea? i think the pro-life movement likes to paint pro-choice advocates as people who just want to kill babies. it's not true. people call hillary clinton or john kerry hypocrites because they want abortion to be "rare, but legal". they are not hypocrites. they are not secretly hoping that more babies will die.

in the days of Noah, god looked at the earth and saw how the generations screwed up the generations that came after them. the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children. when you have generation after generation where parents abuse or otherwise mess up their children (and then many of these children grow into abusers and otherwise incapable parents of future generations of messed up kids)... i guess what i'm saying is: i understand the flood (!) i get why god would look down and see layer upon layer of tangled sin and do what he did. how do you fix that? how do you change such a messed up society into a society where all children are cared for and there is no abuse or sin [or premarital sex, drugs, rape, unwanted pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, etc]?

you start over.

you have to start over with parents who have not been screwed up themselves. parents who will raise their children to be healthy and wise. parents who will provide an environment for their children that will be conducive to bringing the kingdom of heaven here to earth--that will reflect god's true intentions for human life.

but in this imperfect world... without the ability to flood it and start over... how can we expect people to act as in a perfect society? our world is as it was in the times of Noah. and god wiped out every man, woman, and baby in that day.

couldn't it be a possibility that in some cases god offers abortion as a way of starting over? as a sort of mini-flood? so that in this or that single instance, the sins of the father will not be visited upon the children?