Contraception, Abortion, and Infanticide
In reflecting on my last post about fundamentalism and liberalism it is interesting to note that neither side is completely consistent. You can see that when you look at contraception, abortion, and infanticide. A truly consistent fundamentalist would oppose all three. A truly consistent liberal would accept all three. Yet we only fight about abortion. It shows how hard it is to follow either of these principles to their logical conclusions.
Fundamentalism basically denies the possibility of any progress. We have the answers and anything new is assumed to be bad. That gets very hard to live. The Amish come close but most people are not willing to go to that kind of extreme to avoid evil creeping in. They pick and choose which issues to make fundamental. Based on what? It can be pretty arbitrary. Contraception is one area where they have given up a traditional church teaching using very liberal thinking.
When it comes to “binding and loosing” mostly they err on the side of binding too much. Many forbid all alcohol, insist on 6 day creation, etc. Still contraception shows they are not immune from loosing some things that should be bound. They do seriously try and die to self and follow Christ. They just make errors because they are doing it under human strength. The only way to avoid errors is to find a church that God has graced with some form of infallibility. But going there forces you to deal with all the errors that have been made by previous generations of protestants. It is hard to accept how far away from God’s truth you really are.
Liberals try and do the right thing as well. They have a different attitude towards scripture. They allow much of it to be interpreted in a way that does not let it speak authoritatively. To be fair, Leviticus is properly interpreted that way. They push it out further in a way that can be logically defended. It just isn’t consistent with the way Christians have always read the bible. But Protestants are in no position to use that as an argument. So all interpretations are seen as valid. So then the liberal will go with his feelings. Most of these are highly influenced by the culture. But again, this is a sincere search for truth. They are not trying to wish away Christianity but to make sense of scripture and modern thought and come out with better doctrines and morals.
For the moment, the issue of infanticide is highly instructive. Most have a very different view of abortion than they do infanticide. Why? It is easy to see when you look at the culture. Christian morality is degrading over time into pagan morality. Contraception was accepted first, then abortion, infanticide will follow. It is just a matter of time before western culture goes there. Liberals don’t see it. They feel they have constructed a morality that bring science and scripture together and is really where God is on these matters. But what is the principle that determines abortion to be OK and infanticide to be wrong? Where do you get that from scripture or science?
Liberalism is not any easier to push to it’s logical conclusion. There are some very ugly places it takes you. It basically goes the same place as atheism. Sure you take God along for the ride but He is not the center of your world and life view. Really human reason is at the center. You cannot prevent the culture from going anywhere if you have no fundamentals you are willing to stand up for. The hope is that at some point the liberal will notice the ship is headed far off course and look for something solid to grab on to. Often what they grab is something else that is also drifting on the tide of culture. The only thing truly solid is the Catholic church.
