IMPLICATIONS OF A PRO-CHOICE GOD

It was the off-season. On a hot, slow Thursday night in September my husband, my post-teenage son and I joined our two friends from New York for dinner at the local pizzeria. 

With a table and entire restaurant (plus staff) to ourselves, we caught up with the happenings in our families, work, community, mutual acquaintances, and, inevitably, politics—local and American. Politics led to religion, which in turn raised the issue of personal conviction, and an examination of their relationship to current social systems and their legal frameworks. Our friend, whose wife in her quest for meaning in spirituality has settled for Buddhism, wanted to politely pin me down with the harder questions about homosexuality, its origins, and the pro-life debate. It was encouraging that we could all participate in the discussion without making each other feel intellectually inferior.

The time just flew. We could have gone on and on but it occurred to me that we might have been delaying the staff so we continued our deliberations in the car as we drove our friends home. The final question posed to me concerned whether God would send people to hell. I could have tried a “Jesus tactic” on him—answering a question with a question. I could have asked him, “What do the scriptures say?” and asked him to read Revelation 20:11-15 and Revelation 21:5-8).

Instead I speculated that under our imperfect human system of laws although a person is guilty there are clauses that provide leniency for the defendant. How much more the Great Judge. The important thing is that a person hearing the gospel and refusing to rightly respond by surrendering one's life to the authority and instructions of Christ should not feel unjustly condemned when he is sent to hell. Let God decide how he will deal with those who never heard.

We parted on good terms and in peace that night. However, lying awake in my bed the following morning I could not help but reflect on the pro-choice argument. 

Liberals and even some conservatives vigorously defend a woman's right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy or to allow the child to develop. According to their reasoning a parent (in that case, the mother) has every right to decide how many children she will keep, and how many she will discard, as well as make selections based on the sex and health of the unborn baby. Yet more often than not it is a highly offensive offensive notion to pro-choice advocates that God could also be pro-choice.

Why not? If he is the parent, spiritually speaking, why is it not his prerogative to decide how many children he wants and which ones to abort in the trash can of hell?

If there is no hope (cure) for a foetus with a defect (sin) could it be more merciful for him to terminate life in the womb (this transient existence on earth)?  Then why are people finding it unconscionable? In this light, let us evaluate sin and determine whether people born with this birth defect are worth saving or should be expelled...