The Right to Choose

I was thinking about the “pro-choice” rhetoric Hillary is throwing around, and the fact that rarely do pro-choice advocates ever finish the sentence.  Choose WHAT?  Suddenly it struck me.  Why didn’t I see it so clearly before?  When we “choose” to kill an innocent person, we are choosing against one of the Ten Commandments.  “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20:13). 

So, if we think we are smart enough to reframe one of God’s commandments, what is to stop us from reframing all of them?  We just come up with a few arguments out of our creative imaginations and call it the “right to choose.”   If we can choose to kill, we can surely choose to steal or lie or commit adultery or throw our parents under the bus or worship idols or .... well, anything at all.  We can make it a law or failing that, bring it to the Supreme Court and hope they will make it a law.

But—to paraphrase words President Obama is fond of using—at some point, we have to decide if that is the kind of people we want to be.

And if in reading this you realize that you have fallen short of keeping God’s laws (as I surely have), please know that there is forgiveness and restoration in Jesus Christ, when we turn from our sins and call on Him for salvation.  He can even give forgiveness and healing for those who have killed their own children.  What a great salvation!

A woman's right to choose--what?

On this day when many in my nation mourn the shameful and infamous decision of Roe vs. Wade that legalized a mother's right to end the life of her child at her will, I am always forced to ponder the meaning of the words we use to describe these issues. President Obama reaffirmed again his commitment to "a woman's right to choose." Why do people rarely complete that sentence? The verb "choose" is transitive. It needs a direct object to complete the thought. You can't just "choose". You have to choose something.

Oh, but if we leave the sentence dangling, the last word in our minds sounds so positive. We all like choice. If we completed the thought and the sentence, we'd be faced with the negative reality that the choice the president supports is a woman's choice TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF HER CHILD. We don't want to really think so much about what we are choosing, so we let the sentence dangle on the last positive-sounding word.

It's not positive. There is nothing positive about destroying the life of another human being. If you support a child's right to life, I challenge you to always finish the sentence, and challenge others to finish it, too.