Slaughter of the Innocents—40th Anniversary

by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

     
It is difficult to imagine a man like Herod. He was pro­bably one of the cruelest men who ever lived. Because of a pervasive fear someone would take his throne and he would be killed, he was vicious toward any threat, real or imagined. When he heard wise men had come to wor­ship a new Jewish king he called them to his palace to find and destroy the baby Jesus. (Matthew 2:13-23) His plot was foiled when God directed the wise men to go home by another route, but Herod devised another plan so vile we can hardly imagine it. He att­em­pted to destroy Jesus by taking the lives of every baby boy born in that part of the world who was under two years of age!
     

As horrible as that may seem, Herod's evil scheme was far surpassed in horror and bloodshed when the Supreme Court of the United States made it legal for anyone who chose to do so, to destroy their own unborn children through the practice of legalized abortion.

     
As we think about the 40^th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, now more than 55 million children have had their lives callously snuffed out in hospitals designed to be in­stitu­tions of healing. In hospital mater­nity wards and nur­series throughout the world, doctors struggle to save babies youn­ger and smaller than those being destroyed in legalized abortions!

   
Abortion by choice is a self-inflicted death-blow to the home. If we can so easily destroy our unborn children, our living ones come next. When “pro-choice” groups first advocated legalized abortion as a means of birth control one reason in its favor was that it would diminish the incidence of child abuse since unwanted children would no longer be born. We don't hear this much anymore because we all know that since the legalization of abortion the incidences of child pornography, child abuse and child molesta­tion have literally skyrocketed upward. When we devalue any person or people, we devalue us all.

  

Any mother who has ever carried a child to term, any father who eagerly awaits the birth of a child, or any parents who lost an eagerly awaited child by miscarriage, will tell you that at eight months the baby is very much a per­son—a living being with an already developing personality. Thus life (as an individual hu­man being) must begin at conception or somewhere between conception and eight months....or is it seven? Six? Two?

      

Conception is the only answer that makes sense.

     

When we claim the unborn child is not human, it is only a small step to saying the helpless child, senior adult, mentally handicapped, or some other less than “perfect” beings are also less than human and they, too, can be exploited. Even as I write this, persons come to my mind in all of these categories and I remind myself they are all perfect just as they are!

     

When we claim unborn children are somehow less than human and therefore reasonable targets for abortion, we return to the mentality that produced slavery, the persecution and near destruction of the Native American peoples, and the holocaust of Jewish and Gypsy peoples by the Nazis. When we want to do a really evil thing to an­other human being we always seem to rationalize it by pretending they are not human, or, are somehow sub-human.

     

Someday history will look back on the abortion massacre of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the same revulsion with which we remember these other self-inflicted plagues of humanity.

     

On this January while we recognize the 40 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I know some of you who read this may have been deluded by the abortionists and agreed to a procedure for yourself, a loved one, or perhaps for unknown persons in an abortion mill. That agreement now leaves an ache in your heart that seemingly cannot be healed. I assure you Jesus Christ can heal your aching heart. He loves you and will bring grace and peace if you will surrender the pain to him. The Bible tells us there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) so I urge you to trust him for complete healing.

     

I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek.
   

Slaughter of the Innocents

It is difficult to imagine a man like Herod. He was pro­bably one of the cruelest men who ever lived. Because of a pervasive fear someone would take his throne and he would be killed, he was vicious toward any threat, real or imagined. When he heard wise men had come to wor­ship a new Jewish king he called them to his palace to find and destroy the baby Jesus. (Matthew 2:13-23) His plot was foiled when God directed the wise men to go home by another route, but Herod devised another plan so vile we can hardly imagine it. He att­em­pted to destroy Jesus by taking the lives of every baby boy born in that part of the world who was under two years of age!

As horrible as that may seem, Herod's evil scheme was far surpassed in horror and blood­shed when the Supreme Court of the United States made it legal for anyone who chose to do so, to destroy their own unborn chil­dren through the practice of legal­ized abortion.

Since then, literally millions of children have had their lives callously snuffed out in hospitals designed to be in­stitu­tions of healing. In hospital mater­nity wards and nur­series throughout the world, doctors struggle to save babies youn­ger and smaller than those being destroyed in legalized abortions!

Abortion by choice is a self-inflicted death-blow to the home. If we can so easily destroy our unborn children, our living ones come next. When “pro-choice” groups first advocated legalized abortion as a means of birth control one reason in its favor was that it would diminish the incidence of child abuse since unwanted children would no longer be born. We don't hear this much anymore because we all know that since the legalization of abortion the incidences of child pornography, child abuse and child molesta­tion have literally skyrocketed upward. When we devalue any person or people, we devalue us all.

Any mother who has ever carried a child to term, any father who eagerly awaits the birth of a child, or any parents who lost an eagerly awaited child by miscarriage, will tell you that at eight months the baby is very much a per­son—a living being with an already developing personality. Thus life (as an individual hu­man being) must begin at conception or somewhere between conception and eight months....or is it seven? Six? Two?

Conception is the only answer that makes sense.

When we claim the unborn child is not human, it is only a small step to saying the helpless child, senior adult, mentally handicapped, or some other less than “perfect” beings are also less than human and they, too, can be exploited. Even as I write this, persons come to my mind in all of these categories and I remind myself they are all perfect just as they are!

When we claim unborn children are somehow less than human and therefore reasonable targets for abortion, we return to the mentality that produced slavery, the persecution and near destruction of the Native American peoples, and the holocaust of Jewish and Gypsy peoples by the Nazis. When we want to do a really evil thing to an­other human being we always seem to rationalize it by pretending they are not human, or, are somehow sub-human.

Someday history will look back on the abortion massacre of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the same revulsion with which we remember these other self-inflicted plagues of humanity.

On this January while we recognize the sanctity of human life, I know some of you who read this may have been deluded by the abortionists and agreed to a procedure for yourself, a loved one, or perhaps for unknown persons in an abortion mill. That agreement now leaves an ache in your heart that seemingly cannot be healed. I assure you Jesus Christ can heal your aching heart. He loves you and will bring grace and peace if you will surrender the pain to him. The Bible tells us there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) so I urge you to trust him for complete healing.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

When God says “No”

We can get some real junk on the internet and we do have to watch what we watch and read, but we can also find great wisdom. It’s just a medium, a network, and its value to each person is in how we and our friends use it. Recently I saw a post shared first by Nirmal Patrick, then by Robert Fry. It said God’s “no” is not a rejection, but a redirection. Since I’m always looking for something to write about, I decided to follow up on this bit of wisdom with some thoughts of my own.

We all know God sometimes says “no” to our fervent prayers. People are not healed, and sometimes die. We don’t get the job. We don’t sell the home (or buy the one we wanted). There are all sorts of prayers that are answered by God with a firm and definite “no”. Why would a loving God do something like that?

Really, you already know the answer—because He loves us. God, like any other loving parent, knows that sometimes he must say “no” to our prayers. Our difficulty is that we often don’t recognize this as love. We think if God loved us he would do what we want. But deep down in our hearts we know that isn’t true—especially if we’re parents—sometimes love demands a negative response.

If God says “no” it is only because he knows something we don’t know. If we knew as much about the situation as God knows, or had the wisdom of God, we wouldn’t have asked for it in the first place. If we could see into the future the way God sees we wouldn’t want the kind of future our misinformed prayers would bring.

It all boils down to faith. Do we trust God enough to accept his “no” with as much praise and thanksgiving as we do when He says “yes”? Sometimes faith is not about believing there is a God, as much as it is about trusting in the kind of God he is. He knows everything about you and me—including our futures and he knows what is really best for us. He not only knows us, he cares about our future state. He loves us unconditionally and understanding that we don’t have the foresight and wisdom he has, means he sometimes must forego the joy he would find in always doing what we want—because he knows if we knew all that he knows, we wouldn’t want it either. Faith in God keeps us strong when the trials of life come upon us, as they surely will. The short term answers

we would choose are not always best for life and/or eternity and God always thinks with that kind of view.

So when God says “no” remember his “no” is just as good as his ”yes” and just as much a sign of His unconditional love.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.