We recently came back from our mission’s Latin American Conference, which is a conference for missionaries in . . . you guessed it. Dozens of missionaries from all around the hemisphere gathered together in Panama.
At the Panama Canal, Miraflores Locks
We had lots of meetings, but also lots of time to talk and meet people and even to be touristy. This was the first Avant conference we’ve been to since Camino Global and Avant joined together, so there were quite a few missionaries who didn’t know each other (and there there still are – it was impossible for us to even meet everyone). I believe that they try to have a regional conference every 2 years.
Without going into all the details, there were times of worship, prayer, Bible teaching, and a lot of mission information meetings. There was also a special program for the youth and kids.
Yes, we were able to go and visit the Panama Canal, and even see ships go through. Having lived near the Trent–Severn Waterway in Ontario, it was interesting to compare and contrast the two. (The Canadian system of course having smaller locks, but being much more extensive. It was mostly finished before the Panama Canal was started.)
To see the wildlife, all we had to do was look out the window or walk out the door. It was a birdwatcher’s paradise, to say the least. And yes, Shari and I went to see some sloths. Here is an action-packed video for you to enjoy:
Last time we were looking at the Bible and also modern law, talking about various terms for murder, and various different categories.
Interestingly enough, our culture has piled on all kinds of terms and terminology around killing, especially at the “borders of life”. For example, killing a baby before it’s born is “abortion”. Killing a baby after it’s born is “infanticide”, or more commonly now “postpartum abortion”.
And instead of “baby” we use various words depending on the stage of development, “fetus” being the most well-known (of course, “baby” refers to development as well).
We know more about the development of human life in the womb now than ever before in history. For example, we know that from day 1, the new little life has its own DNA. It is not its mother – it is a different, growing, alive, human being.
From the start, this new human is an independent life. Not, of course, in the sense of not needing its mother. We all depend on others, to a certain point (see Genesis 1 and 2: Keywords #2 and #3). A two year old depends on its parents (which does not give them the right to kill it!). But it’s independent in the sense that it’s its own living human life, apart from its mother.
At only 8 weeks old, we can see the hands and feet of the baby. The baby can already suck its thumb! The main component of its eyes has already formed. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!” (Psalm 139:14a)
People in past ages didn’t know as much about baby development as we do, but they did know that there was a new life in the womb. And yet, in some places in the world, people seem to have the irrational and seemingly archaic idea that if you can’t see it, it’s not really a person! (Just cover your eyes and look in a mirror and see if it works.) I’m not sure how else you can explain why some seem so willing to kill a baby in the womb, but not a newborn (although, of course, there are many advocating for the right to kill the newborn as well).
Sadly, in the first days and weeks, some mothers voluntarily take a “morning after” or “plan B” pill, which murders this precious new person. And we have to say that some so-called contraceptives actually do murder the baby. And some go to clinics where the baby is murdered. Maybe we should use the word as it should be used.
And speaking of terminology, what do we call people who commit murder? I’m not talking about anyone in particular at this point, just clarifying terminology. But it’s hard to say – even to type – when you’re talking about certain categories….
There are some arguments that are used in favour of killing the unborn baby which disappear when we start using biblical categories.
What about in the case of rape? Well, why should the child be murdered for the sake of a parent?
The mother was too young. So you’ll murder the child because of the mother’s age?
The baby is part of my body, and “my body my choice”.
We already know that this is another life, so saying it’s part of the mother’s body isn’t exactly honest in the first place. But it begs the question again, what magic changes the baby into a person worthy of life when it’s born? Does it depend on its location? You can murder someone who is here, but not there?
There’s a reason why many people have pointed out that it’s important to know what it being “terminated” in an abortion. Terminology is important.
This is not to ignore the challenges and pain and complications and emotions in all the many different situations that mothers find themselves in. It’s not to ignore the complications of law and society. I understand the differences of opinion about how we should try to legislate or not in various situations. But let’s not ignore the seriousness of taking a life either. God takes it very seriously. And we must start with His Word, not with out current legal situation.
Those are just a few quick thoughts, but next time we’ll take a look at a much-discussed Bible passage, and then go on to see how the Church and the world look at this topic.
Continuing our discussion on the borders of life, let’s take a closer look at what the Bible says about murder.
We’ve repeated it several times now – every human has incredible value in God’s eyes. God made this clear even in his covenant with Noah:
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
Genesis 9:6
Yes, the image of God (imago dei) is important when it comes to our discussion of murder – God Himself says so. (Read Part 3: The Image for more details on the image of God.)
Coming to the Ten Commandments, we have the well-known words – well, especially in old English – “Thou shalt not kill.”
That word for “kill” is an interesting word. I’m told that there are actually seven different Hebrew words for “kill”. The idea here is not that we should never kill anything, like a caterpillar or a cow. We also know from the rest of the law given to Moses that God does order certain legal executions. And so the idea here is what we would call murder – taking a human life that you should not take. And there are very few exceptions to this in the law.
So we might say in English, “You shall not murder”. But things get more complicated from there. For example, there’s intentional murder and unintentional murder. It gets confusing to get into all the legal terms, but an example of unintentional murder might be “involuntary manslaughter”.
You can kill simply by doing something reckless, or by being negligent. In fact, you can kill by doing nothing. So that could be involuntary manslaughter through negligence. Maybe you want to save money, so you stop feeding your kid. (Don’t do that.) Or, I dig a hole in my front yard, and someone falls in and breaks their neck. (Maybe put up a fence next time.) Negligence.
Again, this is not an article about legal definitions – I’m aware that a lot more nuance would be required. But we just need to be aware of some of the general categories.
You can kill someone entirely by mistake. Involuntary homicide.
And we could go on, but those are some basic concepts. And these general concepts are in the Bible. And it all starts with Genesis 1, and the purpose of the Creator. After all, if we’re all just bags of chemicals, what does it matter if those chemicals get rearranged?
Let’s look at a few passages today and see what kind of homicide might be involved.
But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies, and he flees into one of these cities, then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die. Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that it may be well with you.
Deuteronomy 19:11-13
Easy – this is premeditated, first degree murder.
This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past— as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to one of these cities and live,
Deuteronomy19:4-5
Here we have unintentional homicide. It could be because of negligence (if you knew that the axe head was loose), but looking at the details here it’s probably just talking about something totally unintentional.
When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.
Deuteronomy 22:8
In a culture where people are often on the roof, if you don’t make it safe it’s definitely negligence. Like not putting a fence around that hole, or around your swimming pool.
It’s usefully to summarize intentional, illegal (against God’s law) killing of a human being as murder. But there is guilt involved in other types of killing, right? If someone drives dangerously, and someone dies as a result of an accident, the driver is guilty.
There’s a lot to talk about here! But now that we have some of the basic categories down, we’ll start by talking about the first border of life – the beginning.
My father was an expert on the history of hymns, having spent countless hours over many years researching and collecting resources. He published one book of hymn stories, and had manuscripts for two more.
I’ve been working through his articles and other materials, publishing them in blog format online. And at the beginning of this month (June) I started on the Hymn Almanac.
For every day of the year, he has facts and stories about hymns, often including a video or audio version of the hymn.
For example, yesterday featured the story of a hymn that was written when Elvina Hall’s mind began to wander during a sermon (shocking, I know). And have you ever wondered what in the world the “Balm of Gilead” is all about?
So for the next year, Lord willing, I’ll be publishing mostly posts from this almanac, every single day of the year (2022-2023). If you know someone who is interested in hymns, would you do me a favour? Would you send them the link – http://wordwisebiblestudies.com ?
I think you’ll find the information fascinating, and sometimes it will be information you won’t see anywhere else (for example, my father met more than one hymnwriter. And guess why he called up a circus museum one day to find out about one hymn writer, who had been a clown?).
What a boring title. I was going to get creative – like, “Brides”, as in the bride of Christ and the bride at the wedding. But I opted for boring. Oh well.
So this past weekend I had the opportunity to give the charge to the couple (the devotional) at a wedding of some friends from the Santa Bárbara church. I spoke on Ecclesiastes, in case you’re wondering (although I did end on a more positive New Testament note!). You can certainly pray for this couple as they seek to be a testimony among many who do not know the Lord.
I can’t comment on the speaker, but otherwise it was a nice wedding. The couple really tried to make it glorifying to the Lord. It was fun to see the bride and groom lead a worship music time along with some others from the church!
On Sunday we had a church planting seminar with some of the upcoming leaders in the church, along with Rod and Mayra Fry. It was a very encouraging time to talk about the church and think about areas we can work on in the future.
Some of our old VTI cohorts will recognize the activity in the picture that I pulled out of moth balls. This is one of two groups:
On the right, hidden behind a vase or something, is David Gomez. Some of you may remember that David served with us early in our time here in Ixtapaluca. He has been serving as a missionary in Uruguay, but is back home in Mexico for a few months and will be helping us with the church. He’ll also especially be helping Rod and Mayra with teams that are coming over the summer.
Coming up this weekend, our next Church History class, bringing us all the way to the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD. My, how time flies!
As we continue our series on Biblical Anthropology, we come to another important topic – the borders of life. But let’s start with a little review.
We know that we can find truth in the first place because we have a revelation from the Creator – we call it the Bible. As we’ve learned, in God’s revelation we discover that physical laws of nature come from Him. “Laws” – consistency, logic – from God’s Word we have the concepts of loyalty, trust.
In other words, we don’t live in a random universe. If we did, there would be no way we could really know or rely on anything from one day to the next. Instead, we have a Creator who wants us to know – most of all, He wants us to know Him.
We didn’t create ourselves, we are dependant. On many things. We depend on air to breath. We depend on other people. But at the most basic level, we depend on God. He created us, sustains us, provides for us.
He created the universe, and our own lives, with purpose.
For by him [Jesus Christ, the Son of God] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
Colossians 1:16
And so, as Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
But if we unhitch ourselves from the very source of wisdom, our vision because twisted, distorted. And of course, we do just that, because we’re sinners. As we learned in part 2, we are responsible for our sin. We are responsible to change. But trying to change will never bring salvation.
Yes, Jesus Christ is the Truth, the Creator. But He is also the Saviour. “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
Christ or chaos.
As we look closer at creation, we see that the man and the woman were created in God’s image. And so we have an incredible value and purpose from our Creator.
But even more incredible than this – God Himself took on human form. Jesus is God in the flesh. And so real life, life in time and space, our work, our joys, our sadness, our bodies, everything has dignity and an incredible value. Because Jesus is one of us.
It’s really just in part 3 that we started to apply these truths. We saw that God created us to be in families. One man, one woman, married for life (until the end of the life of one or the other). In most cases, they have children. And if you don’t have children, you come from two who did!
God gave special gifts and abilities to men, and special gifts and abilities to women. Equal, but different. And the law of God warns that one should not try to take the place of the other.
And today we’re going to start talking about the borders of life – that is, the beginning and the end of human life. And in this world, this immediately raises a lot of questions – but let’s start with just a couple. Is it right to end a life early, such as in abortion? And – is it right to end a life near its end?
It won’t surprise you that the imago dei is important here. The image of God. It’s not something we do, or achieve. It’s something already in every human being. The teen beside you – the old lady at the grocery store – the disabled person – the criminal in prison – the man who believes he’s a potato – it doesn’t matter who – they all have value, because of the imago dei.
And it’s the same at the borders of life.
The Bible has a lot to say about old age. This is a beautiful passage. Here, God is actually talking about Israel, but I think there’s a valid application to us as well:
…even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.
Isaiah 46:4
And in the law – “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:32)
Of course, in one sense, God Himself is the oldest of all – the Ancient of Days.
Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.
Proverbs 16:31
Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.
Proverbs 23:22
And so we honour our elders.
And we know how God values the little ones. Even babies – even babies still in the womb.
We all know that God created us in the womb. Well, yes, of course, He uses the biology we know about. But the Bible teaches us that He also has special creative control over the beginnings of each human life.
For you (Yahweh) formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:13
But there’s even more. We read phrases like this one from David: “from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” (Psalm 22:10) And we read in Jeremiah that God consecrated the prophet before his birth:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.
Jeremiah 1:5
Paul says something similar in Galatians 1:15.
But maybe the clearest picture that we have of an unborn baby is John the Baptist. He was filled with the Spirit even before he was born (Luke 1:15). He was able to respond with joy to the Lord Jesus, even in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:41,44).
And so, even an unborn baby can have a relationship with God. Even an unborn baby can have a relationship with God!
The world wants to tell us that we’re here by chance, with no purpose or value. But the Bible tells us the truth – every human being has value and purpose. And that is truly amazing to think about.
