It All Comes Down to Worldview
on May 19th, 2009 at 8:12 am
The President was in South Bend Indiana this past weekend, speaking at Notre Dame’s graduation, and he basically talked about talking about abortion. He evaded the issue and diminished the importance of the debate. Al Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, brings out a good point, “if the President had actually addressed the issue of abortion (like actually offering a defense or rationale for his position) he would have dignified the issue. Instead, Mr. Obama issued what amounted to a call for civility.”
One part of the speech really jumped out at me. When the President called for Americans to agree that, while differing on abortion, “we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually,” he failed to make clear why this is true. If the unborn baby is not a person who possesses a basic right to life, why is the decision to abort so “heart-wrenching?” If the fetus is just a collection of cells, why is abortion so difficult for the mother?
As I taught my discipleship class this past semester, Developing a Christian Worldview, and to put this topic in context, we discussed seven other major worldviews. One was naturalism. Regarding life, naturalism embraces the Darwinian teachings of evolution and rejects divine creation of the universe in general and the unique creation of mankind in particular. In essence humans are a product of time plus chance with no intelligence behind the process.
While not going into all the details, think about how this works itself out practically. Evolution teaches that humans are nothing special, no more than apes that made it to a higher form and intelligence. All animals have basic instincts that drive them, to eat, find shelter and reproduce. So, when our children are taught evolution as a fact (ignoring a lot of logical debate to the contrary) it is little wonder why teens and young adults participate in immoral behavior… they are nothing more than animals acting on instinct. There is no higher moral standard that would curb their instincts. They have neither reason nor capacity to say no to sexual urges, which in a lot of situations produces offspring.
So, back to the issue of abortion, I see this as the classic example of “survival of the fittest.” Our society can eliminate the most vulnerable of our community based solely on the reason of convenience, or subconsciously believing that the mother is more powerful over the unborn infant. Before you go ballistic, “what about cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother,” I’m not an extremist. That is a debate for another day.
The President of Southern Seminary put it this way: If President Obama had actually spoken of abortion itself, rather than addressing abortion only as an issue of controversy, he would have found himself defending the indefensible, which explains why he avoids this discussion at all costs. Yet, now that he is President, he cannot get by with claiming that this question is “above my pay grade.”
We don’t allow people to kill birthed infants, why is killing a child a few months younger acceptable in our society? I believe it all comes down to worldview. Someone with a differing worldview simply cannot understand how the other side can justify their position, and vise versa. In our day of relativism, where truth and morality are determined by the individual, there is no definitive objective moral standard or absolute truth that does not change.
