Melissa H. Strautman, LMT
“You cannot chase the world’s favor and find favor with God at the same time. It’s two different worlds and two different masters” [1]
Pastor Steve Wilson
As Pastor Wilson wraps up the third chapter of 1 Corinthians, he focuses on our practicing either a Biblical worldview or a secular worldview. Obviously, Christians should only be doing the former, but as Paul warned the church, he also urges us to be aware of siding with or serving the world, and how that affects the outcome of our Believer’s Judgement.
A few years ago, I was in discussion with two women who professed to be Christians. The younger woman recounted a story from her job as a dental assistant where she had to assist with the annual teeth cleaning of a ten-year-old child in foster care. This ten-year-old child was several weeks pregnant. The older woman, being a social worker, quickly chimed in to project the horrifying possibilities for this ten-year-old’s life. At no time did these women put this situation through a Biblical worldview filter and consider the providence of God in the matter. They immediately jumped to a popular secular worldview solution; abortion. In their view, it was the only way to right the ship and save the next 8 years of this girl’s childhood. After all …
- she was a minor, and this was rape;
- she didn’t have the knowledge to raise a child;
- she didn’t have financial means to support a child;
- and so many more excuses.
Implications
The temporal implication of any travesty (pregnant ten-year-old) should never be held as more significant than the eternal implications. Ignoring the Father’s will on murder is denying the providence of God in the life of that infant and the mother. God decided the DNA pool from which He knit that infant together in that ten-year-old girl’s womb.[2] God, knowing that child intimately before the earth was formed, decided the time and location of that child’s arrival on the planet.
Heavenly decree always trumps human convention. A ten-year-old giving birth may seem a travesty to you, but God still has a God-glorifying plan for everything He does. Society does not know better than God. What about the emotional devastation[3] of a coerced/forced abortion on a child? Could this possibly reinforce the lack of human worth of an inconvenient child? What about the importance of the Imago Dei?[4]
It is better to be considered a fool by the world’s standards because you live for an audience of one (God), not the world.
If you stand there and boast in your agreement with the conventions of the world as it relates to the life for a ten-year-old at the expense of God’s commands to not murder another child, not only are you a hypocrite, you are saying, “Move over God, I’m taking the potter’s wheel and you are dismissed!”[5]
Abort Jesus?
My own husband is the illegitimately conceived child of a young mother. Jesus would have been considered so as well. If Jesus were conceived today all manner of people would have been in Mary’s ear telling her a baby would steal her childhood. God has given my husband incredible musical talents and used him to disciple many Christian saints. Was my husband a mistake? Was Jesus a mistake? Only a self-righteous, self-deified person would dare to answer, “Yes, kill that thing.”
Unseen Plans
We have to keep our eyes fixed on Christ and what He says to do in these situations (tough or not) and avoid doing what the world says is best; because God is working out His unseen plans[6] for the betterment of His coming kingdom. The means God uses for these plans is the procreation and proliferation of the human race … and the world says, “No, only if we say so.”
Senate Bill 130, The “Born Alive” Abortion Survivors Protection Act failed to pass back in January because our elected officials decided that murdering living children was okay. The secular culture of pandering to women under the guise of health was always just about the “arrogant, selfish ambitions” of natural man (women) and the inconvenience of the most defenseless among us, children.[7]
Darrell Harrison of Grace To You has a weekly podcast called Just Thinking. In episode 62, he does an excellent exposition of scripture as it relates to the topic of the Born Alive Act and abortion in general. He gets into how Christians are parking their Biblical worldview at the door when it comes to these types of topics, in order to side with the world, not God.
We have to let the “things of the world grow strangely dim” on topics to which God speaks directly. When that light goes out at the end, and it will, Christ-focused Christians who practice a Biblical worldview will walk through death’s door into a glorious inheritance of all things reserved just for those who kept their eyes (and actions) focused on Him.”[8]
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[1] Colossians 2:8; 1 John 2:15-17
[2] Psalm 139:13
[3] Hope in Christ Through Tragedy, Association of Certified Biblical Counselor’s Truth In Life podcast, April 8, 2019
[4] “Imago Dei” explained in paragraph 13 of Finding God in Four Glories, by M. Strautman, Views from the Pew Blog, May 3, 2018
[5] 1 John 2:15-17
[6] 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
[7] James 3:13-18
[8] Hebrew 12:2; Colossians 3:1-2; Romans 8:5; Ephesians 1:18; Matthew 17:8; 1 John 2:15-17
