Recently, star basketball player and professing Christian, Stephen Curry, said that he was supporting Kamala Harris. When asked why, Curry said,
“We need to be in a position where women have the right to choose what’s right for them. That’s at the top of the list for me.”
Curry’s top reason for his vote for president is the protection of the practice of abortion.
While I was sad to read this, I know he is not alone. Many other professing believers support the legality of ending a child’s life, while that child is in the womb.
Why is this? I think the reason is simple: most have been deceived.
When you logically consider what abortion is, you understand that it always involves the killing of an innocent human life. And that is wrong. This should be clear for those who name the name of Christ.
But some, along with others outside the faith, have been blinded to reality.
How does this deception happen? Why have we accepted and even celebrated something so truly awful?
The answer is always in Scripture. For it’s not an old, outdated book, one that’s irrelevant for our time. It is always relevant because human nature does not change. Neither does our Creator change.
I maintain the Bible is a reliable book of history, and it contains record of specific prophecies that have been fulfilled. Further, it tells us of things that will happen in the future.
You can say that the Bible tells us how it began, how it’s going, and how it all ends. So we can have confidence that what God’s word says is true.
For a look at this important issue, let’s begin at the beginning.
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” –Genesis 1:27-28
From the beginning, man was made by God in His image. His command was that men and women would increase in number – to fill the earth, and to have authority over it.
If we miss these basic truths, we’ll miss the rest of the story.
We were not made for ourselves, but for God. We were made to reflect His glory, to live in relationship with Him, and to carry out the assignment He gave us.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. –Ephesians 2:10
We have a purpose, which is wonderful news.
But that means life is not all about us. At first, this can seem an unwelcome thought. Until you realize who God is.
Take the best, most excellent, beautiful thought you could ever think. Then multiply it by infinity. God is good. He is love. He has done wonderful and praiseworthy things. Nothing we can desire on earth can compare with Him.
To be made in the image of a perfect, omnipotent, omnipresent, all-loving, all-powerful, all-just, righteous God…To know Him, to love and be loved by Him…there can be nothing better for mankind!
The harsh truth is, though, that we have rebelled against Him. We are all disobedient, sinful from birth. We have together turned away from Him and His will. We want to live life our way, according to our desires, thinking that will make us happy.
We are capable of deceiving and being deceived.
Worse, we have a spiritual enemy, who wants to destroy us. The devil is real, not some character created for movies and books. One who the Bible describes as a prowling lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
He hates the living God, and wants to destroy His works, especially his prized creation: mankind.
So he tries to thwart the thriving of human beings, and stop them from completing the work God gave them to do.
Think with me: If God wants mankind to reproduce to fill the whole earth, what would His chief adversary want to stop?
The idea to keep human beings from being born, to put them to death before they have a chance to live a full life, did not come from our Creator.
He said quite the opposite. “You shalt not murder” was one of the ten commandments, or “moral law,” God gave us (Exodus 20:13).
As the means of reproduction, God gave us a beautiful gift of intimacy between a husband and wife. And He reserved that act for marriage alone.
In this way, He provided protection for the couple as well as their offspring. The act of sex would be reserved for one couple for a lifetime together, and their children would be born into the most stable environment for their growth and flourishing.
The act itself would be so sacred because it is ultimately a picture of a greater mystery: that of the love of Christ for His church.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. –Ephesians 5:31-32
Think our spiritual enemy wants this to happen as God intended? Nope.
The idea that sex should not be so restricted, but enjoyed freely, is what our culture has shouted for the better part of a century.
In their minds, they’ve moved beyond the act being about couples, to being about the desires of the individual. And further, to those desires defining who the individual is.
A host of supposedly brilliant philosophers and scientists (Sigmund Freud among the more famous names) have told us that mankind’s chief end is sexual satisfaction. That to suppress those desires keeps us from flourishing.
They’ve explained that guardrails for sexual activity is not only outdated, it keeps us from being who we truly are.
And if you listen closely, you can hear the whisper from Eden, “Did God really say?…You will not surely die.”
I believe one of the strengths of the Christian worldview is that it explains reality better than any alternative view.
The world has order to it. Things are designed to work in a certain manner. Doing things we were designed to do produces a natural effect.
And thus, sex produces offspring. But this poses a problem. If our purpose in life is to gratify our sexual desires, having babies could well interfere with that.
What to do?
Our culture, realizing this problem, answers by saying, “Find a way to keep our activity from producing children.”
Beyond the means of self-control, we believe we need something fail-proof. Something that will take care of the problem.
First, it was contraceptives. But when those are ineffective, we need something more, to make sure we’re not burdened by another person, who requires our care to survive.
So we convince ourselves that ending the pre-born child’s life is really in everyone’s best interest.
I doubt the child would agree.
But there’s another problem, one we don’t want to think about.
When engaging in promiscuity, the natural result of our actions takes a toll on our physical and mental health.
What’s worse is what abortion does to the life of a pre-born child. It also can also have deleterious effects on the woman’s body. Not to mention later regret.
Thus, the enemy convinces us to live outside of God’s design for intimacy, to our own detriment. Then to put to death our children before they can come into the world.
In this way, we live in opposition to how we were made, and we do not fulfill God’s command to fill the earth and subdue it.
In short: we are deceived.
We think it will bring freedom and happiness. But what sin always brings instead is regret and death.
My friends, do not be deceived.
