For years, debates have raged over abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. The debates are intensifying. A Christian culture would have no reason to debate these issues. What we have today is an anti-Christian (godless) society which consistently chooses death over life.
It’s a twisted juxtaposition. The same culture which hates thinking about aging and dying also encourages so much death. They hate funerals, but they love getting rid of anything which reminds them of weakness and frailty, of sickness and pain.
God filled His word with instructions about life. For believers, life is sacred because each of us is created in God’s own image. God gives each person an immortal spirit which continues to live after the body dies. God gives every human moral understanding, the ability to discern and choose between right and wrong. You are created differently than baboons and badgers.
As Noah exited the ark after a full year of floating, God instructed him (and all humanity who descend from him):
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth… And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
“Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”
Genesis 9.1, 5–7
Search the Scriptures. You will not find this mandate reversed or halted. This world is founded on this principle of life—not the principle of death!
Someone might suggest that even in this, God said certain men should die, and that is true. But why should they die? Their blood should be shed because they shed another man’s blood. No man has the authority to take another human being’s life! God appointed governments to execute murderers (Romans 13.1–4), so the murderer life is not ended by human decision, it is taken in obedience to God. Putting murderers to death upholds the principle of life.
Do you see how God opened and closed His instructions above in Genesis 9? “Be fruitful and multiple and fill the earth.” God wants us to make babies, produce life, fill the earth with more people bearing His image! Abortion arrests this process and rebels against God’s clear directive.
Euthanasia, like abortion, is murder, the unauthorized taking of a human life. Perpetrators of such crimes are subject to capital punishment, as God said.
Further, the “childfree by choice” craze is another hot conversation of our time. In a magazine appropriately entitled SELF” ten women explain why they are happy and have no regrets about their decision to remain childless. NPR (no surprise) published an article in 2023 lauding and laughing about 20 adults’ comments as to why they decided to be childless.
Psychology Today did an article called “The Truth about People Who Stay Childfree,” and an interesting excerpt is, “All of the other groups felt less warmly toward the childfree than the childfree felt toward one another.” Childfree has become its own clique; you are either in or out of the group. Why would those who do not have the childfree mentality be less warm towards those who do? Why can’t we just “let them be their authentic selves”? It’s because people innately understand God’s creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. It is embedded in us. When a married couple makes the outright decision to not have babies, it’s as if they are deciding to withdraw from the human race. We regard the decision as selfish—they are refusing to do their part to perpetuate what God is building. Marriage and children go hand-in-hand, and physical reality reflects Scripture.
Step back from the culture and take a good look. It doesn’t take long to recognize this Western generation is obsessed with death. They like living themselves, but they are happy to end millions of unborn lives, they are happy to sweep away the old, infirm, inconvenient ones who cost them money, and they are happy to stop perpetuating life on earth. “Happy” is used here euphemistically, for they surely are a miserable lot trying to convince themselves they are happy.
Happy are they who keep the commandments of the Lord! We shall rejoice in life and continue to fulfill God’s mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth with His image.