Ok, but there are some things that we can really agree on. Or at least I think we can. I read today that 4 million infants die in the first month of life. Those are avoidable deaths, or mostly avoidable. Basic health care and nutrition would drop that number quickly. But we seem to be reducing that kind of care instead of increasing. Most Americans overestimate our foreign aid--believing that we spend somewhere around 15% of our budget on foreign aid when the real number is 1%.
More numbers?
"Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)(emphasis mine)
'U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower' (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look 'developed' to you? Yet it's the only 'developed' country to score lower in childhood poverty.
Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--'continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves.' Families that 'had members who actually went hungry at some point last year' numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005)."
Consider that, we are 41st in the world in infant mortality. Where are the movements, the parades, the "pray-ins," the vigils outside congress? They don't exist. And maybe liberal Christians need to take the lead here. Bush's policies won't help that number. Not in the least.
4 comments:
The Bible isn't quite as clearcut on abortion as many Christians think it is. Exodus 21:22 states, "When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the judge determines." The following verse explains that if the woman dies, the guilty man will be executed.
So we see that the death of the woman brings about the death of the offending man. But the death of the unborn child only carries a fine. This seems to indicate that the unborn child is considered property, not life.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an abortion advocate. I'm not sure under what circumstances I think the practice should be legal. But the abortion debate skips over these verses. If we're being honest, we should consider everything that Scripture says about the unborn.
And, as you point out, there's a great hypocrisy about the sanctity of life. It only seems to apply to the unborn, not to the homeless, the poor, or to the people we're slaughtering in Iraq to keep our oil and gas relatively cheap for a few more years. (And what about the over a million children that have died between the two Iraq wars due to the U.S.'s economic sanctions?)
A good point Kevin, but I've tries to use Ex 21:22 in discussing this issue. The response is that the verse refers not to miscarriage, but premature live birth. My Hebrew isn't up to arguing the fine points of the translation. The majority of english translations I've looked at say "miscarriage" but apparently the majority are wrong. ;o)
"The response is that the verse refers not to miscarriage, but premature live birth."
Yeah, and all the wine in the Bible is grape juice. Except the wine that gets people drunk. How could two men fighting cause a premature live birth? I'm not a doctor, but that just doesn't even make sense.
I am glad that Kevin raised the point of how abortion is treated in the context of the Bible. Much like slavery, they have to appeal to broader ideas, right? Like a belief in God's protection for innocent life and the idea of God's justice?
Why that doesn't translate into broader issues like opposing war or poverty eludes me. I think Richard's example is instructive. The bible is selectively innerent and is used really only when it can be a weapon. Leighton has to be right--I can't imagine the ancient world conceptualizing things that way.
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