Respect for human life

Have you ever been told something you didn’t want to hear but you needed to? Those are the conversation we don’t really want to be part of. So if you don’t want to hear something we all need to hear, if you don’t want to engage into a conversation that really needs to happen, don’t read on.Last week, in the wake of Detroit’s homicide numbers for 2012, Mayor Dave Bing said, “We’ve just lost respect for each other; we’ve lost respect for life.” The number he was lamenting was 411 up from 377 the previous year.  What a sad statistic, Mayor Bing had every reason to lament it. However, it pales in light of the fact that in 2012 approximately 1,200,000 (1.2 Million) pre-born little boys and girls had their lives snuffed out through abortion. Indeed we have lost respect for human life.It is even sadder because we can no longer claim ignorance. One no longer can argue about when human life begins, modern science can now identify human being from its first cell on. Following conception are merely stages in the life of a human being both in and outside the womb. It is even sadder because these killings are legal through all nine months of pregnancy, even right before a child slips through the birth canal. It is even sadder because we build an entire money making industry around the taking, the destruction of little human beings. And it is sadder still that we don’t want to hear about it, we don’t want to be exposed to the ugly truth that since the Roe vs. Wade decision rendered by the highest court of the land, which has a responsibility to uphold justice and liberty for all, well over 50, 000,000 (fifty million) pre-born babies have died. We have acquiesced to stripping an entire group, the pre-born, of the rights each American holds dear: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We do not want to hear of morality (although the taking of innocent life is an immoral act). We do not want to hear of responsibility past a condom regarding sexual behavior. We don’t want to think about having to take responsibility for acts of unbridled (and unprotected) acts of passion and lust.Mayor Bing is right, “We have lost respect for life,” and I wonder if he included all those little boys and girls who lost their lives via an abortion pill or the hands of an abortionist in the city of Detroit. We cannot devalue human life anywhere along its entire life span and hope to maintain respect for human life. We cannot engage in a conversation about respect for human life while stripping an entire class of all its fundamental rights. We cannot maintain respect for human life if we do not want to talk about responsibility regarding our capacity to create life. We cannot hold on to respect for human life if do not reckon with the reality that we will answer to our Creator, God Almighty, for all of our decisions and acts.Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness are indeed a great endowment and great values as long as we choose them for all.To God be all glory, Pastor Hans