Life Is God’s Great Gift – Don’t Disregard It As An Inconvenience
Word-of-the-Day: ‘(13) For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. (14) I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful; I know that full well.’ (Psalm 139:13-14)
One of the top news stories of the summer is the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother who back in January 2023 killed her three very young children after she sent her husband out to do some errands. She then attempted to commit suicide by jumping out of a second-story window, but did not die; instead, she was severely injured and is now a paraplegic.
This became newsworthy, not because her action was horrendous and for most of us incomprehensible that a mother would do this, but a large number of women have come together to not only support Ms. Clancy but to also call for her complete exoneration. They claim she is innocent due to the hormonal shifts within her body, along with the psychotropic drugs prescribed to counteract those shifts, are to blame.
My personal thoughts begin with society’s inability to assign personal responsibility. There are personal responsibility and personal accountability in play for every action each individual takes in life. Though we can sympathize with Ms. Clancy in regard to the post-partum depression and hormonal problems she was suffering from, it does not excuse her from her responsibility as a mother to care for and protect her children, even from herself. She could have easily had her husband watch the children while she did the errands, for example.
But the larger issue beyond this incident, which is very tragic and heartbreaking, is the response of many of the women, and some men, in their call of exonerating Ms. Clancy. It is the overlooking of the fact that three children have been killed; they are no longer alive to experience the life they had in front of them. Why is this?
Life is a gift given to us by God. It started in Genesis 1:27, when God created man, and woman, in His own image. This was the sixth day of Creation, but was not an afterthought by God but an integral part of His design. All that He created prior to man was to support us; the heavens and the earth, the sea and the sky, the fish and the animals, the plants – all was created for us to survive and thrive.
If human life would have been so unimportant, why would God have done all of this for us and our benefit? Yet, throughout history, starting with the murder of Abel by Cain in Genesis 4:8, we find a disregard of life. Abel recognized life was precious, and in his tribute to God made the sacrifice of animal life the most important part of his worship to Him. Cain could not recognize this was a far greater sacrifice than his sacrifice of vegetables, and in jealousy killed his brother for no reason other than self-gratification.
But Abel’s sacrifice, though valuable, was not as valuable as human life; in Matthew 10:31, Jesus tells His disciples we are worth ‘more than many sparrows’. The human life is in God’s eye the most valuable of all life on Earth; Abel’s sacrifice of animal life was precious, but the only sacrifice far greater and more precious to God was the sacrifice of Jesus’ life upon the cross, to redeem us of our sin through the willingness of Jesus, His son, to forfeit His mortal life so our would not be forfeited to the condemnation of sin.
But Cain was held responsible and accountable by God, and became marked and sentenced to a form of exile to the land of Nod, per Genesis 4:15-16. His life, though he had a wife and children, was one without the support of his family, forever marked as an outcast away from his parents, Adam and Eve. From the beginning, God held that murder, the taking of human life without reason, was sinful and against Him and His precepts. This is restated in Exodus 20:13, when God provided Moses the Ten Commandments the Sixth Commandment is ‘You shall not murder’.
Yet man continues to kill one another. There are killings that are not murder, such as killing someone in self-defense, or in the midst of battle in order to defend or defeat an enemy force, but this typically is a reaction instigated by the intent of someone perpetuating the desire to harm or murder another. It is a selfish action on the part of an individual to want to kill another person without reason or Righteous justification (like self-defense).
When it comes to the murder of children, which is particularly heinous, we find throughout the history of Israel in the Old Testament those who turned away from God and Righteousness turned toward this illicit act, by sacrificing their children to false gods such as Molech or Baal in an act of pagan worship in a blasphemous disregard to God and His precepts. The murder of innocent children, in the fires of the Hinnom Valley outside of Jerusalem, was done as a literal slap in the face to God; the life He gave for them to care for, the life the mother carried through the pain of childbirth, tossed aside in a futile attempt to gain favor to a non-existent god.
This selfish act of infanticide unfortunately continues today in the form of abortion, made marketable by Margaret Sanger through Planned Parenthood in the early 20th century. Life of the unborn became devalued, the needs of the unborn child considered to be less in worth than the needs of the mother. When the unborn life is devalued, it makes it easier to kill it and have it erased. Abortion is a selfish act that places convenience over the responsibility and accountability of being a parent. God did not create us to live in convenience, but to be responsible and accountable to Him, for all that He provides us, including the lives of our children.
The killing of children after birth and the support it garners, through the demonstration of women (and men) who support Ms. Clancy’s actions, is an extension of the devaluation of life through abortion. If one can justify why an unborn child should be killed, it is easier to devalue the life of an infant, an adolescent, of any person’s life. The spread of euthanasia, in Europe and Canada, demonstrate a selfish desire for ‘death on command’, not only from an individual but now from families and from the state. When a life – any life – becomes inconvenient, it is easy to remove that life out of the picture.
Abortion, euthanasia, infanticide; these are convenient names Satan provides the unrighteous to commit murder. The Faithful Christian should never condone murder under any circumstance, without reason or justification. We are to support life, which God provides as His ‘very good and pleasing work’ and perhaps His most favored achievement in all of Creation. It is He who promotes life given abundantly in Him and with Him, especially life for eternity for those who accept His gift of Salvation, as our Lord and Savior.
