Tough Questions: Life, Love and Murder

I usually try to avoid controversial issues. My goal is not to debate, argue or force my view on people. My purpose for this blog is to encourage godly growth. But part of growing closer to God is knowing about Him and what He thinks about the issues of life. God does care about the grey areas. My teen sunday school class gave me some topics they didn't understand or weren't sure what the Bible said about them. These are the answers we discussed.

Euthanasia

Legal suicide has become increasingly more prevalent in our society and world. Many argue that a person should have the right to choose when they die, which makes man at the center and determiner of life. Are we in control of that? Do we have the knowledge we need to make that kind of decision?

First, who is the author and sustainer of life? God. He created life. He sustains life. He is in control of life. He also knows everything that will happen in and because of a person’s life. He knows when a person has accomplished everything He has planned for them.

Jeremiah 29:11 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’

Those who argue that a person’s life and purpose are determined entirely by that person deny God and His will and purpose for us. God has specific plans for us, good plans with a good future and hope. He plans to protect and restore us. He has our best in mind. A person taking their own life is ignoring God’s plan for them and the fact that He may have future purposes for them to carry out. By dieing early they are missing out.

Second, who knows what the future holds? God. He alone knows how long a person will live. Often, the terminally ill are given “6 months” to live, but that prognosis is often wrong. A person who says, “I’m about to die in a few months I might as well die painlessly, the way I want,” is ignoring the fact that no human knows their future days. Many people, given the chance, will exceed their 6 month limit.

Psalm 37:18 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

The Lord knows the days of the blameless,
And their inheritance will be forever.

Third, people who ask to end their life early are usually depressed or need better pain management. Those issues can be treated, and if they were, the person would probably not be so eager to end their life. The fact that someone wants to end their life is a good indication that they have given up. They need faith, encouragement and some form of pain relief (physical, emotional, spiritual or mental), not death. They need to turn to God, the great Healer and Comforter. If a person could choose to end their life, they would likely die before they are saved, and they would be lost forever.

Matthew 11:28 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Isaiah 57:18 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;
I will lead him and restore comfort to him and to his mourners,

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 

God wants us to minister to and comfort the depressed and hurting, not bring them to death. We have a greater ministry helping them to find a reason to live, to find true life, than in helping them die when they choose.

Job desired death. He went through horrendous atrocities, great physical pain, and the torment of unhelpful friends. His grief and pain brought him to desire death, to see that as better than life. But he didn’t die, and he came to be even more blessed than he was before. The trials and sufferings of life are painful, but they are also the times when we grow and mature. It is the storms of life that cause us to grow deep roots and wisdom if we will face them and trust God rather than running and hiding from the pain.

http://www.joniandfriends.org/radio/4-minute/assisted-suicide/

(This is all to say nothing of the implications of murder and eternal consequences of suicide.)

War, Peace and Murder

The question was asked why people choose war when they have the option of peace. The answer is really fairly simple. People who are seeking war and choose to fight rather than make peace are usually either greedy, selfish, murderous, arrogant, or a combination of them all. The people who seek war are looking for some selfish gain, whether it is power, wealth, control, etc. Peace will not accomplish what they want. The people these are fighting against usually try to make a deal for peace, but often must fight or lose their lives, homes, etc.

In the sense that war is used to dominate, control, or exterminate others, it is obviously wrong, but war is not always murder. God even ordained war at times. He commanded that the Israelites not only fight but destroy the tribes they encountered in the Promised Land.

Before I go further, let me define murder. Murder is a person takes the life of another human in an unjust, unlawful way. It is never murder to kill an animal (Lev 24:21), and it is not murder to kill someone justly. It must be unlawful or unjust by God’s standards. According to the Bible, killing is justified in war (Num 31), self defense (though even Biblically it may still be considered manslaughter, Num 35), and capitol punishment. All of these cases are, however, subjective and not always, without a doubt considered justifiable.

Ecclesiastes 3:3 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

[there is] A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.

Again, God often called His people to war, sometimes to attack and sometimes to defend. It is the manner or cause of war that determines whether it is murder. Sometimes peace can only be brought by war, as strange as that seems. For the Israelites, the only way they could live in peace was to conquer the neighboring countries, otherwise they would always have trouble. The final battle at the end of the world when Jesus returns is another example. It will be bloody and horrible, but it is not murder. And the purpose is to bring peace. Sometimes, God uses war to punish a nation, like when Israel was sent into exile. God used Babylon and Assyria to war against the Jews to punish them for their rampant idolatry. He then used other nations to war against those to punish them. (2 Kings 17, 18, 1 Chron 9) In some circumstances, specific soldiers can be accused of murder in war by killing innocent people, for example. (2 Sam 20)

Gay Rights

First, let us establish what the Bible says about homosexuality.

1 Corinthians 6:8-10 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Genesis 19:4-5 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.”

Romans 1:26-27, 32 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error… and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Homosexuality is clearly sin according to the Bible. It is not necessarily worse than any other sin (as some believe) but it is sin, and the reason that Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly destroyed. It denies the way in which God made creation; male and female. He ordained that there be men and women, and that they would be married and united. Making gay marriage legal would not make it any less sinful because it would still be sin in the Bible, God does not define homosexuality as sin based on a persons marital status but on their gender. Satan is using homosexuality to twist the beauty of the way God made humanity, marriage, and sex.

The fact that the earth no longer needs to be populated, and so the natural function of a man and woman are no longer “necessary” is irrelevant, because God still calls us as Christians to have children, to raise them up to love God. Having children is not a purely physical, scientific endeavor meant for the sole purpose of population growth. It was meant as a blessing to parents, a way for us to minister to others, a way for us to grow as we teach and train another generation. The family unit is a fundamental part of God’s plan for humanity, and He designed it to have a mother and a father (female and male.)

Now that we have established that it is sin, what about rights… Our society puts great emphasis on personal rights (as with euthanasia and abortion), possibly more than it should. As Christians, our own personal rights should not be our main focus, because we are not supposed to think about and serve ourselves. But what about the rights of others? As far as individual human rights, homosexuals should be treated no different than any other person because they are still people, and even though they sin, so do we. But what about marriage?

Some would argue that, because we can’t expect those who don’t believe to live the way we do and adhere to our moral standards, we should not impose laws that would force them to do that, i.e. the fact that adultery is not a criminal offense. They would say that we should not “force” people to not sin by making it illegal, but rather give them the option to choose as they please.

Others would say that we as Christians should stand for Biblical marriage, that by voting in favor of gay marriage we are undermining God’s plan for marriage and the family. We need to stand for what we believe, regardless of what others do or believe. Voting in favor of something a person believes to be wrong would be hypocritical. We are called to stand for the truth.

But above all, we need to remember that God calls us to love others, regardless of what they do, to treat them with love and respect, and that love can overcome anything regardless of how we feel or what they do. This sin is no worse than any sin we commit ourselves.

John 13:34-35 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.