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[Tasty Soup]

IF aborted life gets a free pass into heaven, and being with the Lord of heaven is the ultimate goal of all Christians, what makes abortion so bad? As I understand, the ultimate goal of Christianity is to obey the Lord Jesus so as to commune with him eternally in Heaven. I understand also that Christians believe God has a purpose for them here on earth, to preach the gospel and to build the kingdom of God. My argument, which I admit is more of a question is, what makes abortion bad/wrong/evil if the lifeform aborted ultimately ends up in heaven...?

I personally do not believe unbaptized babies, infants, or fetuses end up writhing in agony in purgatory or hell. Any God who'd condone such a thing surely doesn't deserve worship but vehement hatred. So the real question is, considering the ridiculousness of the aborted ending up in hell, the only other sane option for a believer of the goodness of God is that by grace the aborted is saved and granted a free pass into Heaven.

The logic is pretty simple and I want to be as straight forward as possible. If aborted lifeforms go straight to Heaven and Heaven is the ultimate goal and reward for a true believer, why is abortion a sin according to many Christians/Catholics?

Just a side note. You could argue that if person A takes the life of person B, person B being a true Christian, the faster they will make it to Heaven and by that logic the ends justify the means. A was only looking out for B's best interest.

[jimwalton]

The ends don't justify the means, especially in this particular case. The brutal murder by abortion of children just to send them to heaven is barbaric. It's abhorrent to say, "I love humanity so much I will kill them all." The logic may be straight forward, but the thinking is skewed by immorality. It's a contradiction to kill in order to give life.

[Goo Goo]

1 Samuel 15:23: "This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants...' "

Was it "barbaric" when Israel slaughtered Amalekite infants?

[jimwalton]

I'm sorry to learn that you have misunderstood the entire text. A text like this deserves a little bit of research.

You're in 1 Samuel 15.2-3. In the ancient Near East, it was common warfare rhetoric to speak of a complete victory as "killing all the men, women, children, infants, and animals." It never happened, and there was no intent that it happened. It was their way of saying, "Let's win a complete victory here." In the locker rooms our football teams yell, "Kill! Kill! Kill!", but we know what that means: "Let's win today!" We yell from the baseball stands, "Kill the umpire!" when we mean, "You're an idiot and you missed the play." It's our rhetoric, just as they had theirs. We post signs that say, "No Standing." They don't mean you're not allowed to stand there; they mean cars aren't allowed to park there. We know that, but if the sign was dug up by an archaeologist 1000 yrs from now, they'd wondering why people had to sit in the area around the sign. It would be a total misunderstanding.

I can give you numerous examples from the ancient Near East to evidence what I am saying. I'll just put a few here for you now.

- Hittite king Mursilli II (who ruled from 1322-1295 BC) recorded making "Mt. Asharpaya empty (of humanity)" and the "mountains of Tarikarimu empty (of humanity)." Not true; just rhetoric.
- The "Bulletin" of Ramses II tells of Egypt's less-than-spectacular victories in Syria (1274 BC). Nevertheless, he announces that he slew "the entire force" of the Hittites, indeed "all the chiefs of all the countries," disregarding the "millions of foreigners," which he considered "chaff."
- In the Merneptah Stele (ca. 1230 BC), Rameses II's son Merneptah announced, "Israel is wasted, his seed is not," another premature declaration. Not true, didn't happen, no genocide.
- Moab's king Mesha (840/830 BC) bragged that the Northern Kingdom of "Israel has utterly perished for always," which was over a century premature. The Assyrians devastated Israel in 722 BC.

The same is true of Amalekites of 1 Sam. 15 (the Amalekites were a people group for about 1000 years after being "totally destroyed"), and all of the Canaanite groups. The point was not to kill them all in a genocidal frenzy, but to win a decisive military victory. The women were not slaughtered, the children were not butchered, and there was no barbarism going on.

You'll notice in 1 Sam. 15.8-9 & 13 that King Saul claims to have carried out the Lord's instructions. But King David raided the Amalekites in 1 Sam. 27.8 and "he didn't leave a man or woman alive." In 1 Samuel 30, David raided the Amalekites again "so that none of them got away" (v. 17). But in 1 Chronicles 4.43 we find out that Amalekites are still around. Just a little bit of research proves to us that "complete destroy men women and children" doesn't mean barbaric slaughter of innocents, but winning a decisive military victory.