From the article was the following excerpt:
"If Tiller was slain because of his work, he would be the fourth U.S. physician killed by abortion opponents since 1993.
"In 1998, a sniper killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in his Amherst, New York, home. Anti-abortion activist James Kopp was later arrested in France and is serving life in prison.
"In 1994, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Paul Hill, a former minister, was convicted of the killings and executed in 2003.
"And in 1993, another doctor, David Gunn, was shot to death outside a different Pensacola clinic. His killer, Michael Griffin, is serving a life sentence.
"In addition, a nurse at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic was maimed and an off-duty police officer was killed in a 1998 bombing by Eric Rudolph, who included abortion among his list of anti-government grievances."
Regardless of of your position on the subject of abortion, people can't go around killing people whom they disagree with. The primary opponents to abortion are Christians who claim the act of abortion is murder. Case in point, Paul Hill, one of the murderers mentioned above was a former preacher.
What ever happened to Love your enemy?! (Luke 6:27-36). It is rather difficult to win people over to Christ when you gun them down in front of their families and Christian friends. It won't do much for persuading the family either.
I have a professor, Dr. Terry Muck, who recently said,"The moment you use violence to achieve your religious ideals, you lose those who are attracted to those ideals."
What statement do Christians who recourse to murder think they are making? Where is the love of Christ in that?
1 comment:
You make a good point in saying that "people can't go around killing people whom they disagree with."
Let me first say that I DO NOT agree with the killing of abortion doctors.
I think there is a fundamental difference between those Christians who oppose abortion and those Christians who kill abortion doctors that should be pointed out.
For those who kill, plot to kill, or applaud those who do so, it is much more than a disagreement. It is a matter of life and death for innocent babies. It is, in a sense, a war.
So the question you pose, possibly rhetorically, about what kind of statment is made when a Christian resorts to murder has large ramifications. Especially when coupled with the quote from your professor.
I think it makes a statement far beyond truning people away from Christ. It puts Christianity into the realm of terrorists in the eyes of many. When looking at the past, say 10 years, of terrorist acts around the world, almost all of them have had links to religion.
Even if a majority of Musilms are not pro-violence and do not take part in violent acts, Islam has been forever tainted in the eyes of the West.
To think the opposite isn't true, is folly.
Even though a majority of Christians have not taken up arms, or committed violent acts, Christianity has been forever tainted by the actions of those in the West.
This is not a discourse against America, but of attaching the necessary (and sometimes unnecessary) violence that nations participate in to the term Christian.
Consider the fact that the American flag stand in a vast majority of churches in America, right next to the Christian flag.
Consider the never-ceasing mantra that America is a Christian nation by evangelicals.
If your professor is right that using violence to achieve religious ideals loses people, then when will Christians understand that condoning national violence is actually pushing people away instead of attracting them to the love of Christ?
Glad to see you posting again Joe.
-mike
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