Posted on 06/01/2009 1:50:49 PM PDT by wagglebee
The cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday morning presents the pro-life movement in America with a crucial moral test - will we condemn this murder in unqualified terms?
For many years, Dr. George Tiller has represented the horrific reality of the abortion industry in this nation. Infamously known to the pro-life movement in America, Tiller was known as "Tiller the Killer" because of his well-known willingness to perform late-term abortions almost no other doctor in the nation would perform. Because of Dr. George Tiller, Wichita became the destination of choice for women seeking abortions in the late third trimester.
In 1993 Tiller was shot in both arms by an assailant. His clinic was regularly protested and was once bombed. Tiller had many brushes with the law, and just weeks ago he was acquitted of charges that he had colluded with another physician to illegally justify late-term abortions.
George Tiller was shot to death Sunday morning as he was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Witnesses said that a lone assailant entered the church, shot Dr. Tiller with a single shot, threatened two others, and then fled the scene. A suspect was arrested hours later. Wichita police said that the unnamed suspect would likely face multiple charges as early as Monday.
Violence in response to the horror of abortion is rare, but not new. According to some news reports, Dr. Tiller was the fifth physician to be murdered by abortion opponents. In other cases, abortion clinics have been bombed and workers have been hurt or killed.
Proponents of abortion rights often charge that the rhetoric of the pro-life movement leads to violence. After all, we describe abortion as murder and point to the business of abortion as the murder of the unborn. We make clear that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and that what goes on in abortion clinics is the business of death.
We make these arguments because we know they are true. Abortion is murder. What goes on in those clinics is institutionalized homicide, often for financial profit. Abortion is a moral scandal and a national tragedy and a blight upon the American conscience.
But violence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause. Now, the premeditated murder of Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church is the headline scandal - not the abortions he performed and the cause he represented.
We have no right to take the law into our own hands in an act of criminal violence. We are not given the right to take this power into our own hands, for God has granted this power to governing authorities. The horror of abortion cannot be rightly confronted, much less corrected, by means of violence and acts outside the law and lawful means of remedy. This is not merely a legal technicality - it is a vital test of the morality of the pro-life movement.
The Christian church has been forced by historical necessity to think through these issues again and again. The church has reached a basic moral consensus on issues of violence and governmental obedience, and this consensus requires that Christian citizens work within legal, judicial, and political means to persuade governing authorities concerning what is good, right, just, and honoring to God. Those who operate outside of this consensus and perform acts of violence are rightly understood to abrogate authority to themselves in a way that violates not only the laws of men but the law of God. Civil disobedience may be justified so long as the Christian is willing to suffer at the hands of the governing authorities, but is not justified if the citizen employs violence against the state or against other citizens.
In the case of Dr. George Tiller, the governing authorities failed again and again to fulfill their responsibility to protect all citizens, including those yet unborn. The law is dishonoring to God in its disrespect for human life. The law failed to bring George Tiller to account for what should have been seen as crimes against humanity. But this failure does not authorize others to act in the place of the government, much less in the place of God. The government must now act to prosecute and punish the murderer of Dr. George Tiller.
In October of 1859, John Brown led a violent attack upon the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. A radical abolitionist, Brown had already proved himself capable of violence for his cause. In 1856 he had led a gang that brutally killed several pro-slavery figures in Kansas. The raid on Harpers Ferry led to more deaths before Brown and his surviving rebels were arrested, charged with treason, and executed.
When John Brown was arrested, Henry David Thoreau defended the man and his violence, asking: "Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good?"
Those are the very questions some are tempted to ask now, but these weighty questions cannot justify violence in the name of an honorable cause. Thoreau was right about the fact that the laws allowing slavery in the United States were immoral and unjustifiable. John Brown was right when he claimed that slavery was a blight upon the nation's conscience - a wrong that had to be ended. Brown's logic led him to treason, and he was found guilty in a court of law and punished. Thoreau would refer to Brown as an "angel of light," but Thoreau never had to live with the consequences of his own attempt to justify murder, nor did he ever acknowledge the true character of the man.
The pro-life movement in America must not wage war against abortion by following the example of John Brown. Nor can we allow ourselves the luxury of the logic of defending the indefensible along the lines of Thoreau. We must confront this great evil of abortion from a higher plane, and know that the battle is ultimately in God's hands.
Murder is murder. The law rightly affirms that the killing of Dr. George Tiller is murder. In this we must agree. We cannot rest until the law also recognizes the killing of the unborn as murder. The killing of Dr. George Tiller makes that challenge all the more difficult.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com. Original Source: www.albertmohler.com.
Too bad society has been so propagandized they can't see the wisdom of your words.
The sheeple will do & think as they're instructed...
..that's why we're in such dangerous times.
A people that cannot agree on the fundamental principles of government bring themselves chaos and strife and anarchy. The most forgotten word in the title of the Declaration of Independence is "unanimous." Thanks to the moral relativism, multiculturalism, communism, socialism, anti-americanism brought to us by the Democrats for well over 150 years, those of us willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor for the principles of 1776 are a minority. Without a new birth of freedom -- a government of the people, by the people, for the people, will perish from the earth.
I couldn’t agree more.
When the law refuses to redress a crime, someone somewhere is apt to take the law into his own hands.
Most of us would pray for the abortionist’s soul, and try to get him saved, trusting on the holy spirit to do his work in the man’s soul. But he was in a church that didn’t notice there was anything wrong.
We have a “church” that refused to tell him he was wrong, and we have an unrepentant abortionist serving the sacraments, and using his church membership for cover as he defends the indefensible in the press.
In the United States, you can be put to death for murder, usually only if there are “special circumstances” such as serial murder or murder for hire. Tiller was guilty of both serial murder “and” murder for hire, but he practiced a protected form of murder so there was no legal recourse. So the law of “karma” kicked in and now he faces a higher court.
Its a tragedy that Tiller wasted the life God gave him, and its a shame it ended under such crummy circumstances.
I love Dr Mohler but: "the abortions that he performed and the cause he represented" were never a headline scandal and would never have been a headline scandal. I agree that Tiller was murdered but why do I feel like a coward? The church is not doing enough. I am not doing enough. I feel no guilt for Tiller's death. Will the nation be judged for it?
I firmly believe that the day will come, and may not be far off, when abortions will be imposed by the state as in China. In that day we will have to decide whether we will defend the blood of our own unborn children because we have not defended the blood of our neighbor's children.
Psalm 94
1 O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.
2 Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.
3 LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?
4 How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?
5 They break in pieces thy people, O LORD, and afflict thine heritage.
6 They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.
7 Yet they say, The LORD shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.
8 Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise?
9 He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?
10 He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?
11 The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.
12 Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD, and teachest him out of thy law;
13 That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked.
14 For the LORD will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance.
15 But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright in heart shall follow it.
16 Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?
17 Unless the LORD had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence.
18 When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.
19 In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.
20 Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?
21 They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood.
22 But the LORD is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge.
23 And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wicked
Matthew 18:10
Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.
In World War 2. Some Germans thought it was appropriate to take justice into their own hands and attempted to murder Adolph Hitler with a bomb.
I imagine this only hurt the anti-holocaust issue with the undecided German population.
During the 18th and 19th Century, some slaves would sometimes try to rise up and to murder their owners or slave owners. This turned those undecided on the slave issue against them.
As you can see, violence is never works.
What we have here is one murderer, murdering another murderer. They both will stand before God and neither will justified, but proclaimed guilty. I have no doubt bu t what Tiller changed his stand on abortion yesterday. He was a day late
1
I don't think anyone has to tell Jesus anything, don't you know that He already knows...Since I have not formed what you suggest, I cannot count you in or out...that statement of yours is owned by you. I also never said they could tell Jesus how righteous they are, that statement is owned by you..
Per your freeper name, O has funny ears and I will make fun of them or yours if yours are funnier than his..
I would say that Tiller received justice.
Well said.
And yes, I think our nation will be judged....is being judged....for the 54 million unborn babies allowed to die.
If the Civil War was all about secession, my point question is even more pointed. Which is a greater injustice: secession or legalized abortion on demand?
My dear, those 54 million babies were not "allowed to die". They were deliberately and willfully killed by hired slaughterers; their dirty deeds were paid for retail, by individual citizens.
The denizens of Nazi Germany at least had the bad excuse that the killing was being done by uniformed government goons. In America, it's being done by private citizens. Which is worse?
"Putting words in my mouth" is boorish, and reflects badly on those who do it. If that's all you can manage, I have no interest in discussing anything with you.
AM: Do I assume correctly that the reference to donkeys was too much for this thead?
John Brown also died and stood before God. I'm a little curious to know how you think he was judged? What was the verdict?
You have far more confidence in the FedGov's restraint than I have. Let's say Texas tells FedGov to take a hike. They could, plausibly, make it stick.
You really think FedGov wouldn't respond with force?
If, in fact, the Union's resort to war was a justified response to secession ... what is justified response to abortion.
Which is the greater injustice: secession or abortion?
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