Life Is Beautiful!

INTRODUCTION

Opening Statement: On January 22, 1973 the United States Supreme Court handed down its famous Roe vs. Wade decision which unleashed death and destruction to the unborn. By a vote of 7-2 they declared that abortion was a constitutional right. This January marked the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the dreadful Supreme Court decision that found this "right to privacy" in the Constitution and used that right to legalize abortion-on-demand. Human dignity was dealt a horrendous blow. Some 50 million babies have died since that ruling was handed down. Today, however, the stakes are higher. We’re not talking about taking the lives of 50 million kids, as horrible as that is. We’re talking about creating the lives of 50 million kids—and then killing them, ostensibly for the good of humanity. Supposedly, we have created life for our own purposes.

Title: Life is Beautiful – Let’s not Mess it up!

Theme: Abortion and Cloning

Introduction: Charles Colson has suggested that cloning and the biotech agenda are even worse news for human dignity than abortion. Not only are we taking upon ourselves the god-like prerogative of ending human life as we choose, we are attempting to appropriate the prerogative of making human life as we choose. And now, the Raelians, a pro-cloning religious group, claim that a cloned child has been born. The Raelians claim that a cloned child, a baby girl named Eve, was born on December 26, 2002. They claim that more clones are due in a couple of months, and there’s a waiting list of two thousand people waiting to pay $200,000 each for a clone. This is not some science-fiction story—it’s an immediate concern. Their goal is to somehow transfer the mind of an aged or infirmed person into a youthful clone.

Observation: This is dangerous for a number of reasons. For example: cloned animals are typically plagued by health problems and are easily euthanized. Most animal cloned embryos die in the womb and most that survive to birth are defective in some form or another and often die early. We can only expect the same result for this unfortunate human clone, which is nothing more than a human experiment. Are we going to do the same to our human clones that begin to develop major problems? Are we going to bring human beings into this world with the intent of using them for replacement parts and take their lives when they no longer serve a valid purpose?

Exhortation: All of this makes many Christians want to simply build the church walls even higher, dig the moats deeper, and pull up the drawbridges. This is the least helpful—and least biblical—of all responses. We are called to be in the world, just as Jesus was. This is our moment to offer Christian hope. Even though the biotech revolution is moving like a steamroller, crushing everything in its path—including ethical questions, we can come in alongside our friends and encourage them and support them in choosing life for their unborn baby. We can offer eternal life in Christ rather than duplicate ourselves and use the duplicated person as “spare parts”. The cloning debate could very well be won over backyard fences and in barbershops across America. It will be won in our families as we teach our children, the future scientists and leaders of America, about the sanctity of human life. Helping our neighbors to understand the issues by our words and demonstrating our love by compassionate care is the way we will build a public consensus that will reject the culture of death to those who no longer serve a purpose.

Key Word: There are two key points to help us through the sanctity of human life issue: know what the Bible says about life and know what the issues really are regarding our most recent threat to life.

OUTLINE

What the Bible Says About Human Life!

Explanation: God is our Creator. We are responsible to Him. “I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born.” (Isaiah 44:2a - CEV). All life is precious to God. Whether it is a baby in the mother’s womb, a child, a youth, an adult or an elderly person. We are all precious to God. Thus, to kill a life because it doesn’t meet our criteria of “quality of life” is to usurp God’s creative role. Thus, abortion (the killing of an unborn human being), infanticide (the killing of an infant), euthanasia (the killing of the ill and the infirm), homicide (the murder of human beings at any stage in life), and cloning (the duplicating of another human being on our terms and for our own reasons) are all a revolt against God and an attempt to usurp the prerogatives and plans of the Creator.

You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it. Long before your parents conceived you, you were conceived in the mind of God. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you!