Living Righteously in a Culture of Death

Jesus commands us to be Salt and Light. “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13–16, NIV)

In a culture of death, Christians need to be Salt and Light. The actual term “Culture of Death” first entered common use after Pope John Paul II mentioned it several times in his 1993 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. Evangelium Vitae is Latin for “The Gospel of Life”. In the encyclical, John Paul II wrote about the intrinsic value of every human life, which must be welcomed and loved from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Here is a quote from the encyclical in which he defines what he means by a Culture of Death: “A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of 'conspiracy against life' is unleashed.” The Culture of Death is a culture where "it is the strong who decide the fate of the weak." How do we live righteously in a culture of death?

This morning I’d like to do four thing: 1) Read the pertinent Biblical Texts, 2) articulate the Christian Doctrine, 3) examine the Cultural Challenge, and 4) contemplate the Believer’s Response.

I. THE BIBLICAL TEXT

“This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:4–7, NIV)

“The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. The word of the LORD came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile. The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:1–5, NIV)

“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16–17, NIV)

1. these passages, and many more, teach us that God is the Creator and Sustainer of life

a. he breathed into Adam the breath of life and Adam became a living being

b. in Jeremiah we hear God saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you ...

1) even though a man and a women come together in sexual union, one providing the seed and one providing the egg, it is God who brings the two separate elements together and forms a person within the womb ... no child conceived is conceived “by accident” from God’s viewpoint

2) contrary to what some people think, the verse does not teach that we existed as a soul waiting to be born into a body, but that God’s foreknowledge of events is so certain that their reality is certain

c. the Colossian passage teaches that we are a revolutionary creation of God and not an evolutionary accident of the cosmos

2. from these verses (and many, many others) we develop the doctrine of man and our come to understand our humanity

II. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

1. the doctrine of man teaches that a Sovereign God created human beings to reflect His image, to enjoy the blessings of marriage and family, to accomplish good works, and live in relationship with Him

ILLUS. Some of you have seen the 1980 movie The Elephant Man. It is based on the life story of Joseph Merrick, an English man with severe deformities from neurofibromatosis who was exhibited as a human curiosity named the Elephant Man. If you’ve not scene the movie, I recommend it to you. There is a scene in which Merrick is traveling by train to London. When in public he wears a hood with eye-slits because his appearance is so hideous that children flee and women faint at his sight. As he leaves the train platform a group of young teens begin to follow and torment him. All they see is a hooded man walking with a severe limp. Soon the crowd grows and he is chased into a the men’s lavatory where he is cornered. Someone grabs and removes his hood and the crowd gasps and recoils in shock, but then closes in to attack. At that moment, he cries out, “I am not an animal. I am not an animal. I am a human being!”

2. we are not animals—we are the superlative act of God’s creative work

a. but worldviews have consequences

1) the Darwinian worldview is that we, are indeed, merely animals ... a more highly evolved species of animal, but merely an animal

2) to believe otherwise is the “sin” of speciesism—the assumption that humans are superior to the rest of the world’s creatures

a) it’s the view of the radical animal-rights movement

ILLUS. David Sztybel, a Canadian philosopher specializing in animal ethics, writes that our enjoyment of a juicy hamburger or a thick steak is comparable to the racism of the Nazis that led to the holocaust.

3) this is some of the nonsense that results when a culture rejects the biblical understanding of humanity

b. ever since Charles Darwin released his book Origin of the Species in 1859 the prevailing theory among the intelligentsia of the world is that there is no clear boundary between Homo sapiens and the lower species from which we supposedly evolved

1) it’s a scientific theory that nullifies the need for a sovereign deity who creates and rules over his creation

2) it’s a worldview that denies life beyond death

ILLUS. Toward the end of his life, Darwin wrote, In the theory of evolution, man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin upon him. It makes him a brute, only more intelligent than other brutes.”

c. evolution is a theory that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy—if a man is told often enough and loud enough that he is nothing but a brutish animal, we should not be surprised when men, as a whole, begin acting brutishly

1) Karl Marx took Darwin’s theory and applied it to human society, suggesting that a man has no inherent significance or value beyond his contribution to the well-being of society

2) the individual is merely a cog in the machinery of society and when the person’s usefulness to society ends they lose their right to use up valuable commodities that are better used for the strong and healthy

d. the result has been an ever-increasing devaluing of human life that considers the very young and the very old, or the sick or the disabled as dispensable

ILLUS. Some of you may remember, when just a couple of years ago, Iceland triumphantly announced that it had all but eradicated Down’s Syndrome within the tiny nation. What they didn’t announce was that they were accomplishing that goal by “eradicating” babies in the womb who were diagnosed with potentially having Down’s Syndrome! There was no medical breakthrough in treating the Syndrome ... no technology that healed the person afflicted with the malady ... they just killed the unborn who potentially had it.

1) Western culture has now become a Culture of Death in which the sanctity of human life is demeaned and those who would defend it, ridiculed

2) when a culture devalues human life and then airbrushes God out of public view it brews a toxic mix

ILLUS. The result was an unprecedented assault on human life and human dignity in the 20th century. An estimated one billion people died under the reign of Totalitarian regimes ... regimes that adopted the Darwinian view of man and.

3. the biblical view, of course, transcends this idea that man is simply a biological phenomenon

a. the Christian understanding of man as a special product of God’s creative grace cuts directly across the naturalistic interpretation that is evolution

4. a biblical view of the doctrine of man begins with unapologetic commitment to a sovereign God who formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life making him a living soul

5. the doctrine of man, therefore, encompasses four axioms

A. 1st, WE ARE THE PINNACLE OF GOD'S CREATION

1. the structure of Genesis 1 accentuates that mankind is not an afterthought, but is instead the pinnacle of God's creation

2. the psalmist asked, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4)

a. the question reveals that thoughtful people long ago were puzzling over the nature of humanity

b. even the ancients realized that man is fearfully and wonderfully made—that we are different than the rest of creation

1) man is the only creature among all the creatures who investigates himself

ILLUS. The salamander does not ponder his origins—how he came to be what he is, or why he enjoys living under logs and rocks or what lies beyond the twenty square yards of his territory.

2) man is the only creature among all the creatures who feels impelled to ask, “Who am I”, and “Where did I come from?” and “What makes me different from other creatures?”

ILLUS. Only man asks these questions. The Chickadee does not sit at the bird feeder pondering its "birdness."

3. philosophers, theologians, and scientists have mulled over these questions

a. the effort to explain human life has spawned religions, philosophies, legends, saga, and scientific theories

b. in college classrooms, science laboratories, pulpits, and endless books the human being continues to try to account for himself

4. our search to answer the question “Who am I?” if it does not begin with God, will end in a horribly flawed worldview that will ultimately lead to, as Pope Paul II wrote, a conspiracy against life

a. we are not accidents of evolutionary chance, but a special creation by an all-powerful Creator

5. no other part of creation is made in God's image—only humans: No other part of creation is expressly blessed by God—only Adam and Eve

a. we are not a potluck product of the natural processes

B. 2nd, MEN AND WOMEN SHARE GOD’S IMAGE EQUALLY

1. Genesis 1:27 declares that men and women both share equally in the image of God

a. Eve is not somehow less than Adam because she was created out of Adam

b. in this way, gender and corresponding sexual ethics are rooted in the image of God in humanity

c. we are created distinctly man and distinctly woman as a part of the goodness of God’s creative work

1) both sexes are equal before God and are called upon to accept and respect the God-given gender assignment given them

2) not to do so is creaturely rebellion against the Creator

2. the Christian view of gender thus opposes the modern idea that “gender” is “fluid” and a mere “social construction”

C. 3rd, EVERY PERSON OF EVERY ETHNICITY SHARES GOD’S IMAGE EQUALLY

1. one of the most pernicious ideas that initially came out of Darwin’s theory of evolution was that certain ethnicities of men are inferior to other ethnicities of men

a. sadly, it Darwinism was used as a defense for slavery

2. but the biblical doctrine of man teaches that Every person of every ethnicity is made in the image of God

a. while there are a number of ethic classifications of men there is only one race of men—the human race

b. if this is true, and it is, then there is no room in Christian ethics for distorted ideas suggesting that one’s skin color or ethnicity is better than another, a truth further verified by the fact that Eve is called the "mother of all living" (Gen. 3:20)

c. likewise, disparaging remarks about other people are forbidden since James reminds us of the danger of cursing "men who are made in God's likeness" (James 3:19)

3. the final book of the Biblical Canon makes if clear that people from every nation, tribe, people and language will worship together before the throne of God

D. 4th, WE ARE TO BE RESPONSIBLE STEWARDS OF CREATION

1. the creation of humans in the image of God entails human responsibility as stewards of the earth

“God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28, NIV)

2. the doctrine of man entails three important responsibilities that flow out of our assignment to be stewards over creation

a. 1st to “be fruitful and increase in number”

1) here is a reference to the gift of marriage and human sexuality

2) one of man’s assigned duties is to procreate the species

b. 2nd, we are to “work the ground”

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” (Genesis 2:15, NIV)

1) more literally, we are to make the ground work for us

a) we are to manage it, and use its resources so that mankind might flouish

c. 3rd, because humans alone are made in the image of God, humans alone are tasked with "ruling over" creation

1) humanity is not an imposition on the planet, because the planet was created for human habitation

2) Genesis paints a picture of the Earth as actually waiting for humanity to arrive so that the world can thrive

"This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, ... “

3) God created the Garden, not for the plants, but for the human creature that He would put in the Garden and tend it

4) the world is not simply man’s environment but his domain over which he is to exercise dominion

d. while we should not interpret "dominion" as a synonym for "exploitation," the doctrine of the image of God in humanity does in fact mean that humans are more important than animals and birds and fish and vegetation, and the very ground we walk on, and are to rule over these things

3. in conclusion, the Doctrine of Man teaches that God bestows upon humanity a dignity and providential purpose which all other views of man’s origins fail to comprehend

“You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:” (Psalm 8:5–6, NIV)

a. God animated Adam’s body and endued it with a special quality of life and dignity

b. man became a living person with a self-awareness, and intelligent existence—we are, according to the story, a living soul

1) we’re not a body with a soul, but more accurately, a body-soul

2) we are, therefore, neither just a physical being nor a spiritual one—but both at the same time

4. the worldview implication is that human beings have an innate dignity and should not be wantonly or unjustly destroyed

III. THE CULTURAL CHALLENGE

We live in a post-Genesis-3 world, meaning we live in a fallen world where the world, the flesh, and the devil are the dominant influences of human behavior. The result is a serious distortion of the Doctrine of Man.

Through the centuries men have devalued, debased, and destroyed human life. and continues to do so. Consider the slave-labor camps in today’s China; the child soldiers in Uganda; Islamic suicide bombers and their victims in Afghanistan and Iraq; the endless wars in Colombia, Burma, Kashmir, and Somalia; the sex trade in Thailand; man-made famine in North Korea; euthanasia in Europe; the ghastly toll of abortion in America. The culture of death is real and it is pervasive.

In our own culture the “culture of death” has become as “American as apple pie.” Abortion is now one of America’s most common surgical procedures performed on adults. As many as one out of every three women in America will have at least one abortion. In some minority communities, the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births. The tragedy of abortion has left 60 million babies tossed into surgical scrap buckets. Proponents of abortion insist that abortion is the ultimate act of empowering women, and that a women posses the “right” over her body, including the terminating of a pregnancy. Merle Hoffman, a major voice in the abortion rights movement, has declared that women need to understand abortion as no more significant an act than having “a bikini wax.”

In western Europe the culture of death is most clearly witnessed in the growing acceptance of euthanasia or what they euphemistically call “mercy killing.” The Netherlands was the first European county to legalize voluntary euthanasia or physician assisted suicide in 2002. Around 80 per cent of people who request euthanasia die at home and are killed by doctors on the grounds that they are suffering unbearably either physically or mentally, and are making an informed choice. Last year, 6,400 people were officially euthanized in the Netherlands, but unofficially an astonishing 32,000 were helped to die by a physician. Technically, euthanasia is illegal in the United States, but Physician Aid in Dying (PAD), is legal in the states of California, Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Vermont. Movements to extend the practice exist in every other state. “Death With Dignity” is their motto. Proponents of euthanasia say that death is to be embraced, and those whose lives are unworthy of life should die and get out of our way. It is a short slide down the proverbial slippery slope from “Physician Aid in Dying” to “an ethic which places the doctor's loyalty to the nation as 'cultivator of the gene pool' above his responsibility to the individual patient.” The liberal progressive will scoff at this prediction. And yet, right now in America, 80% of all pregnancies where amniocentesis reveals Downs Syndrom, that child is aborted. How soon until we euthanize the Downs Syndrom child post birth?

All of these examples beg a series of questions: Who decides who shall live and who shall die? Will economic concerns become the primary means of judging tho is worthy of life? Who gains by the death? What does this say about how we value life

IV. THE BELIEVER’S RESPONSE

1. as God’s people, we are called to be more than simply “not part of the problem”

a. we are called to be part of the solution, to offer the remedy to mankind’s brokenness

2. God has always been deeply concerned about the culture surrounding His people

a. He called Abraham to be set apart from those around him

b. in Exodus, He implored His people, “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong”

c. in Leviticus, He commanded His people, “Do not follow any of the detestable customs” of neighboring nations

d. and in the Gospels, He called on His followers to be salt and light for the world

3. “You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus said. “You are the light of the world”

a. but what happens if the salt loses its saltiness? What happens if the light is hidden, if it doesn’t point the way out of darkness?

b. if we don’t try to make the culture better, then what good are we?

A. JESUS WANTS US TO INFLUENCE OUR CULTURE

1. the Church must be a culture of life, contending for human dignity at every level—in the womb, in the nursing home, in the hospital ward, on the streets and in the schools

a. even as we have become the moral minority, the church must be engaged and not disengaged

1) we can have an impact by not doing certain things —

not going to the latest slasher movie

not shrugging our shoulders when children play violent video games and certainly not buying them for them

not merely clucking our tongues and tisk-tisking the news of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s ‘house of horrors’ abortion clinic

2) we can also have an impact by doing certain things —

we can support pro-life ministries like our own Missouri Baptist Children’s home in it’s ministry to unwed mothers

we can vote for pro-life legislators

we can support pro-life legislation by writing our Senators and Representatives

we can encourage our children to remain sexually pure so they don’t have to worry about what to do in case of an unplanned pregnancy, and in the case of an unplanned pregnancy we can encourage them to deliver the child regardless of the embarrassment it may cause

we can encourage our loved ones faced with debilitating illnesses or unbearable pain, that even in the midst of their suffering God has a plan

2. God’s people must develop a conviction that is unashamedly pro-life

ILLUS. Will we, unashamedly be a “pro-life” people, or will we be a “pro-death” people? On Nov. 9 of last year (2018), a group of various"faith leaders" performed a blessing on a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Columbus, Ohio. They referred to the building, which has as it’s primary function aborting babies as “Holy Ground,” and “Sacred Space.” They billed the gathering as a “celebration of conscience and moral decision making.” What they’re really celebrating is mutilation and death. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness…"

a. the abortion controversy and the embryonic stem cell controversy are not a debate between those who are pro-choice and those who are anti-choice

b. it’s not about privacy

c. it’s not about trusting women to decide what is best for her life

d. it’s not about forcing one’s morality on someone else

e. it’s about one question that trumps all others

1) What is the unborn?

2) if the unborn is a human being, created in the image of God, endued with an innate dignity, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong

ILLUS. In a chilling admission, pro-abortion advocate, Mary Williams writing for Salon.com conceded what the pro-life movement has contended all along—that from the moment of conception the unborn child is undeniably a human life. And yet Williams argues that this unborn human must be terminated if the mother so desires. That a woman’s autonomy over her own body trumps the rights of the child growing in her womb. Williams coldly maintains that “[The mother’s] life and what is right for her circumstances ... automatically trumps the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.” The unborn baby, which she fully believes is human, is a “life worth sacrificing.”

3. when the champions of death threaten vulnerable lives, champions of life must arise to protect them

a. I’m encouraging you to be a champion of life

4. we can take on the Culture of Death

a. we win by shining the light of truth upon an ideology that depends on darkness and secrecy for its very survival

b. this war of ideas will not be a short war, unfortunately the worldview war we are engaged in is war with real human casualties both young and old

The heart of our problem is that our culture is full of men and women who have a heart of stone, that needs to be replaced with a heart of flesh.

The Bible describes the ultimate purpose of your life as entering God's Kingdom. This requires receiving the heart of flesh. We call that being born again. Once you’ve been born again, you’re to become the salt and light of the culture you live in.

Prayer: Oh God our Creator and Sustainer of life, have mercy upon our nation. We are a people who have chosen to walk the paths of destruction when righteousness is before our eyes. We confess we have chosen death and not life by allowing the killing of the innocent life in the womb. By this we have also devalued life that is beyond the womb. We have made poor choices and are now suffering the judgment of them. But I pray now that You O God would give each of us the courage to be Your voice in the wilderness to speak of Your righteousness. Help us to cast off lips of silence. Have mercy and forgive us. On this day we are observe and choose life.

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