Eugenics is the
process of removing those people who are considered to be not worth sharing the
planet with you, either by race, disability or any other reason. It means
literally ‘good genes,’ whatever that might mean but it is generally tended for
some to mean that there are people that are sub-human, who do not deserve to
partake of breath.
They exhibit
the contempt for those people that they do not consider their equals, rather
like the pre-reformed Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Instead of the
provision of prison, workhouses and treadmills, they use the tools of abortion
and euthanasia to eliminate due to the supposed factors of economic stress and
inconvenience. ‘Compassion.’ ‘joy’ and ‘fulfilment’ are not in the vocabulary
of a eugenicist.
An example of
this train of thought was Ronald Aylmer Fisher who was a Fellow and President
of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from the 1920s through to the 1950s,
and was considered to be one of the finest mathematicians in the twentieth
century. His enthusiasm for evolutionary biology has resulted in him being
called ‘the greatest biologist since Darwin’ by Richard Dawkins (himself the
centre of a twitter storm when he suggested that it was alright to abort
pre-born children with Downs Syndrome). Fisher was one of the founding members
of the Cambridge Eugenics Society and he thought that ‘inferior’ races should
be eliminated. He informed an UNESCO enquiry in 1952 that ‘available scientific
knowledge provides a firm basis for believing that the groups of mankind differ
in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development,’ which
(thankfully) the inquiry disagreed with in their conclusion.
The views he
held were reflective of Charles Darwin himself. In his 1871 treatise The
Descent of Man, he wrote: ‘We civilised men…do our utmost to check the
process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the
sick…Thus the weak members of society propagate their kind.’
The family line
of Charles Darwin is closely intertwined with the eugenics movement. His son,
Leonard, was the President of the Eugenics Education Society from 1911 to 1929,
and every leading eugenicist was a member of this society.
More famously,
Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Dalton, coined the word ‘eugenics’ and founded
the (British) Eugenics Society in 1924, which later became the Galton Institute
in 1989. It is still in existence but has repudiated its eugenic past by saying
that Dalton represented a view that was held at the time.
The poverty,
squalor and waste that was evidenced in the Victorian and Edwardian periods,
especially in the rapidly growing cities but also in the rural communities, did
not evoke the compassion of the intelligentsia – those people who were in a position to influence society’s mindset
– but instead they felt revulsion and disgust for the people who were less
fortunate than they were. An example can be seen in the 1915 diary entry by
Virginia Woolf: ‘we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles, the first
was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the
second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one realised that everyone in
that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no
forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It
was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.’
There were
people on the political right that held these views as illustrated by Winston
Churchill stating in 1899 that his aim in life was the ‘improvement of the
British breed.’ He perceived the ‘feeble-minded’ (by which criteria is not
mentioned) as a threat and, in a letter to the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith,
advocated the compulsory sterilisation as an alternative to confinement –
stating that it would be ‘a simple surgical operation so the inferior could be
permitted freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others.’ It
is a remarkable statement from a man who was known to suffer depressive
episodes, which called the ‘black dog,’ and could easily be included in that
category for treatment.
Churchill was a
Liberal at the time of writing those words, albeit in a temporary manner before
he would return to the Conservative ranks. However, other more convinced
Liberals like John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge were convinced
eugenicists. Keynes was a co-founder with Fisher of the Cambridge Eugenics
Society and would continue to strongly hold eugenic views even after the Second
World War, calling it ‘the most important and significant branch of sociology.’
There is the
troubling observation that as Parliament was discussing the Beveridge Report
(which addressed want [caused by poverty],
ignorance [caused by lack of education], squalor [caused by poor
housing], idleness [caused by the lack of jobs or the ability to gain
employment], and idleness [caused by inadequate health provision]), the author
of the report was making a presentation to a group about eugenics.
William
Beveridge also remarked: ‘those men who through general defects are unable to
fill such a whole place in industry are to be recognised as unemployable. They
must become the acknowledged dependents of the State…but with complete and
permanent loss of all citizen rights – including not only the franchise but
civil freedom and fatherhood.’
Those views can
be observed also on the politically left, who claimed to have the welfare of
the working classes at heart, such as the Marxists and the Fabians. Eugenicists
on the left included Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Harold Laski, H G Wells, Julian
Huxley, J B S Haldane and George Bernard Shaw – all of whom saw eugenics as
part of the socialist programme. Shaw announced that ‘the only fundamental and
possible Socialism is the socialism of the selective breeding of Man.’
Beatrice Webb
thought that eugenics was ‘the most important question of all,’ whereas Sydney
declared that ‘no eugenicist can be a laissez-faire individualist.’
The philosopher
Bertrand Russell proposed that colour-coded ‘procreation tickets’ should be
issued by the State to prevent the gene pool of the elite being diluted by the
inferior humans. The deterrent would be that the people who decided to have
children with holders of a different coloured ticket would be punished with a
heavy fine.
H G Wells
complained about the impact that improving the lot of the majority would have:
‘We cannot go on giving you health, freedom, enlargement, limitless wealth, if
all our gifts to you are to be swamped by an indiscriminate torrent of
progeny…and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are
determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens
that you inflict upon us.’
In the 1930s,
the Labour MP Will Crooks described people with disabilities as ‘like human
vermin’ who ‘crawl about doing absolutely nothing, except polluting and
corrupting everything they touch.’ His colleague Archibald Church advocated the
compulsory sterilisation of certain categories of ‘mental patient’ as he
proposed that it was necessary to stop the reproduction of those ‘who are in
every way a burden to their parents, a misery to themselves and, in my opinion,
a menace to the social life of the community.’
The course of
though continued even through the field of ‘reproductive’ medicine. In her 1920
book Radiant Motherhood, Marie Stopes looked forward to legislation that
would ‘ensure the sterility of the hopelessly rotten and racially
diseased.’ Elsewhere, she stated that
abortion was the means of reducing the ‘ever increasing, unceasing spawning
class of human beings who should never be born at all,…birth control [i.e.
abortion]…is really the greatest and most truly eugenic movement of ‘human
generation’.’ She continued to say that abortion was ‘the most constructive and
necessary to the means of racial health.’
Marie Stopes attended
the Nazi-organised Berlin congress on ‘population science’ in 1936. She also
indicated her priorities by leaving the bulk of her fortune to the Eugenic
Society, which had campaigned for racial purity. Ms Stopes also cut her son
Harry out of her will as he married a woman, Mary, who was short-sighted. Ms
Stopes wrote of her daughter-in-law: ‘She has the inherited disease of the eyes
which only makes her wear hideous glasses so that it is horrid to look at her;
but the awful cost will carry on and I have the horror of our line being so
contaminated and little children with the misery of glasses…Mary and Harry are
quite callous about both the wrong to their children, the wrong to my family
and the eugenic crime.’
It was a view
that was carried forward for Margaret Sanger (the pioneer of Planned
Parenthood) set out her beliefs in a 1923 op-ed for the New York Times: ‘Birth
control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtless practice. It
means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society,
and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective
stocks – those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of
American civilisation.’
There are example
today of women whose babies have diagnosed with differences being pressurised
into having abortions. There was the promotion by the Department of Health
responsible for England for the introduction of a new form of ‘non-invasive’
pre-natal testing which would be possibly more accurate than previous methods
of maternal blood-testing to see if Downs Syndrome is evident. Hans Galjaard,
the Dutch geneticist who has written reports on the new form of screening, was
asked if the new type of screening would result in the elimination of Downs
Syndrome, to which he replied, ‘Yes, that was one of my motivations.’
James Watson is
another member of the scientific community who considers that he has the right
to determine the lives of other people. The American Nobel Prize Laureate and
co-discoverer of the DNA structure wrote in 1995 (‘Values from Chicago
Upbringing’ in D A Chambers (ed) The Double Helix Perspective and
Prospective at Forty Years, New York academy of Science, p. 197): ‘But
diabolical as Hitler was, and I don’t want to minimise the evil he perpetuated using
false genetic arguments, we should not be held hostage to his awful past. For
the genetic dice will continue to inflict cruel fates on all too many
individuals and their families who do not deserve this damnation. Decency
demands the someone must rescue them from genetic hells. If we don’t play God,
who will?’
This attitude
permeates throughout the so-called intelligentsia, who think that they have the
right to ride roughshod over the lives of others and to whom the word ‘love’
never enters the equation. The writer Dominic Lawson tells of how he and his
wife embraced the birth of their daughter, Dominica who has Downs Syndrome,
into their family. After her birth, Dominic revealed that Claire Rayner, a
well-known British agony aunt and broadcaster, had written an article claiming
that the Lawsons had behaved ‘selfishly’ because of the ‘cost to society’ that
people like Dominica had incurred. Ms
Rayner had written: ‘People who are not yet parents should ask if they have the
right to inflict such burdens on others.’ Incredibly, Ms Rayner was a patron of
the Down’s Syndrome Association and she could not understand why the
Association asked her to resign.
Elsewhere, it
was ascertained that at least ten adults with disabilities were sterilised in Australia’s
Northern Territories at the request of their guardians and not the individuals
themselves. In a 2019 United Nations report, there was concern about ‘the
non-consensual administration of contraceptives and abortions for, and the
sterilisation of women with disabilities.’ These concerns included what had
been happening in Australia.
The application
of abortions to people living with disabilities also applies to people of
non-white racial group. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, an
Afro-American, wrote in his opinion on a law case (Indiana Department of Heath
et al v Planned Parenthood, Indiana and Kentucky Inc. et al) and highlighted
the racial element when the abortion statistics are considered: ‘The reported
nationwide abortion ration – the number of abortions per 1,000 live births –
among black women is nearly 3.5 times the ratio for white women…There are areas
of New York in which black children are more likely to be aborted than they are
to be born alive – and are up to eight times more likely to be aborted than
white children in the same area.’
He continued:
‘Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race,
sex, or disability of an unborn child as Planned Parenthood advocates, would
constitutionalise the views of the 20th century eugenic movement.’
The people who
supposed to protect the weakest in society are, instead, damaging or even
eliminating them. Victor Frankl commented: ‘If we present man with a concept of
man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton
of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives
and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, hereditary and environmental, we
feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone and become
acquainted with in the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration
camp, Auschwitz.’
He continued
with this observation: ‘The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate
consequence of the theory that man is nothing more than the product of heredity
and environment – or as the Nazis liked to say, of “blood and soil.” I am
absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and
Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but
rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.’
The assertion
has been made, correctly, that Hitler believed that the biological advancement
of humanity was the highest good: ‘for Hitler the highest arbiter of morality
and political policies was the evolutionary advancement of the human species.
In the final analysis, Hitler based his morality on a racist form of
evolutionary ethics.’ (Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of
Evolutionary Progress, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2009, p. 8) The
disturbing statistic is that the Nazis were not unusual in their low views
about the other races, especially the Jewish people, both in mainland Europe,
and also in the United Kingdom and the United States. The surprise is that the
movement took off in Germany as it was the nation that had the highest number
of inter-racial marriages between Jews and non-Jews of all that part of Europe.
There was far more fervent anti-Semitism in countries such as Poland, Ukraine
and Lithuania (see Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: History’s Age of
Hatred, Penguin Books, London, 2006). The impact of Hitler’s belief in
social Darwinism can be seen in his own words (as illustrated in Richard
Weikart, op cit.): ‘History itself represents the progression of a
people’s (Volk) struggle for life’ (p. 36); ‘All of nature is a powerful
struggle between power and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the
weak’ (p. 37); ‘[I]n the limitation of this living space (Lebensraum)
lies the compulsion for the struggle for life, in turn, contains the
precondition for evolution’ (p. 36); ‘The entire universe appears to be ruled
only by this one idea, that eternal selection takes place, in which the
stronger in the end preserves its life and the right to life, and the weaker
falls’ (p. 39)
The words of
this Fascist dictator is not too far from the classic Darwinian view – in fact
the term ‘survival of the fittest’ coined by Herbert Spencer and then used by
Charles Darwin as a chapter heading in a later version of The Origins of the
Species would suitably encapsulate this perspective. To quote the Victorian
author in Descent of Man: ‘Natural selection follows from the struggle
for existence…Had he [man] never been subjected to natural selection, assuredly
he would have never had attained to the rank of manhood…[I]t may well be
doubted whether the most favourable [circumstances] would have sufficed [to
produce human evolution], had not the rate of increase been rapid, and the
consequent struggle for existence severe to an extreme degree.’ Richard Weikart
has commented that racism was percolated throughout evolutionary thought in all
intellectual societies as ‘Darwinian vision of racial inequality that viewed
races as having evolved in varying amounts from their simian ancestors.’ (op
cit. p. 58) It is not too far a leap to make from Hitler to the view that
is held by many eugenicists today who regard people who do not fit into their
categories as having personhood and therefore not worthy of living.
It was not only
people in the Third Reich who were from other races than the ‘Aryan’ who were
eliminated, but also those who lived with mental health issues regardless of
racial classification. There was a Nazi policy of sterilising women who were
considered to have undesirable traits. In less than twelve years, approximately
400,000 women with hereditary illnesses were forcibly sterilised and, from 1934
onwards, all women who were within the scope of the sterilisation law were also
forced to have abortions. It is worrying close to having comparisons with our
present society where ‘undesirable’ characteristics even to the level of an
unborn child having a cleft palate being the subject of a discussion regarding
abortion. An example would that, in Iceland, there are steps to increase the
abortion of pre-born children with Downs Syndrome so that it is eradicated from
that nation. The conversation must lead to how close these actions are to those
of the Nazi State, and whether indeed it is the same steps that are being taken.
It is an uncomfortable discussion that we must be bold to initiate.
It is right
that there is abhorrence at what the Nazis and other totalitarian governments
have done, especially in the light of such events as the Holocaust. It appears
that they have lost the military battles, but they have won the (im)moral war,
if we treat human lives without regard and honour from conception to the final
breath.
When God is
removed from the equation, there is a greater propensity to regard fellow
humans with lesser regard. A typical response is as follows: ‘Let me summarise
my view on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear…There are
no gods, no purposes, no goal directed forces of any kind. There is no life
after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead.
There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no
free will for humans, either.’ (William B Provine, Origins Research 16 (1): 9,
1994)
In such
viewpoints, humanity is an accident at best and a curious joke at worst.
According to such intellectuals, such as the new atheist Jerry Coyne, ‘There is
no special purpose to your life, no more extrinsic value than a squirrel or an
armadillo.’
The
consequences are that the standard of personhood becomes arbitrary as there are
no absolutes except for each individual thinks right. It could be on the
ability to make choices as Peter Singer, a preference utilitarian, would
maintain: ‘A being who has capacity for self-awareness and for making choices,
exercising preference about continuing life.’
Another
definition is made by John Harris, in his book The Value of Life: ‘A
being who is capable of valuing their own existence …The value of my life is
precisely the value I give to my own life.’ He has argued that if a person does
not know if they are alive then they do not have a value.
Michael Tooley,
in Abortion and Infanticide, defines as follows: ‘A person is a being
who is capable of understanding that they have a ‘continuing self’…if you are
not aware that you exist, you do not have an automatic right to life.’
The problems
with these definitions are that they are subjective with no standard by which
they can tested. The stated viewpoints become even more cloudy in the mist
caused by post-modernity where all views are valid, even those which contradict
their analysis. It would be interesting to see how these writers would view their
own life limitations and whether it would have prevented them from being born
or would lead to an early forced termination of their life. The certainty that
can be stated is we might think that a person is not aware of their
circumstances, but we could be completely wrong. In work on people with deep
unresponsive comas (that is, vegetive functions) by M Adrian and others using
magnetic imagery, it showed that their brain awareness was still functioning.
In another
scenario, a number of studies have shown that pre-born children are aware of
their existence and surroundings. They are aware of the noises that go on in
the outside world including arguments, soothing sounds and television programme
theme tunes. It has been well attested that, although pre-born children are
wholly dependent, they are also fully sentient (see, for example, ‘Science is
giving the pro-life movement a boost,’ The Atlantic, 19 January 2018). Nancy
Pearcey has written that because of ‘advances in genetics and DNA, virtually
all professional bioethicists agree that life begins at conception.’ (Love
Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, Baker Books, Grand
Rapids, MI, 2018, p. 25) It is a slippery slope if the argument should be
advanced that dependent humans should be removed as it goes against all that we
hold to be human, as we help those who are unable to help themselves to give
them dignity and to honour their existence.
As to those
older people with advanced dementia, there are instances in the Netherlands
where such patients have had to be anathemised before they were given the drugs
to end their life.
When there is
no ethical bedrock, there will be amorality, which fills the moral space in a
vacuum. There is no void in morality as something will fill it. It will
belittle the high standing which God has imputed into each person, and we will
end up with sentiments expressed by Richard Dawkins in a tweet on 16 February
2020: ‘It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral
grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of
course, it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs and roses. Why on earth
wouldn’t it work for humans?’ In other words, despite eugenics offending the
moral sensibilities of many and the philosophical thoughts of scholars, it is
proposed by the advocates of eugenics to progress in any event.
There is no
great enthusiasm among the medical profession for removing life. The
overwhelming majority of hospice practitioners are against the use of
euthanasia and there is a dwindling number of doctors who are prepared to carry
out abortions. Lord Robert Winston wrote tellingly (in ‘Eugenics: Evil is its
DNA,’ The Sunday Times, 23 February 2020): ‘As doctors…the key issues is
respect for the individual. Eugenics is quite different. It does not involve
paramount respect for the individual, but rather the interests of society.’
Although Lord
Winston would not ascribe his thinking to a deity, there is great concern about
how far out the tentacles of eugenics is reaching out. In parts of Europe,
there are babies who are aborted after birth, similar to the practices of
infanticide demonstrated in the worst times of the Roman empire.
Eugenics is
frankly the grab for power by those who are in authority, or consider
themselves to be. It is the concept held by those who are considered to be in
power or privilege – wanting to eliminate and erase those people who do not fit
their criteria, like a school bully wanting to get rid of a less able pupil
from a school by remorseless removal of any dignity and worth. Instead of God,
they want to play the roles of gods. As C S Lewis stated in Abolition of Man:
‘Man’s power over Nature turns out to be power exerted by some men over other
men.’
There has been
a weakening of the Christian ethos, certainly in the United Kingdom as in other
countries in the west, as exhibited in the 1967 Abortion Act. Major General Tim
Cross has likened the western society as being like a ‘cut flower,’ where it
will end up in the bin and die as it is removed from the soil where it was
cultivated; it does not grow, cannot new seeds of meaning and hope, and no new
flowers can be formed. Once the plant has been wrenched from its heritage, it
cannot be replanted.
There used to
be the acknowledgement that we relied on God for our very existence – the
source of the breath that gave us life (Genesis 2: 7). Paul restated this fact
before the Athenians when he said that God ‘gives all men life and breath and
everything else.’ (Acts 17: 25) It is a mark of humanity that we recognise that
we are not independent beings, however much we yearn for that status, as Paul
again spoke that ‘in him [i.e. God] we live and breath and have our being.’
(Acts 17: 28) It is from God who has made us His image-bearers, that we derive
our dignity, identity and significance. The removal of our lives outside of His
timing deprives us of all three things.
The words of
the Jimmy Carter Centre, in its Annoted Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
encapsulate the same thoughts: ‘The moral status of human beings is exalted in
large part due to the declaration first made in Genesis 1 that human beings are
made in the divine image.’
The high view
of all people has been expressed by John Wyatt, the Christian physician: ‘Our
creation in God’s image implies…a radical equality…In the human community, we
are surrounded by other reflections of God who are different, but fundamentally
equal in dignity to ourselves.’ (Matters of Life & Death, Inter
Varsity Press, Nottingham, 2009, p. 61)
The reliance on
God commences pre-birth, from the moment we are conceived onwards, as the
psalmist wrote: ‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my
mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your
works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of
the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were
written in your book before one of them came to be.’ (Psalm 139: 13 – 16)
Likewise, God
takes the moment that we leave this world as being part of His plan. He
considers it to be a holy thing: ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the
death of his saints.’ (Psalm 116: 15) Death, however it comes, is not to be
treated lightly or of no consequence. It is many, many times greater than the
consequence of taking an animal to be put out of its misery as men and women,
boys and girls are made in the image of God – something that is unique and
awesome.
The protection
and, more importantly, the celebration of the weakest in our society
demonstrates our strength – our capacity to love, to enjoy, and even to be
humble. Our societies are like forests, with trees interlinking their roots –
the removal of even one tree, however insignificant it might be considered,
will cause the catastrophic erosion of all that is good. Babies with
disabilities are able to touch the hardest hearts, and even those people with
the most gnarled bodies or minds are able to contribute by being themselves and
so bring out the best in others. Joseph Pieper was right in saying: ‘Love is a
way of saying to a person, “It’s good that you exist, it’s good that you are in
the world”.’
We live in a
mixed up world where a pre-born baby at 26 weeks gestation may be murdered in
one hospital room, whilst a similarly aged one is being rushed to a neonatal
care room. In England and Wales in 2019, there were 207,384 abortions, with
only 0.06 per cent due to a risk to the mother’s life and only 1.5 per cent
were due to the baby’s disability, which means that the vast majority were for
socio-economic reasons. It has been calculated that, in England and Wales, nine
million lives have been lost due to abortion in the last fifty years. Or, to
use another illustration, an older person in one part of the world may have
their life ended by euthanasia; whilst, in another country, there might be people
raising money so that person can have a better quality of life.
As people with
power, however limited we think that it is, Christians should reflect the
values of the God who created us and then gave us this amazing gift of rebirth
through Jesus Christ – which is available to all regardless of physical or
mental characteristics. There is the need not only be pro-life when it comes to
beginning and end of life issues, but throughout the whole of a person’s life.
We should be demonstrating care for issues that affect a person’s dignity and
need for righteousness and justice, whether it be that of poverty, ethnicity or
any other issue.
God is
concerned for every step that a person takes for Jeremiah reminds us: ‘I know,
O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his
steps.’ (10: 23) He is concerned about every minutiae of our lives (Matthew 6:
26) and He expects us to take the same care for the weak and vulnerable.
There are
countless examples in Scripture of God showing His compassion and active
involvement where people have been in situations of weakness. We see this in
the earthly ministry of Jesus, such as in the miracles where people are healed (e.g.
John 5: 1 – 15; Mark 5: 25 – 34) and in the raising the widow of Nain’s son
from the dead where she relied on him for welfare (Luke 7: 11 – 17). The high
regard for people in the lowliest of circumstances was obviously one that
continued into the Church as, for example, Peter and John healed a beggar (Acts
3: 1 – 10) The pattern that they were following could be seen in their Master
as Peter explained to Cornelius: ‘how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy
Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were
under the power of the devil, because God was with him.’ (Acts 10: 38).
It is
interesting to note that God who is all-powerful used the ultimate tool of
weakness. Jesus came and was not born in a royal palace but in accommodation
for animals and placed in a feeding trough; He was not involved in high
politics or ruminated over the finer points of philosophy in the ivory towers
of the day, but travelled to mingle with the outcasts and the despised; and He
did not die comfortably on a luxurious bed but, at a very young age, on the rough
cross as a subject of scorn and ridicule.
God makes
salvation available to all so that everyone can understand it, regardless of
age, mental capacity and physical abilities. There are no abstract boundaries
and, indeed, He seems to delight in contradicting the whims of men for exclusivity.
Paul writes to fellow Christians about when Jesus came into their lives: ‘Not
many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were
of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the
wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the
lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are
not – to nullify the things that are, so that no-one may boast before him.’ (1
Corinthians 1: 26 – 29) It was a lesson that Paul had to learn in his own life:
‘For when I am weak, I am strong’ (2 Corinthians 12: 10) for it was then that
he had to rely on the grace of Christ.
When it comes
to the crunch, I want to be on the side of the weak, the dependant and the
vulnerable as God clearly is. It is that standing with them from conception to
their natural end, and every time in between. It is not my standards or
assessments, my thoughts of who have the best genes, but to see every person in
the uniqueness that God has given to them.
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