"For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven..."

This is an interesting article by a religion teacher at a Catholic high-school in New York.

He says:

We recently tackled abortion.
A few students tried to make abortion a feminist issue, but interestingly, only a very few...A few others defended abortion as a necessary means of birth control or even population control. But the most prominent line of thinking by far was, well, not thinking.

In my personal experience of University students, this is also so so so true.

Most people are "pro-choice" simply because they haven't actually thought about it.
Abortion is legal, society is mostly pro-choice...so teens and young adults just assimilate that and take the because-it's-legal-it-must-be-right stance.

They don't actually THINK about it.

It is honestly rare to find a young person who says, "Okay, so a fetus at 10 weeks old has a beating heart, it is growing, it is alive, it is a separate person from its mother...but I still think it's okay to kill it."

at least not in my experience.

{Interestingly most doctors however DO have that stance, because they know that abortion involves the killing of a life...they just don' think the life is important. ]


These interactions from the article are between the teacher and students and I think they are a great reflection of how lots of young people think:

Steve: It’s not like we’re talking about a living person here.
Me: What do you mean?
Steve: Well, the heart doesn’t even start
beating until it’s like five months along.
Me: Five months?
Steve: Sure.
Me: Actually, it’s more like three weeks.
Steve: No way. That’s not true.


Now, every one of these
college-bound juniors covered fetal development in ninth-grade biology. Consider
another student’s assertion.

Craig: Until it [the unborn baby]
comes out, it’s not alive. It’s dead.
Me: Dead?
Craig: Yeah.
Me: And what do you base that statement on?
Craig: Science.

If charity suggested I chalk all this up to (profound) ignorance and
misinformation, Samantha left no doubt about what lay beneath them. In the midst
of yet another discussion of basic fetology, this honor student spoke up.

Samantha: Yes, but what science says doesn’t matter.
Me:
(silent, unsure of an appropriate response to such an assertion)
Samantha: Just because something is true doesn’t mean you have to
believe it.
Me: Okay. (I write her last sentence on the board so it’s plain
as day.) Are you sure that’s the argument you want to make to defend a right to
abortion?
Samantha: Sure. I can go through my life denying what
science says is true. I have that right.
Me: Yes, I guess you can. I can
refuse to believe, for example, that the world is round. I can insist it’s flat.
Samantha: Exactly.
Me: But can that kind of thinking ever
become the foundation of our laws, even if some unreasonable folks want to base
their personal decisions on it? If we do, laws just become a matter of who has
the power, not what’s right and true. Laws would simply be what the lawmaker
wants them to be, for his own convenience. If the ones making the law want to
say wife-beating is okay, then that’s the law; it doesn’t matter if it’s “true”
that women are people and have rights. Or Hitler can have his concentration
camps. Or America can have black slaves. And there’s nothing anyone can do about
it, because (the lawmaker says) just because something is true doesn’t mean I
have to believe it.

Samantha shrugged.

These are not the only
instances of my students’ rejection of rational thought or willful denial of
plain reality. When I responded to one girl’s objection that we can’t make laws
based on morality by pointing out that we criminalize rape and murder and
stealing for moral reasons, she told me, “Yes, but those are different. In
those cases, you’re hurting someone else.”

The great thing about young people is that they still have that glimmer of childhood innocence in them, that streak of God's law written in all human hearts hasn't be fully adulterated by the lies and self-seeking of the world.

Oh sure, it can be twisted by society, but I think it can be more easily appealed to when presented with the Truth.

When presented with the facts, lots of older adults, blinded by their own 'ego' (as Freud would say), can deny truth as being true, or dismiss its importance.

They hearts are a lot more corrupted with sin.

But I think there are few children who wouldn't be moved if you showed them a preganant lady's tummy and said that some people think it is okay to kill the baby inside.
They'd be horrified that anyone would do such a thing!


But an adult...well, they'd shrug it off, explain it away, numb that little whispering voice...and then eventually grow so cold, that they are literally spiritually blind

(*takes a look at English society* abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, contraception, homosexual marriages, IVF, surrogate motherhood, sperm donation, egg donation, wife-abuse...)

anyway, this little article just made me think about the beauty and simplicity of children and made me reflect some more about on the child-like characteristics Jesus was referring to in Matt19:14 "Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."


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