Submitted to the Baptist Center for Expository Preaching

PREACHING ON THE SANCTITY OF LIFE

A Paper

Submitted to the Baptist Center for Expository Preaching

of

The Baptist College of Florida

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Mission Objective

to Supply Preaching Resources

to the Students and Friends of the College

Edwin E. Scott

B.A., Baptist Bible College, 1980

M.Div., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1984

Th.D., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1989

June, 2010

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CONTENTS

Introduction...... 1

The Scope and Variety of the Issue...... 2

Preaching on the Sanctity of Life...... 5

Common Characteristics for Preaching on the Sanctity of Life...... 6

Specific Topics for Preaching on the Sanctity of Life...... 13

Conclusion...... 17

Appendix: Sample Sanctity of Life Sermon...... 18

WORKS CITED...... 22

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1

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to suggest an approach for preaching on the issue of the sanctity of life. The approach suggested will seek to encompass the multiple manifestations of this issue, not just the higher profile question of abortion. The approach will be biblically based, and will seek to be an effective approach in the contemporary congregational setting, one that may often include persons with direct experience in that higher profile question of abortion.

While the paper emphasizes the delivery of the message for the contemporary audience, it should also be stated that a lack of respect for the sanctity of life is not a new development in society. The modern expression of the issue is certainly troubling, but the issue has commonly cited ancient antecedents. The perennial villains of the Old Testament era, the Assyrians, bragged about their lack of respect for human life. Their bragging was most likely a vehicle for increasing the anxiety of their opponents, but it was also based in fact. A modern translation of one of Ashurbanipal’s inscriptions reads:

I captured many troops alive. I cut off the arms and hands of some; I cut off the noses, ears, and extremities of others. I gouged out the eyes of many troops. I made one pile of the living and one of the heads. I hung their heads on trees around the city. I burnt their adolescent boys and girls.[1]

While the obvious barbarity of the Assyrians is not paralleled, the statistical portrait of a cultural mindset without a respect for life in the modern world leads one to ask if civilization has made any progress at all in the years since the Assyrians.

For example, the Guttmacher Institute, a partner of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has suggested in a positive fashion that half of all American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45 and that about one-third of those women will choose wisely to have an abortion.[2] A recent study by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention confirms that estimate, but also suggests that the rate of abortions may be falling.[3] Even if the rate is falling, the statistics are still disturbing.

The Scope and Variety of the Issue

The issue of the sanctity of life is not limited to the single dilemma of abortion, but is also expressed in a whole range of social concerns such as euthanasia, capital punishment, violent crime, and the weakening respect for life seen in modern entertainment. It is in that final category of entertainment that the evidence may be more difficult to specify and analyze, and thus may seem somewhat more anecdotal, but it can be clearly seen in the commonality of violent images on television and in the movies, as well as in the commonality of their exposure to underage viewers. Taken together, all of these issues combine to create what Charles Colson has called a “culture of death.”[4]

How has this “culture of death” been expressed? In terms of the abortion issue, the outstanding negative characteristic is the motivation for choosing an abortion. Far from the public outcries commonly made by pro-choice representatives for the safety and health of the mother as well as the protection of the victim of rape or incest, the currently cited reasons for choosing an abortion focus on the inconvenience of the pregnancy. Even the Guttmacher Institute confirms that the majority of women choosing abortion cite issues of convenience as the primary factor. To be fair to the Guttmacher Institute, the statement below is quoted in full:

The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.[5]

The Institute concluded that family planning clinics have “helped women prevent 20 million unintended pregnancies during the last 20 years.”[6] According to Charles Colson, the 1992 decision of the United States Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (a follow-up case to the better known Roe v. Wade) gave this convenience based choice the same status as a religious choice.[7] The follow-up case, in effect, enshrined abortion as an undeniable convenience. In one sense, that decision was inevitable because society had already largely given up on the sanctity of life in the womb. Jimmy Draper reported that the July 1983 issue of Pediatrics Magazine had already madethe following statement in the lead editorial: “We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God, and singled out from all other animals and alone possessing an immortal soul.”[8] That editorial was written by noted utilitarian philosopher, Peter Singer. In a separate article, Singer later commented on the future of the sanctity of life in relation to abortion by saying:

During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments. By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct.[9]

Another way in which the sanctity of life issue has been expressed is found in the chronological opposite of abortion: the euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide question. While this particular manifestation has not yet reached nation-wide legalized status in the United States, the issue is at least being discussed. In some cases, it is even being embraced illegally. Referring to doctors and nurses who secretly euthanize the weakest and most helpless patients in their care, Wesley Smith has suggested that society is developing a “culture of death angels.”[10] Smith’s thesis is that such death-angel behavior proves that the impulse for physician-assisted suicide will ultimately lead to non-voluntary euthanasia. Any suggestion, therefore, that this issue may be neatly categorized and standardized as an act of compassion for the desperately ill is misguided.

As previously stated, the entertainment arena certainly reflects and in some ways may even initiate cultural changes, but the impact is best seen over the long term, where the direction of changes in the cultural mindset becomes clear. The shock at a single curse-word in the classic 1939 film, Gone with the Wind, pales in significance to the plethora of language and violence found in modern films, and it seems that the audience’s thirst for such films continues to grow. The well-knownFriday the Thirteenth horror series had its ninth sequel, Jason X, in 2001. Such films are apparently desired to be as bloody as possible. According to the Internet Movie Database, the early version of Halloween 4(an installment in another violent series of films) was deemed to be too “soft,” and so a special effects expert was secured for an extra day of “blood filming.”[11] David Chagall has noted that extremes in language and violence are now so commonplace in entertainment that they seem to be a part of acceptable thinking.[12] It seems logical to suggest that even such imaginary violations of the sanctity of life in entertainment are reflective of, or are actually leading to, an erosion of the sanctity of life in the real world.

Preaching on the Sanctity of Life

Having briefly surveyed the scope and problematic variety of issues related to the sanctity of life, the primary issue at hand is to develop of strategy of proclamation for dealing with this issue. A general orientation for preaching on this subject may well be found in Ken Ham’s comment about the nature of all preaching in the contemporary age.[13] Ham’s observation concerns a contrast between the Day of Pentecost sermon preached by Peter in Acts 2 and the Mars Hill sermon preached by Paul in Acts 17. When Peter preached to the Pentecost audience, he preached to people of the Jewish faith, who believed in the inspiration of Scripture as well as moral absolutes. When Paul preached to the Athenian audience, however, he preached to people of a polytheistic faith, who did not know the Old Testament or the New Testament proclamation and who may not have had strong belief in any moral absolutes. According to Ham, contemporary preachers are more in Paul’s position than in Peter’s position.

In other words, contemporary proclamation generally takes place in the context of Paul’s predicament: how to preach to people who do not have common ground with the preacher.[14] If this is the case, then a beginning philosophy for dealing with the issue of the sanctity of life in a contemporary church audience will be similar to dealing with any subject in which the preacher and the audience do not share the common ground of a commitment to an inspired Scripture, the sovereignty of God, and an acceptance of moral and spiritual absolutes.

Common Characteristics for Preaching on the Sanctity of Life

A first and more general common characteristic for preaching to such alien audiences on any number of topics would be to heed the valuable advice of Charles Swindoll and avoid being “preachy.”[15] What Swindoll means by that comment becomes clear in the context of his writing: be loyal to the Bible’s clear teaching and timeless principles related to a given subject; be direct about how man has ignored the clear teaching of the Bible; but do both without being arrogant, harsh or judgmental.

Adam Hamilton has suggested that this goal of being firm but fair in preaching on controversial issues can be accomplished, but not without planning to influence people rather than simply announcing your position in the mode of traditional prophetic preaching:

More recently I have watched pastors, who were quite proud of their “prophetic ministry,” drive churches right into the ground. Or, if they did not drive the church into the ground, they succeeded in driving away everyone who disagreed with them, attracting only the like-minded to their church. What they did not manage to do, unfortunately, was to actually influence anyone to change.[16]

Rather than simply being proud of one’s position, Hamilton suggested the adoption of the methods of forensic science, which considers all possibilities before drawing a conclusion. When preaching on controversial issues, therefore, Hamilton suggested the following five techniques:

1. Show respect for all participants in the debate, as well as their positions.

2. Study all sides and be prepared to argue for or against any position.

3. In the sermon, first make the case for the position you will not ultimately choose. Make it as strongly as possible. Those who hold that position will be more likely to hear your side if they feel you understand theirs.

4. Make the case for the side you hold. Make it biblical, but also admit the weaknesses of your argument.

5. Be willing to change and grow during the study process, just as you expect your listeners to change after hearing your message.[17]

And while such a methodology will not guarantee universal agreement with the preacher, it is in keeping with Colson’s idea of avoiding the “preachy” sermon.

A corollary of avoiding being “preachy” would be to emphasize hope and restoration. To identify the wrong of some action is certainly important, but it is equally if not more important to identify the restoration available in Christ. The advice of Sam Serio is helpful at this point even if the target subject differs. In giving instructions about preaching on sensitive sexual subjects, Serio said:

Never preach against any sexual behavior without equally sharing the wonderful hope, grace, mercy, pardon, and victory available for those who are in Christ Jesus. Always be aware that whichever sexual sin you preach about was probably done by people who are hearing your sermon. Did they hear any message of hope from you? As a preacher and pastor who is delicately dealing with such difficult topics, your main goal is to help your people get past the hiding of their sexual suffering or sin.[18]

A second common characteristic for preaching to such alien audiences on this or other topics would be to know one’s audience. The late Keith Willhite may not have been the first scholar to discuss this subject, but he was immensely helpful in his emphasis on this part of audience analysis and his coining of the suggestion that the preacher “look from the pew’s perspective.”[19] Another way to state this would be to say that contemporary preachers need to develop a sensitivity to the secular identity and nature of their audience. Bill Hybels has suggested that speaking to modern secular audiences requires two critical steps: understanding the way the secular audience thinks, and communicating to the secular audience that they are liked. Hybels is concerned that many faithful preachers and churches artificially distance themselves from unbelievers by failing to demonstrate any level of understanding or compassion.[20]

Willhite’s contention is that while only God ultimately determines whether or not a sermon is relevant, it is the listener who determines what can be called the temporal or immediate relevancy of a sermon. Therefore, the preacher must give attention to knowing his audience, even though he is mostly interested in the biblical message, its literary genre, and its historical-critical context.[21] In other words, he must break out of the certainty of the preacher’s world and understand the unsure and potentially confused thinking of the listener’s world, and do that with compassion.

According to Willhite, such an analysis occurs with a study of and an awareness of one’s congregation at multiple levels: cultural opinion (the kind found in national polling), local opinion (the kind found in local and regional databases), particular opinion (the kind found in congregational surveys and in congregational conversations), and personal opinion (the kind discovered in pastoral experiences with the congregation and in praying for the congregation). Willhite suggested that the eventual outcome of this process would be a better understanding of how people think that would inform and improve preaching. The vehicle for this improvement in preaching could function either formally or informally. Informally, the preacher can visualize where various people might regularly sit in the sanctuary on any given Sunday and then pray intentionally for them. Formally, the preacher could write a planning grid for sermon application. In either case, the preacher is analyzing his congregation and can then adapt his delivery, style, or approach appropriately.

Willhite suggested that this analysis cover theological issues (what percentage of the audience is regenerate or unregenerate), psychological issues (paradigms, values, emotional processes of the audience), demographic issues (age, gender, income level, race, type of employment, political opinion), and “purpose-oriented” issues (previous congregational feedback, unresolved tensions in the congregation, hostility of the audience to previous messages). [22] In other words, the preacher should know his audience as thoroughly as he can, and he should adapt his style of communication to that knowledge. Just to be clear, it should be repeated that Willhite has suggested an adaptation of style (dress, language, type of sermonic argument, arrangement of sermon material, illustrations), not an adaptation or change of the essential Christian message.[23]

A similar argument has been made by David Henderson, who confessed that contemporary preachers who desire to influence secular audiences must work diligently to achieve a proper balance between the authority of the text and the real and felt needs of the audience. Henderson suggested that the difficulty in achieving this balance occurs when traditional preachers put a higher concern on the message than they do the needs of the audience. Similarly, contemporary preachers also err when they give more concern to the needs of the audience than they do to the authoritative text of Scripture. The former is a failure to translate the text into the modern situation; the latter is accommodation: