the high moral ground of right to life

I just finished listening to the speech that President Obama gave at Cairo University. While I do not agree with some of what our president said, for the most part I was impressed with his delivery and content. I am especially pleased that in his discussion of the plight of the Palestinian people, he included Palestinian Christians as a group that has suffered in recent years as a result of the turmoil in the Middle East. So often, this group is completely left out of the discussion, although the population of Palestinian Christians in Israel especially has dramatically decreased and because they are caught in the middle of the conflict, have suffered the most in terms of percentage loss.

I also would have liked to hear stronger language when it comes to religious freedom in Islamic majority countries. One of the reasons I believe that radical Islamic terrorism takes hold in so many of these countries in the Middle East is because there is an official intoleration to other faith expressions.

I couldn't help but think that in a setting such as this, it was good for the president to claim the moral high ground when it comes to human rights. But moral high ground can only be claimed if one has a moral authority higher than himself to stake the ground. Of course, President Obama has frequently pointed to his own Christian faith and to scripture to make this point and indeed he pointed to his own Christianity in this speech.

As Christians, we respect human life and dignity because these things have been "endowed" by our creator and He has called them "good" and sacred because we were created in His image. Life is sacred and holy because it was given to us by God.

Obama's use of Koranic versus to claim that ground was obviously well received in that context there in Cairo. It was necessary for him to point to the spiritual authority of the audience he was trying to convince. But the theology of the Koran is not the same as the theology of Christianity, and therefore it is not exactly correct to say that we are all "children of Abraham". The same Koran that says "when you kill an innocent person you kill all humanity" also says "Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you." (Koran 9:123) The moral high ground there is pretty shaky.

As Christians we can see that the seed of Abraham was Christ and that the blessing to the nations prophesied in the Abrahamic covenant was that Christ would come, born as a Jew in the city of David from the tribe of Benjamin, and that He would lay down His life as a sheep before His shearers as a ransom and atonement for our sinful condition, becoming the covenant curse so that we could become the covenant blessing. He was torn to pieces in fulfillment of the covenant so that we wouldn't have to be. That is the only way that any of us are truly "children of Abraham".

I also could not help but think that if our president wishes to claim this moral high ground that can only be given to us by a higher authority, then he must be consistent. This was the statement the president issued on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on January 23:

“On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters."

Last year over 1 million babies were killed in abortions in the United States. That's the equivalent of 350 world trade center bombings every single year.

I cannot say it better than John Piper in this video:



If the president will say out of one side of his mouth that we cannot stand for the murder of innocent men women and children in acts of terrorism and then out of his other side say "we should not intrude on our most private family matters" even if that lack of intrusion involves the murder of innocent babies in the womb, he has forfeited the high moral ground that is so important to the thesis of his argument so masterfully articulated in Cairo today.