So I was reading through the book of Ecclesiastes. A kindred friend, and seminary professor of mine, apparently committed suicide recently, and I just feel sort of... hollow. For some odd reason I thought I'd read through Ecclesiastes. I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not, but I did it. I read it in the version known as The Message. Again, I don't know if that was a wise choice or not, but that's what I did.
Anyway, in chapter 6, verses 3-5, the writer says:
Say a couple have scores of children and live a long, long life but never enjoy themselves—even though they end up with a big funeral! I’d say that a stillborn baby gets the better deal. It gets its start in a mist and ends up in the dark—unnamed. It sees nothing and knows nothing, but is better off by far than anyone living.
I realize this is not the end of the book, but it got me thinking about the abortion argument. I am not "pro-abortion," but I have never seen it as the single-issue issue that a lot of my fellow Christians seem to make it.
So, this is what ran through my mind as I read this morning: If Christians believe in eternal life, and life starts at conception (rather than at birth), then is it really all that bad that a child be aborted before entering into the world as we know it? Is it not, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says, "better off by far than anyone living?" Said "person" will never have to know hunger and thirst and heartache and disappointment. If they really are alive before birth, will they not enter into the presence of God unscathed, so to speak?
I don't know. And I'm not asking the question of anyone (I'm not looking for an answer). I'm just wondering. Could it be that we make too much of some things which aren't really all that terrible in light of eternity?
Who knows. I'm probably a heretic...