Belinda wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2019 6:25 pm
Immanuel Can wrote:
Needle's Eye, camel, rich man.
I know the passage, but I can't tell what you're trying to make of it. It's about pride.
... it's the lack of awareness of the foetus that matters when we are discussing the ethics
No, that saying by Jesus is not about rich poseurs . It is unambiguously about how the rich man is as likely to get to Heaven as a camel can pass through the Needle's Eye. Jesus at all times supports the despised and disposessed who take precedence before the rich and powerful.
I don't think the context bears out that reading. You see Jesus mixing equally with rich men like Simon and poor ones like lepers. It's not that rich men are despised by God, nor that poor ones are automatically privileged either: it's that rich people tend to think of themselves as self-sufficient, and thus not in need of salvation, whereas poor ones are more likely to know their need and respond to an offer of rescue.
You find Jesus told stories about good and bad rich men, and good and bad poor men. And his disciples included both the rich and the poor, though admittedly more of the latter than the former...likely for reasons like what I suggest above, as illustrated in the case of the famous "Rich Young Ruler" who came to see Jesus.
When we are discussing the ethics of abortion we lack immediate instructions from God
You mean like, "Thou shalt not commit murder"? That looks pretty immediate to me.
You cannot be a thinking Christian and deny that very poor children and adults often have lives that contain more suffering than the life of any foetus.
Maybe. But that's not the case under discussion here. Here we're talking only about sex-selective abortion.
This isn't an economic or medically-excusable thing: it's a deliberate decision to keep a male child -- to treasure, celebrate, feed, raise, love and pay for a healthy boy child -- and to take any healthy female child and rip her into bits and flush her into a sink, when you were perfectly capable to have treasured, celebrated, fed, raised, loved and paid for her instead.
