I am watching with interest the first few days of America’s new president from North Africa. It is noticed here but not really a big deal. They seem to think that it’s all politics as usual. For me, as for many Christians, the policy of greatest cause for anger is his radical position on abortion and exporting abortion. As I think about the millions of babies that Americans have murdered since Roe vs. Wade my mind goes to something I have been studying recently. Abortion actually played a role in the incredible growth of Christianity in the first three centuries.
Turns out that Pagans who had fully bought into the Hellenized philosophy of the day which prevailed, worshiped in the body above all things. So they worshiped sex as a god. They even had a god who was the god of sex. Men often never got married but had frequent sex with many women. Thus many women became pregnant without a husband to promise to take care of the child and as a result aborted that child. Men also could order an abortion without the consent of his wife. Baby girls were often aborted or “exposed” which is the practice of simply letting a child die after birth and in some cases leaving the still leaving baby to the wild beasts. This is evident in a Roman General far from his wife who had found out that she had given birth to a baby girl. He commanded her to “expose” the baby since he would soon return and they would try again and see if they couldn’t get a boy. The worship of sex above human life reminds me of western culture and specifically America.
As a result of the gross medicine practiced in those days, abortions often ended in the death of both the mom and the baby. One particularly fatal method of abortion was drugging. The woman would take just enough lethal drugs to kill the fetus but keep her alive. Since people have different reactions to drugs, the woman would often die. These abortions was the norm in for Roman Pagans and even the law at certain times. See Plato’s REPUBLIC. Other instruments used for abortions were crude and left the woman sterile or dead. As a result there were much fewer women than men and a decreasing popultion. The eventual thinning of numbers as a result was a major cause for the fall of the Roman Empire.
You can read how this contrasts to the Christians by their belief in the teachings of Jesus that we still have in the Bible. A Christian man who loved Jesus, as a general rule, married a wife and loved his family. He believed in life. He and his wife were pure on their wedding day. Justin Martyr was one of the first to petition Rome for the outlawing of abortion. Combined with two great plagues that killed off many pagans, the Christian population grew from .4% to over 20% in just over 200 years.
So since the abortion of millions of pagan babies led to a growing percentage of Christians in the Roman Empire, should we be happy about this trend that is repeating itself in America? God forbid. However I do believe we can learn a couple things from history:
1. The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord. We do not know what things God accomplishes even through evil leaders. We can rest at night knowing God is on the throne.
2. America is NOT the city on a hill. Jesus gave that specific, historic description to his disciples. Don’t confuse America with Christianity like the Muslim world does. The church flourished and grew in the Roman Empire and it will do the same today in America. We will continue to send out missionaries and preach the gospel at home. We must preach that truth.
3. We as Christians should still fight abortion like Justin Martyr and the early Christians did. Sure, it’s not the babies of born-again Christians that are being aborted (for the most part) but should we have any less compassion on the unbelieving girl and her baby?
I was just encouraged to see the parallels to the generation I am living in and the generation that saw such amazing growth of the Gospel. May you be encouraged as well to live for Christ.