Reciprocating Bill
Posts: 4265
Joined: Oct. 2006
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| Quote (Louis @ Jan. 27 2011,18:38) | I have just read that VD thread. I am utterly disgusted. The hypocritical, sanctomonious moralising by inarticulate religious bigots is unimaginable.
Bed time I think. I'm going to read something edifying and hope that when I wake in the morning it will allllll be better.
Louis |
It's a bizarre thread, to be sure. I got through about a quarter of it, and can't go further. Anyone there raise the following obvious theological point?
Vox cites the following as the governing commandment from Christianity:
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Vox's OP and the ensuing discussion, so far as I was able to stomach it, concerns the actions of the hospital, not the mother, and then the reaction of the church to the hospital's choice. Yet Jesus didn't say "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man compel another man to lay down his life for his friends." So the exhortation has no bearing upon the hospital's behavior - as the hospital lays down little in so compelling a woman's sacrifice.
Further, dying for another because one is compelled to - and I gather the Catholic church would so compel women if it had its peculiar druthers - is not "laying down one's life for another." Perhaps some Christian women have taken Jesus' words to heart and chosen to put themselves at risk of death for the lives of their unborn babies - genuinely offering to lay down their lives for another. But that's just the point: If there are such women, the "laying down of their lives" inheres in the choice to do so. If it isn't a chosen action, then it isn't the action Jesus exhorts at all.
So, from every direction, Vox is completely out to lunch to in claiming that the above commandment is the governing passage from Christianity in this instance.
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Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
- David Foster Wallace
"Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."
- Barry Arrington
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