Apply the Bible
Answering the Call is an excellent small book. The author, John Ensor, is a Baptist pastor. He does a fantastic job of demonstrating why Christians need to actively oppose abortion. John shows how the gospel can, and should, be central to their efforts. At one point, he addresses the argument that “if the Bible does not explicitly condemn something it must be fine.”
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, professor emeritus at William Patterson University in New Jersey, calls herself an “evangelical feminist.” She claims that “nowhere does the Bible prohibit abortion.” In one sense she is right. The word abortion does not appear in the Bible. Of course, the Bible does not prohibit “driving to endanger” or “domestic violence” or “killing five-year-olds” either, if you demand an explicit listing for something to be forbidden. The Bible teaches that abortion is wrong by teaching that God views the preborn child as a person, and then by calling us to protect the life of all people from homicide.
Christians commonly argue that if the Bible does not explicitly address an issue, that issue is not important or is a matter of individual preference. At one conference I attended, the preacher argued that if the Bible had no explicit prohibitions or commands about a matter "then a Christian's opinion is a matter of cultural preference only." He went on to list 50 things ranging from smoking marijuana to nose rings. He argued that Christians should forsake all "cultural preference" to evangelise. In this version of Biblical application, the Bible is not only irrelevant to huge chunks of life, but Christians have a moral duty to ditch whatever hang ups they have and jump into whatever is happening around them.
The excerpt from John Ensor should demonstrate that such an approach to understanding how the Bible applies to our lives is problematic. Human beings are not only adept at inventing ways of doing evil. They are also good at inventing names for it. To expect an explicit command about a matter, in today’s language and terminology, is unrealistic. Cannibalism is not a word that appears in the Bible, but it does not take a degree in Biblical studies to notice that eating other human beings is not consistent with treating them as God's image bearers. When John G. Paton went to minister in Vanuatu, cannibal tribes lived all around him. When his wife and child died of natural causes, the cannibal tribes wanted to eat them. These tribes frequently ate deceased family members. He had to guard the grave night and day to prevent this. If the preacher at the conference I attended was right, John Paton should have instead joined in the feast.
Arguing that something “must be explicitly listed to be prohibited” not only becomes obviously ridiculous when applied to an action like cannibalism, it also encourages a minimalist approach to applying the Bible. Some of my sisters in Christ would require a Bible verse that stated "Bikinis are immodest" before they would stop wearing them. Other Christians would need a verse saying “watching explicit sex scenes on TV is unholy” before they would stop watching them. Rather than asking "what action would be most consistent with what God has revealed in Scripture", "what would promote holy living", or "what Biblical principles apply to this issue" some Christians are practical atheists. They act in many areas as though God does not exist, or does not care.
Christians should search the Scriptures for guidance in every area of their lives. They should expect that the Scriptures do address the matters that concern them. If there are not explicit commands, there are often principles that can be applied. Any principles or perspectives the Bible does offer should be much more valuable to Christians than what Joe Smith down the street is doing. The alternative to applying the Bible to all of life is to be swayed into all kinds of ungodliness and foolishness, under the guise of Christian liberty.
