Dr. James Dobson said, "I consider abortion to be the greatest moral evil of our time, because of the worth of those little babies." Is Dobson correct? Does abortion rise to that level, or is it just one social evil among equals (homelessness, fatherlessness, hunger, etc.)

 There is a tendency to reduce abortion to an "issue." I find it hard to write about abortion without using the word. Certainly, there are many legitimate issues vying for our attention. But abortion is an act of violence that kills a baby. As such, it goes beyond our senses, beyond our vocabulary, beyond the boundaries of our normal discourse. It shares the same mind-numbing, too-horrifying-to-be-true quality that the specter of the Holocaust raised for the previous generation. The numbers are now so large and the implications of our guilt so great that we experience something of an intellectual coma from the trauma of it. We simply shut down. We do this be reducing abortion to one issue among many and then choosing other issues to focus on. But I think Dobson is correct. Abortion is the greatest moral evil of our age. It is the social injustice that most inflames the heart of God and for which we, His people, are called to act with profound and persistent moral courage.

Among All the Offenses of Man, the Greatest Offense is the Shedding of Innocent Human Blood.

God is long-suffering. But there is a limit to His patience. There is a point, when, through the hardness of our hearts, we become so callous to the moral will of God that He says, "Enough!" In Noah's time, the maturation of evil reached that point. "Then the Lord said, 'My Spirit will not contend with man forever.'" (Genesis 6:3) Then He "wiped" the earth clean in righteous judgment (6:7)

In tracing out the breaking point when God moves from patiently warning to active judgment, Scripture says it is the innocent killing of people, or passively accepting the killing of innocent people, the finally invokes His wrath.

This is the message of the prophets. Some prophets brought this message as an indictment. Others brought it as a reminder as to why judgment fell. In both cases, they pointed to the shedding of innocent blood as the point when God's patience reached its end and God said, "Enough!"

Consider the prophet Ezekiel:

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst…you have become guilty because of the blood you have shed. (Ezekiel 22:3-4,)

Isaiah also indicted the people for their bloodguilt.

When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. (Isaiah 1:15-16)

In Revelation 16:5-6, God's judgment is described as vindication for those whose blood was shed unjustly. God is personally and intimately watching over each person's life, even during martyrdom. "You are just in these judgments…for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets." In Genesis 4:10, we catch a glimpse of how God cares for innocent human life. When Cain killed his brother Abel, God heard Abel cry out for vindication. "Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground."

Because God loves, He gets angry. Because He cherishes innocent human life with a burning heart and commands all men everywhere to do the same, His revulsion at the murder of the innocent knows no limit, nor does His wrath when it is finally unleashed. God's wrath is called "fierce" (1 Samuel 28:18), "furious" (Job 40:11), "full" (Psalm 78:38), "consuming" (Psalm 59:13), "great" (Psalm 102:10), and "jealous" (Ezekiel 36:6). For God to warn us of His wrath is another sign of His love. For us to ignore it is a sign of how hardened we have become and how ripe we are to receive His wrath.

This article is an excerpt taken from Answering the Call by John Ensor and published by Focus on the Family.

John Ensor