FERGUSON: There's only one consideration that I think orthodox Christians have ever had
in mind and that is the possibility that one life threatens another,
and that's an area in which I think Christians have had a genuine disagreement. That is…involves
very, very sensitive and difficult issues ethically in the life of Christians,
but I think given there has been disagreement about that, that I think that has been absolute
homogeneity over the years illustrated by the stand that the early Christians
took. That the taking of human life is contrary to the law of God and we were discussing earlier on
the political leaders and in my own country have recently said, we do not have enough
people in this country. In other words, we cannot continue to function at the level of social order,
social security, pensions, health, all the rest of it, because we don't have enough people.
And it clearly has not even crossed their mind, but we have aborted in the last decade or two,
the population maybe of our third largest city. God gave us all the people we needed
and we are tasting the fruit of our own wickedness. I don't think there is anything more
clearly indicative of the perversity of our contemporary society than the lightness
with which our society takes this issue. It's such an expression of our willful blindness.
Parsons: I want to be very careful because I think I could and any
one of us could spend the rest of our time together today talking about this.
I cannot understand why anyone, let alone any Christian or self-professing Christian
could not and would not support the complete abolition of abortion. This is one of the
greatest sins that has ever been committed throughout the history of civilization. And
we as churches need to be working against this, as families, as individuals and we need to continue,
continue to call the church to act, to call governments to act
and we as God's people need never be silent on this, we cannot be silent on this. And we also
need to be fully prepared for what may come if someday abortion is made illegal, in any country,
the truth of the matter is that most churches and most families aren't ready for that.
We need to be mindful of children who are born and how we care for them,
how they might be adopted into our homes, into our churches, how we might care for them
and we need to be a people who are putting our money where our mouths are, and most of us are
not doing that to the degree that we should. We need to be putting a lot more money into this,
into the ministry of helping not only to save the lives of the unborn or the not yet born,
but also to minister to their mothers and to all those men involved in their lives. There's a whole
lot more that we all could say about this. It is one of the most vexing and angering sins
in the entire history of civilization. R.C. used to say that
slavery was the greatest sin, and the slave trade, and the buying and selling
of human beings was the greatest sin and that abortion became the number one sin of humanity.