OPINION:
“God doesn’t make mistakes.”
“The View” lead co-host Whoopi Goldberg offered this definitive proclamation on the show last week. While some undoubtedly will agree, what she said next about abortion and pro-choice values most certainly will shatter Christian concurrence.
“God made us smart enough to know when it wasn’t going to work for us. That’s the beauty of giving us freedom of choice,” she said. “I also know that God made me smart enough to know that if there are alternatives out there that can work for me, I will investigate them.”
Tragically, her comments painfully expose the dire state of today’s “it’s all about me” culture. The notable confluence of an “I” and “me” in the mix and the deficient notion that people are somehow their own barometers of truth are patently unbiblical inaccuracies.
Guest co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who left her full-time spot on “The View” in 2013, boldly hit back with audible rebuttals, saying, “No” at least twice while Ms. Goldberg delivered her “God” comments. Mrs. Hasselbeck distinctly declined to sit back or remain silent, fearlessly responding by invoking God’s purpose for every human life.
“What about the life in the womb?” she asked Ms. Goldberg. “That life has a plan and a purpose designed by God.”
She, of course, didn’t receive a viable response to this essential question. But the dialogue did reaffirm something devastating: Modern culture has sinisterly and diabolically unhinged from truth. Many of us are still struggling to comprehend the true depths of deception to which society has fallen prey, though moments like this shed light on the descent.
We’ve made gods of ourselves, and yet we’re confused about why our love has grown cold, why our culture is in tatters, why hate and chaos rage, and why consternation seems to be the most consistently prevalent reaction most of us experience after reading the daily headlines.
As we continue our slide into the moral abyss, people are increasingly offering anti-biblical proclamations with a confounding level of confidence, making untrue claims about God and his design. Ms. Goldberg’s comments are just the latest example.
The idea that God would simply leave matters of life and death up to his creation — his children whom he calls to die to self and live for him, all while placing others before themselves — is so painstakingly wrongheaded it’s hard to know where to start.
Ms. Goldberg was certainly right when she said, “God doesn’t make mistakes.” The problem is people are sinful and accident-prone. The idea that “God made us smart enough” to decide whether we want to terminate or bring a child into the world — and that we somehow have the moral go-ahead to choose whichever option “feels” best — doesn’t comport with scriptural reality.
Furthermore, when we take this approach to other areas of life, we end up with just the sort of chaos we’re seeing in our world today. People weren’t designed to be the arbiters of our own truth. We were made to follow a divinely designed creation, order and purpose.
Ms. Goldberg, though well-intentioned, seems to be highlighting a gospel of the self in which people are somehow able, of their own volition, to choose what is right and wrong based on feelings.
When she talked about “the beauty of giving us freedom of choice,” was she referring only to abortion or to other matters as well?
With 7.7 billion people worldwide, the idea that each person gets to make his or her own standards, particularly on an issue as brutal and deadly as abortion, is alarming and frankly unsustainable. Yet it’s a lie we keep selling, encouraging people to cling to the self to find fulfillment.
Meanwhile, our culture, politics, interactions and most areas of our lives are suffering and will continue to devolve until we individually and corporately return to the “plan and purpose” the God of creation has for our lives. Our rejection of these realities will continue to denigrate our lives — and politics — at every level.
• Billy Hallowell is a journalist, commentator and digital TV host who has covered thousands of faith and culture stories. He is the director of content and communications at Pure Flix, and previously served as the senior editor at Faithwire and the former faith and culture editor at TheBlaze.
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