I often spend time hanging out with the trash on Reddit. It’s terrible content and most of the people are liberal extremists, or maybe liberal bots, for all I know, but it is a battleground where ideas are spread so I think it’s worth pushing my voice out there, regardless of the downvotes.
In my latest argument, on the Christianity subreddit, the topic was about abortion. The OP (original poster, I think that means) was pro-life and asked how anyone can be ok with abortion. By the way, this is asked every hour on this subreddit, along with Trump, masturbation, hell, homosexuality, and trans-sexuals (which don’t actually exist, fyi). People there like to bash Christians for “hating gays” and “hating freedom” for wanting it to be illegal for a mother to kill her baby.
So, here is the latest “biblical support” they are using to support killing your unborn baby. It’s Exodus 21:22, and the translation is important:
When there’s a fight and in the fight a pregnant woman is hit so that she miscarries but is not otherwise hurt, the one responsible has to pay whatever the husband demands in compensation.
Exodus 21:22 The Message Translation
That is the quote they gave and gave no other biblical context around the verse. They just laid it out there and said “Compensation? So killing an unborn is NOT the same as killing a person?” (direct quote)
I wasn’t familiar with the verse but I figured there must be something more to the story. God is not nonchalant about life so I figured I should go read the full context.
The first thing is that most translations don’t word it like that. The “Message Translation” seems to be carefully worded to give the impression that “meh, whatever, just a miscarriage, just an inconvenience but no real harm done.”
Go to any other translation and it tells a different story. A story that is much more aligned with the God we know. Not this “oh well” sort of God who says “sorry about your clump of cells”. Let’s look at the ESV and the full context of this point it is making:
22 “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if there is harm,[a] then you shall pay life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Exodus 21:22-25 ESV
Well that’s a different story. Now verse 22 is saying that the pregnant woman gave premature birth but the baby lived, and there is a penalty for that, but if the baby dies then you will pay life for life. So now the baby is considered alive.
The irony is this person had the nerve to say that I was taking things out of context because I previously quoted five bible verses that supported protecting innocent lives. They said:
Cut it with the self righteousness. This is literally what people are talking about when they complain about people who take verses out of context to suit their needs.
Then they kept saying that I have no right to tell them what to do because I don’t do enough of what Jesus tells me to do, as if they have any idea who I am. But that was their defense. Basically, they’re saying “don’t try to prevent me from slaughtering my babies because you didn’t feed the poor today”. This is deep rooted toxic crap. Demonic, even. Like a raging demon who was caught and is throwing at you everything they can get their hands on in order to free themselves. But no, you don’t get away with baby murder because someone went hungry today. You don’t get to quote scripture to rebuke me if you think slaughtering innocent children is acceptable.
Remember, these people are addicted to their sinful lifestyles and want to claim the moral high-ground so they will weaponize bible verses against you. Don’t ever take them at face value. They are deeply ensnared in their sinful choices and will do whatever it takes to protect themselves. They are addicts. They will lie to themselves and actually believe themselves. They will lie to you and are totally fine with murdering the innocent. They will do whatever it takes to prop up the lie they have bought in to.