The Parable of the Burning Building

[little2add]

Once upon a time, a man attended a party on the first floor of a skyscraper. Shortly after the party began, another man burst in and told everyone a fire had just started in the next room and the only way to escape was by taking a five-foot drop out the window.

But the smell of the smoke wasn’t very strong, and the partygoer didn’t want to roll an ankle in the jump, so he convinced himself that the fire wasn’t real. Instead of escaping, he and his friends took the party up to the second floor, far away from the buzz-killy ramblings of crazy Captain Fire Crier.

A few minutes later, however, Captain Fire Crier told them the fire had spread to the second floor and once again urged everyone to jump out the window, which was now about a 15-foot drop—maybe not enough to kill a person, but definitely enough to break your legs. Even though the partygoer could now smell the smoke and feel the heat, he feared the jump more than the fire, so he ran up to the third floor.

Once again, the fire found him, and once again, Captain Fire Crier begged him to jump out the window. But because the drop seemed even more terrifying, the partygoer ran up to the fourth floor. Then the fifth, then the sixth, and so on until he found himself at the top of the building, surrounded by the raging flames that he kept pretending weren’t real because he couldn’t bear to make the jump that stopped being survivable 50 stories earlier.

How This Applies to Abortion

To apply this parable to the abortion issue, let’s say that you show up to the “reproductive rights” party as a tepid supporter of legalized abortion. You personally oppose abortion, but you don’t want to impose your beliefs on someone else. Likewise, you think the procedure should be limited to the first trimester and shouldn’t be publicly funded.

But then your conscience starts accusing you, saying, “Abortion takes an innocent life and the fire of God’s judgment burns against those who won’t defend innocent life, so if you want to escape that judgment, stop supporting abortion and jump out the window of repentance.”

However, if you admit that you were wrong, God might not let you escape the guilt of having supported something immoral. So, in an effort to avoid that risky jump out the window, you try to convince yourself that you don’t need to take it. You insist abortion isn’t immoral. You run up to the second floor and join the rest of the defiant partygoers who are saying “There’s no reason to personally oppose abortion because what we’re dealing with in the first trimester isn’t a human life. It’s just a glob of cells.”

But then your conscience pipes up again. “That ‘glob of cells’ has its own human DNA from the moment of conception. It’s not the mother’s body. It’s a unique human life that deserves to be protected. Look at the sonogram. Listen to the heartbeat. Stop defending this barbarity. Repent.”

Now you’re starting to feel the heat of God’s wrath on your neck. But because you doubled down on your sin, the jump-out repentance widow is now twice as high and twice as hard, which makes you twice as quick to join the unyielding abortion supporters on the third floor, where you shout, “Fine, it’s a living human organism. But it’s not a person and therefore doesn’t have the right to life.”

In response, your conscience screams that “It’s a human but not a person” is the same fallacious distinction used to justify slavery and the Holocaust, so to escape such bad company, you make a philosophical pivot on the fourth floor, saying, “Person or not, a woman’s right to bodily autonomy is greater than some 12-week-old fetus’s right to be born.”

“Stop it,” your conscience snarls in response. “Stop defending yourself with perverse logic that also justifies second- and third-trimester abortions.” But that’s exactly what you do on floors five and six. Then you climb even higher by arguing that abortion at any point in pregnancy isn’t just acceptable. It’s merciful.

“We’re saving diseased children with little chance of survival from suffering.” Seventh floor.

“We’re sparing children with deformities a lifetime of rejection and bigotry.” Eighth floor.

“We’re protecting the children of low-income mothers from poverty and hunger.” Ninth floor.

“Every child a wanted child.” Tenth floor.

 

see: http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/14/infanticide-isnt-bridge-far-many-abortion-supporters/

See -link above- for the rest of the story.

Edited February 15, 2019 by little2add