Listen to Evangelicals justify God killing children and unborn fetuses in Noah’s Flood or other Bible stories where God either kills children/babies or commands Israel to do so, and they will eventually tell you, “at least all the children went to Heaven” (of course, a Calvinist might object to the universality of this claim, since only elect children go to Heaven after they die).
If this claim is true, it provides Evangelicals with a conundrum. If all children and fetuses go to Heaven when they die, this means that aborted zygotes and fetuses go to Heaven too. Wouldn’t it be better to abort all zygotes and fetuses, ensuring them a home in Heaven after death? Abortion provides a sure path to Heaven, as does miscarriage. This means every Evangelical should be pro-abortion. Better to abort fetuses than to have them reach the age of accountability and reject Jesus.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Thanks for this Bruce. I’ve never understood the Evangelical “age of accountability” thing, which (I don’t think) is even biblical. What is biblical (even though I reject it), is that we’re all born with a sin nature, inherited from Adam and Eve. Therefore, with this inherited sin nature, no one is allowed to enter heaven without the covering of the blood of Christ. If a woman miscarries (according to an accurate theology), then the fetus goes to hell, because of Adam’s and Eve’s inherited sin nature (God can’t be in the presence of any sin nature). If the woman has a successful birth, but the baby dies a week later, then the baby goes to hell (again, because God can’t be in the presence of any sin nature). If the child lives to the ripe old age of 4 years, but is still too young to understand repentance and is sadly struck to death by a passing car, influenza, or whatever, the 4-year-old goes to hell (yadda-yadda). That seems to be a more accurate Christian theology (which of course demonstrates how f_cked up the theology is).
In the UK, parish church graveyards had a section of unconsecrated ground where stillborn babies and those who had died before they could be baptised were buried. Vicars were on call 24/7 to rush.to conduct a baptism so the child could be buried alongside other family members in the church yard.My daughter as a new curate near a big city hospital was on a rota to do this and did get called out occasionally in the night to baptise a dying baby. She found it hard naturally but knew it gave comfort to traditional anglican parents in a very terrible situation.
One of my friends from childhood posted the same concept on her social media page a couple of years ago, and boy, did she get jumped on! She’s more liberal and progressive in her politics, which I’m sure she struggles with while remaining in evangelicalism. Anyway, within hours she had deleted the post. I thought it was a valid question.
Benny’s description is one I wondered about too – that all “unsaved” people went to hell due to original sin, even if they were toddlers too young to understand. Of course, this is why the Southern Baptist church I grew up in had that nebulous “age of accountability” concept that no one could pinpoint the age, naturally, but in the 80s I was told “about age 12”, like how old Jewish boys were when they went through Bar Mitzvah to “become a man”. That seemed kind of reasonable to adolescent ObstacleChick. And it coincided with the age at which my family put a ton of pressure on me to “make a public profession of faith”. I think evangelicals just wanted to not feel bad about tiny children going to hell if they died young. I was dismayed to see that those churches are now baptizing kids as young as 3 or 4 now….that doesn’t seem right. Did their theology shift that much, or do churches just want the boost in number of baptisms per year?
As I understand, modern neuroscientists say that humans don’t mature–which is to say, their brains don’t fully develop–until around the age of 25. So, in essence, a person can be “accountable” for a decade or more before they make an intelligent, informed decision.
But if you die before you reach “accountability,” you’re damned for not making such a decision.
Hmm….