This week, media outlets around
the nation swarmed like sharks to blood
when the GOP's Indiana Senate candidate Richard
Mourdock said, "I think even when life begins in that horrible
situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." This comment set off a political firestorm,
with both major political parties distancing themselves from Mourdock's
statement. The Democratic National Committee
Chairwoman released a statement that "Mourdock's rape comments are
outrageous and demeaning to women."
A more careful examination of the statement and the response prompts an important
grammar lesson and a deeper theological reflection.
First, ambiguous pronouns are
very dangerous. Mourdock's "it"
leaves an opening for his political enemies.
The context of his statement is clear:
when he uses the pronoun "it," he is referring to life. He means that God has ordained the existence
of a new life, a new human being. He is
not referring to the act of rape. The
response of the Democratic Party is predictable, as the Chairwoman employs the
fallacy of ambiguity or equivocation by taking the clear context and shifting
the reference of the ambiguous pronoun to the "situation of
rape." Certainly the Democratic
Party does not think that a new life is outrageous and demeaning to women,
especially when half of all new lives are women!
Second, this exchange prompts a
much deeper question: what is God's role
in rape? Theologians have struggled with
the more general form of this question for centuries: What is God's role in sin? If God is sovereign, does He cause a person
to sin? Or, does He passively allow a
person to sin by taking a hands-off role in the affairs of humans? Or, is He not completely sovereign over the
events in a fallen world? These
questions do not just apply to the sinful acts of human beings but also to the
events of a Genesis 3 world. In Genesis
3, God's Word says that God cursed the ground, decreeing that the earth
would now produce thorns and thistles and that man would physically die. In making this decree, did God commit an evil
act?
As stated in numerous
statements of faith and church constitutions,
“God from eternity, decrees or permits all things that come
to pass, and perpetually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures and all
events; yet so as not in any way to be the author or approver of sin nor to
destroy the free will and responsibility of intelligent creatures.”
The
difficult theological issue regarding God's role with respect to evil is
labeled "theodicy." Jesus'
words in the New Testament teach us about two kinds of evil: moral evil associated with the willful deeds
of sinful people (Luke
13) and natural evil that is not a direct result of a particular sin (John
9). With respect to both kinds of
evil, the orthodox Christian response to a question of the causality of evil
must acknowledge the omnipotence and omniscience of God, His sovereignty over
all things. In addition, the believer
must acknowledge that God is pure righteousness and goodness. In the case of evil, these two aspects of
God's character lead to a tension that we finite humans cannot fully
understand.
Nevertheless, in the case of
pregnancy resulting from rape, we should see clearly that two wrongs do not
make a right. The evil of rape is not
corrected by the evil of murder. The
pregnant woman does not face a moral dilemma just because she was raped. Without question, she has suffered as the
victim of a heinous crime, and her life will certainly be irreversibly changed. She is a valuable human being, created in the
image of God, who needs the love and compassion of her family, friends, and
society... just like the child in her womb.
