As we continue in our examination of the seven things listed by Solomon that are an abomination to God, we come to #3: “Hands that shed innocent blood” (Prov. 6:16-19).
Paul, in discussing the terrible sins of the Gentile world in Romans 1:18-32 lists among the things they had become guilty of, “without natural affection.” One of the most “natural” things that exists is a mother’s love for her children. Yet Paul says that some were “without natural affection.”
I remember an event that took place in Algood, Tennessee in the 1960s right behind where my Mom and Dad lived. When they returned home from worship on Sunday evening, there were police cars with emergency lights on, and a whole bunch of cars lined up on both sides of the street. It seems that a very young boy (three years old, if I remember correctly) was missing and the entire neighborhood was searching for him. This went on for hours and the boy was not located. A few days later, a man had stopped on the road near Byrdstown, Tennessee. He found the missing lad’s body where he had been thrown by his dad on the rocks below the road. It came out in the trial that the boy had gotten sick during supper and his dad hit him so hard because of it that he died. Both the dad and mom were convicted and sent to the penitentiary. It was a clear case of “hands shedding innocent blood.”
Then the nation was shocked as one event after the other started being reported. A mother drove her kids into the water and drowned them. Kids were beaten so severely that they died on more than one occasion. Kids were drowned in bathtubs, etc. The Old Testament even spoke of folks who, in the name of religion, cast their kids into the fire, etc. —“Hands that shed innocent blood.”
And there is no greater example of this horrendous sin than the abortion of the unborn child. The pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that there have been over 61 million abortions performed since 1973, the year the Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade decision ushering in legal abortion nationwide. According to Guttmacher, 35 percent of all U.S. women will have had an abortion by age 45. Guttmacher also reports that 93 percent of all abortions occur for “social reasons” such as a mother’s decision that the child is unwanted or “inconvenient” [The CNS News Team]. Others report that the number is closer to 60 million. If that does not make your blood boil, and bring tears to your eyes, then you must have allowed your conscience to become “seared with a hot iron” (I Tim. 4:2). In the words of James, speaking on a different subject, but very applicable here as well, “Brethren, these things ought not so to be” (James 3:10b). And in the words of a popular song, “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”
I can only imagine the vehement disgust as God watches men and women, who have lost their “natural affection,” as they go on daily with “hands shedding innocent blood.” May God help us to come to our senses!
-Paul M. Wilmoth