A Royal Baby?

In Job 31, Job poses some very poignant questions for our culture today.   When we consider the value of life, we recognize that our intrinsic worth is not determined by our status in life, but by the hand of our creator God - life is a gift, and as we live, we can be challenged to make it our aim to please Him, recognizing that He has a purpose for all of us:
13 "If I have despised the cause of my male or female servant When they complained against me, 14 What then shall I do when God rises up? When He punishes, how shall I answer Him? Then, verse 15 drives home a great point:  15 Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?

The answer, of course, is "YES".   We are all fashioned by God, wired in a certain manner, with a unique DNA and a calling for our lives.  And, in order to fulfill God's call and experience salvation, He gives us the opportunity to accept Christ as our Savior.   We are born human, made in the image of God and with great value, but we also are born into a fallen world with a sin nature - that's why we need Jesus, who gives us the opportunity to experience His eternal and abundant life.


During this season when we celebrate the birth of a child who would come to be our Savior, we can recognize that each child is special, ordained by God and intricately designed:
13 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.

It's been big-time news not only in Great Britain and around the Commonwealth, but around the world - a royal baby, the announcement of a child to be born to Prince William and Princess Kate, the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge, who will be an heir to the throne, and there is a move to allow him or her to ascend, even if the child is female.

The Church of England has released a prayer, which states:
"God our creator, we thank you for the wonder of new life and for the mystery of human love. We pray for William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge as they prepare to receive the gift of their child.  We thank you that we are known to you by name and loved by you from all eternity, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

This contains an affirmation that life is a gift of God, our Creator, and it has been pointed out that the press coverage of the anticipated new arrival describes the child as a "royal baby".   This has not been lost on
Archbishop Cranmer, quoted on the Family Research Council blog, referring to himself in third-party:

Everywhere he turns he reads about a Royal baby. Even The Guardian talks of the couple ‘expecting their first child’, despite the Duchess being in the ‘very early stages’ of pregnancy. We are told that the couple ‘are to be parents’, and that this ‘will be the Queen’s third great-grandchild’, and ‘a first grandchild for Prince Charles’.

And the child’s birthright is acknowledged: yes, he or she is ‘destined to wear the crown one day’; he or she ‘will become third in line to the throne’, which the Prime Minister described it as ‘absolutely wonderful news’.

Surely such ‘pro-choice’ newspapers and journals (and people) should be talking about a bunch of pluripotent stem cells, an embryo or a foetus? For reports suggest that the Duchess is still in her first trimester, so this is not yet a baby; and certainly nothing with any kind of destiny. At this stage, surely, it is a non-person, just like the other 201,931 non-persons who last year were evacuated from wombs in England, Scotland and Wales.

 Blogger Denny Burk, published on the Live Action blog, said:

Could it be that we reserve the terms “baby” and “child” for unborn babies that are wanted and prefer the term “fetus” for unborn babies that are not? This is not an unwanted pregnancy but a wanted pregnancy. And the feeling is shared not only by the royal parents but by almost every person in the English speaking world. Since this is to be a royal birth to one of the most glamorous couples on the planet, almost every person on said planet is in eager expectation of this baby.

What is the difference between this “royal baby” and the unborn child in the womb of a mother in the waiting room of an abortion clinic? There’s no intrinsic difference in terms of their humanity. The only difference is that one is wanted and the other is not. Thus, the one gets the status of “baby” and the other is euphemized as a fetus, blastocyst, or blob of cells.

Most people have not pondered the fact that their language about the unborn is shaped less by the personhood of the unborn than by whether or not the baby is wanted.

In this time when we celebrate the birthday of a child in Bethlehem, the gift of God to a world that has come to devalue the service of God and the sanctity of life itself, it's interesting that the default position of many has been to describe this child in the womb as a baby.   Can you imagine the horror around the world if Kate Middleton were to announce that she planned to exercise her woman's right to choose and abort this child?  

Sometimes you just have to think that culturally, we know what is right, what pleases God, but we are too rigid in our rebellion to acknowledge Him.   Our lives are ordained by God, life is a precious gift, and we celebrate that, even as society seems intent to rush headlong into self-destruction, without stopping to think about the presence of our Creator and His ways.   May we be challenged to affirm life and the potential of each child conceived.