Letter from Michael Bray to Scott Roeder
Excerpt from a letter from Michael Bray to Scott Roeder at the El Dorado Correctional Facility dated 20 July, 2010.
I will take some time to reply to your inquiry regarding the proper response to government-protected and -subsidized child-slaughter. I went over this with Paul Hill long ago. At issue was not whether or not it was Lawful to use force in defense of innocent children. Rather, the question was whether it was mandatory. To avoid the sin of omission we are required to do justice and show mercy. Paul made specific reference to the pertinent statements laid down in the Westminster Confession concerning the meaning of the Sixth Commandment (the Fifth as enumerated by the Romanists and Lutherans).
I will quote for you the relevant parts of the Book of Concord, the summation of theology set forth by those who came to be known as Lutherans, pertinent to the Fifth Commandment: “Do not murder”:
Secondly, under this commandment not only is he guilty who does evil to his neighbor, but he also who can do him good, prevent, resist evil, defend and save him, so that no bodily harm or hurt happen to him, and yet does not do it. If, therefore, you send away one that is naked when you could clothe him, you have caused him to freeze to death; if you see one suffer hunger and do not give him food, you have caused him to starve. So also, if you see any one innocently sentenced to death or in like distress, and do not save him, although you know ways and means to do so, you have killed him. And it will not avail you to make the pretext that you did not afford any help, counsel, or aid thereto, for you have withheld your love from him and deprived him of the benefit whereby his life would have been saved.
Therefore God also rightly calls all those murderers who do not afford counsel and help in distress and danger of body and life, and will pass a most terrible sentence upon them in the last day, as Christ Himself has announced when He shall say, Matt. 25:42f : I was an hungry, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not. That is: You would have suffered Me and Mine to die of hunger, thirst, and cold, would have suffered the wild beasts to tear us to pieces, or left us to rot in prison or perish in distress. What else is that but to reproach them 192] as murderers and bloodhounds? For although you have not actually done all this, you have nevertheless, so far as you were concerned, suffered him to pine and perish in misfortune.
It is just as if I saw someone navigating and laboring in deep water [and struggling against adverse winds] or one fallen into fire, and could extend to him the hand to pull him out and save him, and yet refused to do it. What else would I appear, even in the eyes of the world, than as a murderer and a criminal?
Therefore it is God’s ultimate purpose that we suffer harm to befall no man, but show him all good and love; and, as we have said, it is specially directed toward those who are our enemies. For to do good to our friends is but an ordinary heathen virtue, as Christ says Matt. 5:46.
The Book of Concord was the product of a gathering of prominent leaders of the Reformation in 1576 for the purpose of setting down their articles of faith and resolving points of controversy. It has been the summary of doctrine followed by the Lutheran churches down through the centuries (until the end of the last century when many Lutheran churches along with much of main line Protestantism in America apostatized).
To the point, one might well put the question to me: “Well, how is it that you do not apply this command to the womb children?
And it would be no easy matter to resolve. I can only answer in this way. First is this: As I would not follow an ex-communicant and bid him return, but would let the due judgment fall upon him and his children whom he has by his own deeds taken away from the fellowship of the Church, denying them the Life of the Church and pray for his repentance and return to the Life found at the Table of our Lord where he and his children are nourished, so I must similarly look at these children. They have been taken to the slaughter by their own parents who, living in a Godless and Lawless nation, have been equipped and blessed by the state to carry out such a deed. This very condition is a judgment of God upon a wicked people. It is the same situation found among the nations among whom Israel dwelled. They sacrificed their children to Moloch bringing judgment upon themselves in their own wicked idolatry, destroying the most precious gift from God, thinking that they were serving Him. And God did not command His people to rescue those who so sacrificed their children nor did he pronounce the failure to rescue such children to be sin.
Our current legal/ethical status under our apostate government might well be viewed in terms of the biblical “ban,” by which a town or nation was “devoted” unto destruction. In that case, God sent judgment to that nation, slaughtering all – women, children, animals.
A second reply is a “conflict of obligation” principle in which a person declines to take on one duty because it disables him from performing another. A man with duties to his own children has less of an ethical demand to lose his life to save an orphan depriving his own children of a father. I say less of an ethical demand. The man who gives up his fathering responsibilities to save another does not do wrong, but he certainly is engaged in choosing one duty over another. The choice is left to him and we may remain “pro-choice” by this principle.
A third reply has to do with divine calling, which is also left for the prospective terminator/deliver to discern. (It beckons one to discern the will of God among multiple options and it thus falls as well under the “pro-choice” banner.) One may call to mind the divine calling upon Hosea to marry a harlot or upon Samson to marry a woman outside of the covenant nation or upon Ezekiel to preach to a people of whom God said that they would not repent. These callings are reserved for the particular servant of God to discern. He called these men out for a special task to which He did not call others. He called the like of you and others to particular and significant (prophetic) action.
I favor the first reply. We are an apostate nation despite the feeble efforts of churches of God and singular prophets or para-church ministries to shine the light of Truth. We may well judge that the normal ethical demand for our intervention and rescue of the “innocents” (no one is ultimately innocent as all are sinners under national judgment) is attenuated. But just as such an interpretation of historical events through the eyes of a theological framework is not fool proof (we being prone to foolishness), it is, nevertheless reasonable. It is as if we see the judgment falling – now – and as we would not run (and would have no obligation) to the rescue of children in Sodom and Gomorrah or Jericho, we may not be obligated now to rescue those who bring judgment upon themselves by murdering their own offspring and adding to the indictment which the Father will read to them on Judgment Day.
As I recognize the tentativeness of my assessment as an interpretation of an historical situation (and an attendant application of ethical principles), it is with the same wariness that I find myself able to stand on the general principles of defense of innocents which justify protecting the womb children forcefully. I can, therefore defend you and Paul, and I can defend those who stand in protest but refrain from employing defensive action.
I hope to hear from you soon, friend. Please call when you can.
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