An extraordinary testimony of God’s kindness.

We live in a strange and worrying era, when the value of life is in deep recession.

On the one hand there is the so-called morning-after pill, an insurance against unwanted conception, and - worse - the escalating use of abortion to destroy unwanted, unborn children. On the other hand, at the other extreme we hear of new scientific ‘advances’ in the way eggs can be cultivated outside the womb for women who find difficulty in conception.

Add to this ever-increasing rates of family breakdown, the general acceptance that one’s gender (even that of a child) can be manipulated and re-configured, and the mounting pressure to legalise assisted suicide, and we begin to realise how far our society’s value of life is being eroded.

Sometimes I have wondered how the wastage of life might be made clearer to those blind to what they are doing. Perhaps someone could write a story that imagined the potential of lives lost in the womb, following the imagined life story of those who might have been born, grown up and contributed to our society, but who never made it past the start-line.

Could one illustrate this in a powerful enough way to touch a generation like, say, Uncle Tom’s Cabin challenged a whole nation to reconsider slavery and eventually reverse that tide of evil?

I don’t have the skill to write such a book, but recently I discovered something in the testimony of my own life that, at least for me, illustrated these things in a deep way.

A Blessed Childhood

My life has been wonderfully blessed. I grew up in the era immediately following the Second World War, conceived in 1945 and born in 1946. My earliest memories are of the hard winter of 1947, with its deep snow up to my waist, at a time when we had been temporarily housed with other families in a village in South Wales.

Sometimes I have wondered how the wastage of life might be made clearer to those blind to what they are doing.

My father returned from Belgium in 1946, was demobbed and resumed work as a plumber, enjoying plenty to do in those days of rebuilding a nation and building houses. My mother kept house and was always the anchor of our security as children (my older sister and I).

What followed was a blessed and stable childhood through the 1950s - the era of rationing and austerity but hope, strong families and supportive community, when Sundays were kept special, when there were few phones and few cars. That era lives with me to this day.

A Fruitful Life

I did well at school and was optimistic about my future career. When my father asked me if I would join him in his plumbing business, that he might write SF Denton and Son on the van, I rather bluntly turned him down, having plans to join the RAF.

I did indeed become an RAF pilot, followed by studying for a maths degree at Kings College Cambridge, followed by teaching Maths and Computer Science at Banbury School, and then Educational Research at the University of Oxford where I also picked up my DPhil in the study of the educational of able children. Since the mid-1980s I left all that to go into full-time Christian work, which has, since then, taken me all over the world. It has been a wonderful and fruitful life.

One thing that typified my life from as early as I can recall, was my commitment to serve God, which I brought to prayer every single night in my years of growing up. Much later, I recall a day when the Lord spoke to me on my way back home from a ministry meeting. I was recalling how blessed and encouraged my early life had been, when the question came into my mind: ‘You thought that was your parents encouraging you, didn’t you?’ “Yes,” said I. ‘Well, that was Me’, said God.

It was like a Bar Mitzvah experience at a time when perhaps the Lord wanted me to turn more fully to him as Father and recognise the quiet but significant role he had played in my life all through those blessed years of growing up. Amazing.

Searching for My True Father

Yet the story has become even more amazing recently, ever since a friend put together a genealogical tree for both sides of my family. I was quite pleased to discover a fairly normal set of ancestors from the working class – labourers, agricultural workers, domestic servants and so on - going back through the 19^th Century.

I recall a day when the Lord spoke to me, urging me to recognise the quiet but significant role he had played in my life through those blessed years of growing up.

At this time a thought came back to my mind that had, despite having wonderful loving parents, often posed a question during my early years: was my father really my father? It is remarkable what a DNA test can show, so I took up the offer of one towards the end of last year. The results confirmed my hunches and so began an incredible period of investigation to see if I could find my true father.

Amazingly, my DNA results strongly linked me paternally not to the Midlands where my supposed father came from, but to the USA.

Piecing together clues I picked up from other known relatives, I went looking on US genealogy trees for the person most likely to be my real father. I was looking for someone who would have been serving in the US forces, stationed in the UK near where my mother lived in 1945 with my baby sister, at a time when my presumed father was away serving in the RAF.

Surely that should have been like a needle in a haystack to find; but miraculously, with the help of an historical society, I was able to locate a man who ticked all those boxes. More than that - I have obtained a photograph of him and have discovered that he is still alive in the USA - a frail 96-year-old, but alive. I may yet have personal contact with him, though he will probably be quite surprised at my existence!

What Really Happened

The true story is that I descend from a Native American tribe in Mexico (perhaps the Pima tribe). In the days of immigration and of pioneering (including the California Gold Rush no doubt), beginning around 1800, an Italian went to Mexico and married a young Indian squaw (I imagine her living in a tepee) - and so the line from which my true father came was launched.

In 1942, when America entered the war, a young Italian with Native American roots enlisted and became one of those GIs who came to the UK with bars of chocolate for the children and nylons for the women. Amazingly, it was on the exact day that my deceased mother would have been 100 years old that I discovered this man’s name.

Despite finding him after all these years, I find myself not so much drawn to know my real father as being drawn closer to my heavenly Father.

History of the closing days of the war describe the way GIs linked up with local young women. During those uncertain days, my mother formed a temporary relationship and I was the unplanned result. Soon the GIs went home and eventually my (adopted) father came back from Belgium. It was all covered up and we got on with that life that turned out to be blessed.

I think about this, having complete forgiveness for my mother, and being aware that but for the events which took place, neither I, nor my own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, nor the consequences of my life (good or bad), would have happened.

In fact, despite finding him after all these years, I find myself not so much drawn to know my real father as being drawn closer to my heavenly Father.

A Father to the Fatherless

The point of describing all this is that, in raw terms, my origins were from the unwanted of the developing USA, descending from a ‘half-breed’ (as they would be called in the cowboy films), a nobody, then later born in sin, the unplanned and unwanted result of a temporary fling. An accident with a questionable background.

Yet, God did not leave me in my vulnerability. He put his mark on me even as I was a young child. As Psalm 68 says, he is a father to the fatherless and puts the isolated in families.

If I had been conceived today, I would very likely have been eradicated by the morning-after pill or through abortion.

I only boast about this to highlight what God has done with my life, for there has been some fruit, for example in the education of gifted children, the establishing of Bible colleges, participating in the eradication of polio from Morocco, to name a few highlights. For his glory it is important to see the potential in my life that God planned to use, and which he is still bringing to fulfilment.

My origins, in raw terms, are an accident with a questionable background. Yet, God did not leave me in my vulnerability.

God Values Life

This is a story with two-fold application. One is to highlight the utter waste of potential in our generation, when life is allocated such little value as to wipe it out before birth. My life is unique and colourful in its origins, but there are many such from our generation. There are many lives from the current generation who never had the chance to find God’s love or to fulfil their potential. They simply weren’t born.

The other is the way Almighty God cares for us when we ask him to help us. In an unseen, sometimes hardly perceptible way, God has been alongside me wonderfully all these years. He will do and is doing the same for others who reach out to him in hope and in growing faith.

God values life so much that he gave his life so that we might live and, as he said, that we might have life in all its fullness. How many of those children destroyed before birth might have grown to have their own testimony, we can only imagine. But here is one who could have been at the bottom of the pile, who might have been lost, but was spared for this life, shared in the work of God, and saved for eternal life.

That is my testimony – still developing and hopefully worth sharing. How about yours? It is the sum of our personal testimonies about what God has made of our lives that could be that ‘book’ I was imagining.

Charlie Gard and the sanctity of life debate.

What is life? When does it begin? When should it end?

Should we keep on life support those who have severely impaired faculties and quality of life?

Great Ormond Street Hospital is seeking to switch off the life support of critically ill baby Charlie Gard so that he may “die with dignity”, a phrase used by euthanasia supporters. However, this week Professor Michio Hirano, an expert in mitochondrial disease, flew in from the US to assess Charlie’s case and has said that a brain scan does not show evidence of irreversible damage from Charlie's rare genetic condition.¹ In recent hours the US Congress has granted Charlie and family permanent residence in the States if they wish to pursue Hirano's experimental treatment.²

Incidentally, it was revealed this week that Victoria Butler-Cole, the lawyer representing Charlie’s state-appointed guardian, heads a charity that supports assisted dying.³ So, has his case had a fair hearing?

In the same week that Charlie Gard’s case is being re-assessed, the High Court is hearing the legal challenge of a British man with motor neurone disease, dreading the progression of the disease and ‘locked-in’ syndrome, who wants to be granted a medically-assisted death.⁴

How should a Christian respond to distressing cases such as these, while staying faithful to the Bible’s teaching?

The answer is that we need to take a step back from the unsteady ground of human debate and plant our feet on the solid rock that is God’s word.

The True Value of Life

Human life is valuable not because of its quality, but because we are made in God’s image:

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man. (Genesis 9:6)

From conception to final breath, human life is valuable and no one has the right to destroy it wilfully: “You shall not murder” (Ex 20:13).

How should a Christian respond to distressing cases such as Charlie Gard’s, while staying faithful to the Bible’s teaching?

We are created in God’s image, but we are also sinners who mar that image within us. Both our sinful nature and our awareness of the divine are present from conception:

Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place. (Ps 51:5-6)

God also foreknows us: Jeremiah was told,

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. (Jer 1:5)

If we destroy life, we destroy God’s destiny and purpose for individuals and nations.

Jacob, Esau, Samson and Jesus himself were all described as beings of destiny and purpose from conception. Jesus was “God with us” from conception. He did not become divine at a later date.⁵

Logically, how could it be any other way? At what arbitrary point (which could vary between individuals) do we say a life in the womb passes the ‘value’ or ‘potential’ test?⁶

It may be the influence of Greek thought that has led us away from biblical truth and allowed us to draw distinctions between viable collections of physical cells and human life with potential for growth and personality. Greek philosophy teaches the separation of body and soul, whereas the Bible teaches that man is a nefesh, a “living being” (Gen 2:7), inextricably body and soul from the point of creation.

In fact, the Hebrew word nefesh is commonly translated as ‘soul’. Similarly, in English, an older use of the word soul implies rescue of the complete person, body and soul (as in SOS or Save Our Souls).

We need to take a step back from the unsteady ground of human debate and plant our feet on the solid rock that is God’s word.

Biblical Principles of Love and Protection

We accept that the Bible teaches us to care for our fellow man, so how can we sanction neglect or harm to the most vulnerable - those who cannot speak?

“Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law” (Rom 13:10). In other words, the whole of God’s Law (the Torah) is based on love and protection. Indeed, God’s law is summed up as: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” (a combination of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18).

Jesus told a story to epitomise that ‘royal law’, where a man treats a stranger’s medical emergency and pays for a form of hospital care.⁷ Helping the helpless and vulnerable, especially the stranger (without rights or voice), is a fundamental biblical principle: the sin of Sodom was not simply moral, rather, the residents outraged biblical decency by seeking to abuse and deny hospitality to strangers.⁸

It has been pointed out that the most inhospitable and dangerous place for any human being in today’s world is the womb. The place which should provide the utmost protection and care has become a grave for millions of human beings. Our end-of-life care centres are in danger of becoming similarly precarious places.

Trusting God’s Sovereignty

God’s word is absolute and we have to stand on its principles of absolute, divinely-revealed truth. Those who argue for assisted dying do so from a position of relative truth and situational ethics, seeking to extract overriding principles by pleading from the circumstances of individual sufferers. Indeed, it is with heart-wrenching personal cases that the media is redirecting the moral values of the nation away from God-given certainties.

Mature Christians know that they cannot exercise judgment based on relative truth and transitorily distressing and emotionally charged circumstances. Believers must stand on God’s promises and trust him to be the Sovereign Lord of all situations, even if upholding his principles becomes costly or difficult.

Believers must stand on God’s promises and trust him to be the Sovereign Lord, even if upholding his principles becomes costly.

Do we trust the Lord enough to allow him to govern all aspects of human suffering, while at the same time doing what we can to alleviate suffering and maintain life?

Keeping Charlie Gard on life support and allowing his parents to seek all possible treatment is biblically correct. By withdrawing life support, the medical team at GOSH would not be doing all they can to maintain life (which most doctors have sworn to do⁹). It would also be an unpleasant, slow way for the child to die and is effectively euthanasia because death is being chosen over life. If man possesses the power to sustain and treat him, then morally and scripturally, medics are obliged to exercise that ability.

If we believe that God is sovereign over life and death, then he can take the child to be with him at any point, whether on or off life support. If we think we must help God along by withdrawing life support, we are saying that God cannot take (or heal) the child unless we remove care. That implies that man is sovereign over life and death.

The Father’s Sacrificial Love

Just as human parents possess the unconditional love that should guide and decide their child’s treatment (unless their choices proceed from cruelty or conclusively injurious motives), so our Father God through his perfect love has the ultimate right to decide whether we live or die.

When we say that man should decide whether man lives or dies, we are denying that we have a Creator and a loving Heavenly Father, who knit us together in our mothers’ womb (Ps 139:13) and who demonstrated his love with the costliest sacrifice he could make.

When we say that unborn children and the seriously impaired (i.e. the voiceless) should be denied life or left to die, we should remember that God demonstrated his love when we too were helpless and vulnerable strangers to his promises (Eph 2:12, 19) in an inhospitable world: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Messiah died for us” (Rom 5:8).

Who should decide how our lives should begin and end? Surely the One who created us and laid down his own life for us.

References

1 Mendick, R. Charlie Gard's parents angry that baby's lawyer is head of charity that backs assisted dying. The Telegraph, 18 July 2017.

2 Forster, K. Charlie Gard granted permanent residence in US by Congress 'to fly to America for treatment'. The Independent, 20 July 2017.

3 See 1.

4 Walsh, F. Terminally ill man Noel Conway in right-to-die fight. BBC News, 17 July 2017.

5 References: Genesis 25:21-26; Judges 13:1-7; Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:39-45.

6 For an excellent study on this topic, see The Christian Institute’s ‘When does human life begin?’ by Dr John R Ling in their Salt and Light series.

7 The Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37.

8 Genesis 19:1-29.

9 “Medical students usually take an oath when they graduate but there is no standard approach across the UK.” Oxtoby, K. Is the Hippocratic oath still relevant to practising doctors today? BMJ, 14 December 2016.

Paul Luckraft reviews ‘Has Anyone Seen My Father?’ by Marion Daniel (New Wine Press, 2008)

This is Marion Daniel’s first book and focusses on the important topic of fatherhood and other similar relationships. No-one would disagree that fathers hold a unique place in family life and that a person’s relationship with their father can have far-reaching consequences on their adult life especially in the area of emotional wholeness, so here is a book well worth investing in.

The author’s goal is not to preach or expound psychological principles but to allow God to bring healing and restoration through the truth of his Word. The book is in four parts, with each part ending in a helpful summary plus some prayers that readers can use if they have found that that particular section applies to them.

Gaining Perspective on Our Fathers

Part One explains the pattern of parenting and begins with an interesting outline of fatherhood during different phases of our national history. This is helpful as the age of each reader will determine when they were first in relationship with their father. For instance, older readers will need to know what it was like to be a father around the time of World War 2 and other periods of adversity and scarcity.

In more modern times, the emphasis may not be economic deprivation but rather that society has become more godless and time-consuming. Children today may be better provided for in material terms but starved of time and real love as the father is often absent through excessive work or other activities.

The author’s goal is not to preach or expound psychology but to allow God to heal through his Word.

The author stresses how important it is to realise what factors affected our father’s own upbringing and what traumas in his life made him the person he is. It could be “he was behaving in the only way he knew how given his own upbringing” (p22). Our dads were also children once, with their own unique experience of being parented.

Marion Daniel also makes us aware that our initial impressions of our fathers will inevitably have been childish ones, those of an immature person trying to come to terms with life and the world generally. A more adult reflection in later life is necessary to get a sense of reality and proportion into our thinking.

The Curse of Sin

At times the author is quite hard-hitting regarding the consequences of fathers who don’t know the Lord or walk in his ways. Their children will inevitably suffer in some way from such rejection or wickedness, and the effects can be disastrous.

Using Psalm 109, she states that “there is a very definite curse that comes upon the children of people who act wickedly before God” (p31). This might seem rather dramatic; however, she does continue that the power of any curse that results from the sin of our ancestors can be broken through Jesus.

It is important to realise what factors affected our father’s own upbringing.

Reconciliation and Adoption

Part Two examines Deuteronomy 6 in order to see what fathers should have done for their children in terms of direction and discipline. This is a useful section for Christians who are currently fathers or expecting to be fathers in the near future. Prevention is always better than cure!

Part Three covers the theme of reconciliation. Here the scripture to be drawn upon is the story of the prodigal son, obviously well-known to many but no doubt still able to speak powerfully into many situations. The section ends with three real life testimonies of those who have received God’s healing and restoration in this area.

Part Four is an important section in that it is intended to help those who never knew their father - either because they were adopted, or because their parents were “absent” (p75). It is to be assumed that this would include those who early in life became fatherless through death. We are reminded that God has a special concern for the fatherless and this is explained in terms of being adopted into his family.

One final point in this section is to explain how each local church needs ‘spiritual fathers’, those who can bring encouragement, consolation and direction to those who have missed out on these qualities from their natural fathers.

God has a special concern for the fatherless.

Practical and Useful Insights

Overall this is an important book that will help many people, though some may think that some of the statements made in it are rather simplistic and potentially misleading. For instance, “The emotion of anger is produced whenever a particular goal we have is blocked” (p21). It was commented to me that although anger may be a response to a blocked goal, this is not always the case. Perhaps matters are not always as straightforward as the book suggests, but certainly there are many practical and useful insights which, with God’s help, will produce healing in these areas.

One strong feature of the book is that it provides many scriptures to meditate on and refer back to once the book has been read. It would be well worth having a notebook handy to jot these down and also to note any pages of the book to re-visit at a later occasion.

Has Anyone Seen My Father (96 pages) is available for £5.99 from Sozo Books.