The Miracle of Life, by Timothy George

There are some people for whom you would say “to know them is to love them.” After having the pleasure of getting to know Professor Timothy George a bit, I’d put him in this category.  Dr. Geroge is the Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama and executive editor of Christianity Today. For a sermon on race relations, (“The Sin of Inhospitality”) he chose Luke 9:46-62 as his text. In this passage, Jesus first taught His self-important, ambitious, and competitive disciples that they needed to humble themselves to attend respectfully to children. In the next verses, He rebuked them for their hard-heartedness toward troublesome Samaritans. Dean George noted that in both cases, the Lord was standing up for “nobodies” and shaming the arrogant, even within His own circle. George explained that abortion and racism both sprang from an evil sense of superiority and that right-minded and right-hearted Christians addressed both issues. Since Christ stood for those on the margins, then His followers must do no less.

In Jesus’ world, as in ours, children lived on the margins of society. They were nobodies. They were among the most vulnerable, least protected, least cared-about members of ancient society. It is the same in our world today—among children, both born and unborn. It is ironic, I think, that some of those who are most concerned about abortion have little to say about race relations. And some of those most concerned about racism have very little to say about abortion. But the two are vitally connected because they have to do with the value that God Almighty puts on a human life.¹

Footnotes:

¹ Timothy George, “The Sin of Inhospitality,” in A Mighty Long Journey: Reflections on Racial Reconciliation, eds. Timothy George and Robert Smith, Jr. (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), 143.