Mark Langedijk was an alcoholic. He battled his addiction for eight years. The battle was so difficult for him that he decided he would rather die. And in the Netherlands – where the logic of euthanasia has run its course – he found a doctor who would make him dead. And why not? He was suffering. It doesn’t matter that his suffering did not involve physical pain or that he was not terminally ill. All that matters is that he was experiencing suffering and wanted relief. Euthanasia knows no limits.
And last year, a person suffering from mental illness due to sex abuse as a child was also euthanized. Euthanasia is an easy way to throw broken people away rather than treat them. It is abandonment. These people need our care, not a lethal injection.
I applaud Nick Cannon for having the guts to state the obvious: Planned Parenthood is responsible for “real genocide” in the black community, and is a form of “modern eugenics.” Indeed, more black Americans die from abortion than from anything else. The abortion rate for black women is three times higher than that of white women. Black lives truly matter, and that includes in the womb. And if the Black Lives Matter movement truly believed black lives matter, they would become pro-life because nothing has done more to desecrate the black population than abortion.
There are two passages in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus speaks of “binding” and “loosing”:
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19)
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18:18)
I have heard two different types of interpretations of these passages. The first understands this to give power to the church leadership (whether at the level of the local pastor or the denomination as a whole) to legislate on matters not addressed (or not sufficiently clear) in Scripture. This often gets applied to morally questionable practices. For example, some Christians think it is morally wrong to wear jewelry while others think it is morally acceptable. To settle the dispute, a pastor will either “bind” the issue by prohibiting the use of jewelry among his congregants, or will “loose” the issue by allowing it. Whatever the pastor binds or looses on earth is also bound or loosed in heaven, so to disobey or contradict the pastor is to disobey God Himself.
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Thinking to Believe 