We live in an increasingly lawless culture where avenues of thought and action are pursued not because they are right but simply because they are available. Restraints that have historically safeguarded society from the worst excesses of folly and wickedness are being systematically deconstructed as we pursue ever more reckless agendas.
Three recent news stories highlight this trend.
Dad and Daddy
First, the story of Barry and Tony Drewitt-Barlow, homosexual parents known to their five children as Dad and Daddy. The family represents a confused, tangled, biological web involving donor eggs, multiple surrogate mothers, half-sister and brothers and a child from a previous relationship.
A sixth child could soon be on the way for the Drewitt-Barlows if Tony gets his way after revealing that he doesn’t yet “feel complete”.
Where will it all end? Is the family an endlessly malleable entity subject to all our whims and desires?
65-year-old grandmother gives birth to quadruplets
Second, the story of Annegret Raungik, a 65-year-old German grandmother, who recently gave birth to quadruplets. She travelled abroad to have fertilised eggs implanted after having been refused IVF treatment in Germany amid concerns that she would not be physically capable of bearing the children.
The mother explained that her decision to have another baby was due to her daughter wanting a younger sibling. The quadruplets join 13 other children who come from five different partners.
It’s hard not to conclude that this represents another example of someone sidestepping legitimate safeguards in an effort to pursue their own agenda.
Legal battle for frozen embryos
Third, the case of Sofia Vergara and her ex-fiance, Nicholas Loeb, who are locked in a custody battle over two frozen embryos.
The couple fertilised the embryos in November 2013 but separated in May 2014. Mr Loeb first sued his former partner, seeking a ruling that the embryos could not be destroyed, and has now filed an amended lawsuit seeking custody of the embryos.
Currently the embryos in question are unlikely ever to be brought to term and could well be destroyed at some point in the future. The lives of these two unborn children, like the many hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos stored in clinics around the world, hang in the balance and will be subject to a legal decision played out in front of the world’s media.
Unborn children are the most vulnerable of all sections of society and for their fate to be decided by warring parties, lawyers and judges is a cause of considerable concern.
A lack of purpose
Our culture’s problem is that we have divorced marriage, family and parenthood from their created purpose. We have collectively lost sight of the definitions of purpose found within God’s word that have for centuries provided a framework for thinking through ethical issues.
Leslie Newbigin, in his book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, puts it this way,
“If I do not know the purpose for which human life was designed, I have no basis for saying that any kind of human life-style is good or bad… If, on the other hand, it were a fact that the one who designed the whole cosmic and human story has told us what the purpose is, then the situation would be different.”
We desperately need to return to the ethical principles that have served us so well in the past if we wish to escape increasing lawlessness. It is only by recovering these principles that we can hope to move forward with any sense of clarity and confidence.