defending our faith
Is Piper right on pets?
Chris Sinkinson
Have you ever been asked a question and been completely stumped to give an answer? There is a healthy dose of humility when once in a while we are caught out by a question and truly at a loss for words.
I remember being in exactly that situation. It did not concern biological evolution, manuscript evidence for the New Testament, or an ethical question raised by new technology. It was at an assembly at a local first school when a reception-year child raised a hand to politely ask: ‘My rabbit died this weekend, will he be in heaven?’
politics & policy
Life and death in focus
James Mildred
Last month, a truly awful abortion amendment was withdrawn from the UK Government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Its intention was to legalise abortion to birth for any reason in England and Wales.
Had it succeeded, the door would have been opened to sex-selective abortion and ever-increasing numbers of abortions. In a context where 200,000 abortions took place in England and Wales last year alone and where 9.5 million have taken place since 1967, the situation could hardly be made worse. I’d love to tell you that the amendment was withdrawn because of a growing concern in Parliament about the abortion lobby. The truth, I suspect, is more complex. Tacking an amendment that would have resulted in major social change onto another Bill is a sure-fire way of irking colleagues in the Commons. The MP who tabled the amendment, Diana Johnson, herself claimed it was only a ‘probing amendment’ and she never planned to push it to a vote. At the same time, it was encouraging to see and hear stories of how Christians did their bit – writing to our MPs and engaging with the issue clearly had an impact. Anecdotally I’ve been told that MPs received more than 71,000 emails and letters. For anyone who has been used to being rebuffed by their MP in recent times, it is surely an encouraging reminder to keep going. Sometimes our efforts at lobbying do help to make a difference.
How do we tackle one of society’s last great taboos?
Death is the one of the last taboos in contemporary British society. Medical advances over the past 200 years have all but ended infant mortality and life expectancy is now more than 81 years. As a result, we are less familiar with death, which is confined to medicalised environments. We tend not to talk about it.
Our reasonable expectation that most people will live to a ripe old age means that we are even more shocked when younger people die.