This may kind of blow your minds, but I want to write in this column about frog jumping contests and abortion.Let me be honest by saying that I am filled with ambiguity about both issues. I do feel sympathetic to the pain of little frogs, but I have generally favored the Fourth of July frog jumping contest. When forced to declare whether I am pro-choice or pro-life (a false choice if I ever did see one), I’m pro-choice; however, I view the number of abortions which take place in our society as abominable.

The genesis of this particular weird column was last week’s issue of the Chenango Valley News. Page five contained two letters to the editor under the headlines, “Ethical treatment of frogs at issue in Hamilton” and “Rogers Conservation says stop frog jumping.” If you turn the page to page seven of the same issue their was a long article on the recent pro-choice rally in Washington. The proximity of the two blew my mind. What does this say about us? I wondered how many might be both pro-choice and pro-frog. I can believe that the life of a born person has more intrinsic value than the life of a human fetus. But which is of greater value, a human fetus or a frog? What would a Martian think of our morality if he read this issue of the Chenango Valley News? What would Another Visitor from Beyond think? I don’t really have an answer, but it is a question worth asking, don’t you think?

I believe the direction to an answer lies in the position taken this past summer by the Lutheran Church of America. It declared that neither the right to life nor the right to choose is absolute. It also declared that it is the responsibility of society to delineate both those rights? Like it or not we are in the process of doing so. May God give us all wisdom.

©C. David Hess

As a part of Hamilton’s Bicentennial Celebration the pastors of the Hamilton churches have been asked to provide church newsletters and a personal message to be placed in a time capsule to be opened 100 years from now. I have decided to combine the two. Here is my message to those who will open the capsule in 2095:

I have had a hard time deciding what to write to you. Your world is probably as unimaginable to me as my world is to those who lived in 1895. I am sure they could hardly imagine our world of computers, televisions, jet planes, moon walks, satellite explorations, and atom bombs. What must your world be like? Some of our computer scientists working on Artificial Intelligence are predicting that within as little as a decade there will be computers which will have progressed to the point that they will be considered to be persons. This opens up all kinds of theological questions for us not to mention logistical ones---how will we Baptists ever baptize a computer by immersion without shorting it out? (this is a joke). What will your world be like? Will life still exist on our planet? Or will it be wiped out by nuclear war or some ecological disaster? Will our Lord have returned "to judge the living and the dead" by then? I don't know, but some things I do know. If you read this message, you will be pretty much like us (and like those of a century before us). You will laugh, love, weep, and die as we do (probably of different diseases). You will be sinners in need of grace and forgiveness as we are, and like us you will worship the God who is from "everlasting to everlasting" and the Christ who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever." Whatever good things we will have passed on to you (we know we have passed along a lot of bad), my hope is that chief among them will be faith in God who is with us always.

It is my faith in God who raised Christ from the dead that leads me to say, "I am looking forward to meeting you."

©C. David Hess