April, 2008

Dear Friend,

Several weeks ago my wife and I took our four-year-old grandson Ethan to see the screen adaptation of Horton Hears a Who, the beloved Dr. Seuss tale of an elephant (Horton) who learns of a civilization of beings (the Whos) so tiny that their entire world fits onto a speck of dust. The quintessential line that reverberates from the book and from the film is:

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

Crisis pregnancy center sponsors and other pro-life groups have, understandably, been drawn to this line and have used it in advertising and promoting the anti-abortion cause, much to the dismay of supporters of abortion-on-demand including, remarkably, the widow of Dr. Seuss. These folks say that the book and movie have no relevance to the abortion debate, but only emphasize the importance of every living thing (“no matter how small!”). One gets the impression that this argument is akin to the country parishioner who, greeting the preacher after a particularly pointed and convicting sermon, stated: “Parson, now you’ve stopped preaching and gone to meddling!”

Horton’s brilliant, and morally enlightened, perception that, a person’s a person, not matter how small, reminds me of an oft-quoted portion of the Jerusalem Talmud:

Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved the entire world.

I regularly receive fundraising mailings from Jewish anti-missionary organizations devoted to opposing efforts to share the Gospel with Jewish people. One of their favorite approaches is to declare how much money is spent per year by Evangelical Christians in support of Jewish missions. They even cite the statistic of how many Jews “convert” to Christianity each year and then “do the math” to determine the cost, in dollars, of “saving” one Jewish soul, the implication being that it’s a gigantic waste of money. The contradiction between the Talmud’s statement and this argument is strangely like the country churchman’s complaint about his “meddling” preacher.

No one can put a price on the worth of one human soul, Jewish or Gentile. A person’s a person, no matter how small, and no effort is too great to present the Gospel to even one individual.

Sincerely in Messiah Jesus,

Rev. Roger L. Wambold,
General Director