“Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: ‘any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life.” — President Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation
In my previous blog post, I sought to shed light upon the abortion debate by excavating the question of how any thinking, rational person could defend so ardently an act which so brutally ends the life of an unborn baby? If you remember, I made the argument that this has been made possible because our culture has reframed the debate through the use of clever euphemism which enables them to de-humanize the occupant of the womb thus mitigating the effect of their personal conscience which would prevent them from such an act.
In the current toxic political climate, what is made clear is this, one cannot “reason a person out of a position, he did not reason himself into in the first place.” Since Roe v. Wade, our culture has successfully reshaped the mind and the conscience of the nation to accept, defend and even celebrate abortion as the right every pregnant woman possesses. And yet writes, Ronald Reagan,
“Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court’s result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.”[1]
I can gladly affirm that the church in America has not been inactive nor silent in this debate, despite the efforts of those who oppose us. So, I offer nothing more by way of
It is to that end, I will seek to answer this question,
“What can we, as believers in Jesus, do about the pervasive evil of abortion?”
Are we as powerless as we may sometimes feel with the forces of popular culture and human government arrayed against us? What exactly can the church do to stem the tide of this national and moral tragedy of our time? Can any of our David-like tactics stand the test of time against the Goliath that is the Pro-Choice movement of today?
Absolutely. But allow me to begin at a place that may cause some controversy among the community of faith and say that…
Our hope of success does not begin and end with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Now I may not know all the intricacies and judicial complexities of what it would take to overturn the 1973 decision by the Supreme Court, but I know that the ground swell of opposition is daunting, making it’s reversal almost impossible. That is not to say, we ought not to try. But even if it were, the overturning of Roe v. Wade would not end the killing. Abortion would simply be driven underground as was the case during Prohibition in the 1920’s. People didn’t stop drinking alcohol simply because it was made illegal by constitutional amendment; the flow of liquor continued in the smoke-filled speak-easy’s of the day. The same would happen with abortion. Sinful people will always find a way to fulfill their fleshly desire for what is evil.
Now, I’m not suggesting that Pro-life people of good conscience end their attempts to introduce new legislation which would limit and mitigate abortion as some states have done recently. These legislative measures are helpful and needed and from a practical standpoint anything that could be done to protect the life of the unborn should be viewed as a welcomed friend.
However, my point is this.
We cannot place our ultimate hopes in government or in the legislative process to end abortion.
Abortion exists and continues to do so because the majority in our society wants it. And
The Scriptures teach us that God put human government in place to retard the flow of evil and to punish the evildoer, (Romans 13), but government has no power whatsoever to eradicate that evil desire from the human heart.
In other words, the abortion fight cannot simply take place in the chamber halls and in the smoke-filled green rooms of our federal and state governments, the fight against abortion is far more organic and individual. The problem nor the solution to that problem, stems from the public arena but the battle against abortion begins within each individual woman’s heart who is found ruminating within herself what she should do with the baby she does not want. And if that’s where the problem lies; then that’s where the solution must be applied.
Jesus said in Matthew 15:19-20, “…out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean….” So where does this lead us then? How does one fight this unseen battle?
The following are four things we as the church can do to positively respond to the abortion crisis facing our nation:
Become an agent of Grace!
I can’t help but wonder how many women would ultimately choose against abortion if there was a loving, reasonable voice in their life presenting them with alternative options other than the one forced upon them by a culture that sees little value in an under-developed human life.
In my last post, I related the fact that many women seek an abortion because of the stigma attached to a promiscuous lifestyle. In other words, they seek an abortion because they want to hide the fact that they had sex outside of marriage. They’re afraid of the Scarlet Letter.
Now, it is not my intention to downplay the seriousness of sexual sin, since the Bible does not, however, we in the church have not bridged well the divide between hating the sin and loving the sinner.
When you read of the woman caught in adultery in John chapter eight who was brought to Jesus, you can see that both love and justice were present as the Lord dealt with this sinful woman. We not only observe his patient mercy as he scribbles in the sand, but his honesty and sense of justice by gently commanding that she leave her life of sin.
The remarkable thing about Jesus was that sinners actually sought him out; he could eat with them, spend time with them. He would tell them the truth about their sinful life and yet amazingly, they never felt condemned by him.
As the church, we struggle with bridging this divide. We are often not known for loving sinners as Jesus was because, so often, our respectability gets in the way.
We sing about the Jesus that forgave, in an unforgettable and dramatic way, the woman caught in adultery, yet if such a woman known to us in our community were to visit our church on Sunday, many would silently disapprove. We might find ourselves, secretly in the hidden recesses of our heart and mind, loathing her presence among us.
We offer up prayers to the God of grace who forgave the diminutive Zacchaeus for his greed, corruption and theft as a Roman tax collector, yet if the owner of the town automotive shop who we suspect overcharged us for unnecessary repairs, slips into the side pew beside us, we might ignore his existence and with self-justifying bitterness treat him as though he were an interloper trespassing upon sacred private property.
And yet, in our self-deluded spiritual blindness, we see no correlation between Biblical history and our present reality. And what’s worse, it never occurs to us to ask ourselves, just what Jesus it is, we say we are worshipping on Sunday morning.
Therefore, it’s not difficult to imagine why the church in America has so often failed to make even a concerted spiritual dent in the evil culture surrounding it. We might as well be honest with our communities and hang a sign on some of our churches which reveals the true nature of how some of us feel:
“People with messed up lives are unwelcome here!”
If some churches were that boldly honest about how they feel, at least then they would save the lost the agony of being disappointed when, thinking that those in the steepled building cared, they wouldn’t be disillusioned when they discovered that the opposite was true.
At least with a sign of this nature scrawled across the front of our buildings, the unsaved would finally get an honest assessment of how things truly are. Is that too harsh? Perhaps. But at least, if this happened the world would know that we’ve finally removed every semblance of pretense from our church life.
Of course in this, on one hand, I am being facetious. Yet, on the other, I’m deadly serious! Something needs to change in our churches.
Perhaps those who have had abortions might have made a different choice had they had a church family in their life who treated them the way Jesus treated the woman caught in adultery…perhaps then they would have made a different choice. Perhaps…
Yet, abortion destroys more than just the unborn…it also destroys the lives of countless women as well. Herein do we see our mission field then, brothers and sisters!
Preach and live the Gospel!
If the battlefield of abortion is arrayed in the human heart, then only God through the power of the Holy Spirit by the life-changing message of the gospel can change it. If we, as the church, truly want to see our society change; to see fewer and fewer women choosing abortion over life, then we must be about getting into the lives of people with the gospel. This requires more than just letting the preacher do it; it means going into our world; establishing relationships with sinful people and lovingly leading them to Jesus.
Yet, how many of us are actually doing this?
It is not unusual to find supposedly “good churches” in rundown neighborhoods throughout the cities of America who maintain the highest Christian standards but who have little to no impact upon the world in which it exists; churches who have good theology and doctrine, but who do nothing with them; churches who are obsessed with their own brand of goodness; churches like the church in Laodicea, whose goodness amounted to what was “good for nothing”.
Churches whose worship consists of nothing more than a weekly gathering of smug self-righteous individuals who come merely to celebrate how “right” they are. Churches who make a good show of worship on Sunday within the comfort of their own stained-glass menagerie; all the while ignoring the needy souls sleeping on their very doorstep.
Perhaps it is for these reasons more than any other that George Gallup Sr. could say: “Never in the history of the United States of America has Christianity made such in-roads, while making so little difference in how people live.” Perhaps this why, in the Christian world, there’s a whole lot of things going on, but no lives being changed? There’s a whole lot of thunder, but no rain!
Yet, to be a true disciple, one must move beyond politeness; beyond mental accent to a commonly held truth, and allow the truth presented to change us in a myriad of practical and life-changing ways, in order to become what Christ is. Otherwise, Christianity itself is reduced to merely a pietistic form of spiritual calisthenics. And nothing changes….
Save as many babies as you can!
Often, with evil as pervasive as abortion, the task seems overwhelming and our meager contributions seem so small. It’s then that we are tempted to ask ourselves, “I know abortion is bad but, what can I do about it?” And so, with opposition and obstacles staring as us in the face, we do nothing when what’s true is, we could have done something.
At the very least, support your local crisis pregnancy center through prayer, financial giving, donation, awareness, promotion and the like.
But lastly…
Don’t be forced into silence!
As I’ve mentioned before, “evil has always been aimed at destroying innocence and children are the personification of that innocence.” And given that abortion is Satanically empowered; and given that the opposition he engenders against the church for our stand against it can make for some truly intimidating situations, our responsibility before God has not changed. We are called by God in the midst of this foreboding, ever-darkening, and ever-growing evil to passionately stand and decry its wickedness before the world.
Someone must speak the truth. And if it is not body of Christ, then who? We must not be intimidated! We must refuse to remain silent; to instead, speak the truth to all who will listen and even to those who won’t.
I am reminded of an eyewitness account to the Holocaust that Erwin Lutzer relays in his book, When a Nation forgets God. It’s the story of a German Christian who witnessed the atrocities that Hitler and the Nazis committed in the name of National Socialism. This person writes,
“I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it?
A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!
Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us.
We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow, we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.
Years have past and no one talks about it anymore. But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene.”[2]
The worst thing that could ever happen as it relates to abortion in this country is for the prophetic cries of the church against the injustice of the current holocaust of our time to grow silent. The absolute worst thing we could do as the church…is do nothing.
To sing louder…while the whistle blows.
[1] Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation by Ronald Reagan. Thomas Nelson Publishers: 1984 p.16
[2] When a Nation Forgets God by Erwin W. Lutzer Moody Publishers: 2010