Category: abortion

GOD’S GRACE FOR AN ABORTIVE FATHER

GOD’S GRACE FOR AN ABORTIVE FATHER

The details are vague now, four decades hence. I sat on a curb, or was it a granite ledge? Outside the downtown clinic. Either way, it was cold, barren, like my heart. The girl—yes, still a girl only 17—had disappeared into the nondescript building’s sterile glass door. She had found the place, or had I? I couldn’t remember. Either way, it hadn’t been there long, a new edition to the healthcare—cruelest euphemism—landscape. But I found the money. That I clearly recalled. I found the two hundred dollars it took to end the life in her womb. I thought I was solving a problem, keeping our secret. But the cold reality of what I’d done seeped into my soul like the clammy chill coming through the concrete and into my bones. I paid the doctor to kill our son.

How could I have done that? How could I not see? Evil veiled itself in those days. “It’s just a blob of cells,” they said. But I knew it was wrong. I could feel it.

Little did I know, in 1977, that we were only grains of sand in the mammoth cultural landslide that was the sexual revolution. Free love never was victimless. Roe V. Wade, that revolution’s most significant victory, remains the greatest bloodbath in history, 60 million aborted Americans, with the longest trail of traumatized survivors, 120 million moms and dads.

Time moved on, and so did I until about a decade later, when my first child was born. Something clicked, a window opened, and I began to see. Life is precious! I should have taken the blow, not the girl. Not the child. I should have taken the guilt and shame with her and provided for them both. That is what my father would have done. That is when I started attending the annual pro-life march downtown on January 22nd. It was the least I could do, the only thing I knew to do besides giving to crisis pregnancy centers and advocating for life in the pulpit and print.

It wasn’t enough. At least, it hasn’t been so far. The Pro-Choice propaganda political action machine continues promoting the Big Lie that it is all about reproductive rights and the mother’s health. It is celebrating victory again today when Planned Parenthood’s chief political proponents—the non-profit donated $45 million to the victorious party—will be sworn in as president and vice president of the United States.

Instead of judgment, God gave me a cleansed conscience, a beautiful wife, and three beautiful daughters. Then, in my forties, a young man walked into my life. Energetic, intelligent, eager to serve alongside and be mentored. It took a while because I was so busy with family and work, but it finally clicked. Another window opened. “The timing is about right,” I thought. “This could be my son.” A strange wave of grief and gratitude washed over me. “God, you are so good to me. I don’t deserve this privilege, but I accept it as a gift from your hand.” Many more surrogate “sons” have come and gone since. Slowly the wound has healed.

Perhaps you are one of those men. You gave up a child and her mother to an abortion. You walked away, but you never forgot. You know what you did, and it gnaws at your soul. I can confidently tell you God’s grace extends to you. Reach out to him. Tell him what you did. Ask him to forgive you, to set you free from guilt, and to rebuild your heart. I tell you confidently, and in the name of Jesus Christ, that is a prayer that he will answer.

JUXTAPOSITION

JUXTAPOSITION

Juxtaposition is the placing of two things side by side, especially for comparison or contrast. A sports car and a dump truck placed side by side are in juxtaposition. A Great Dane and kitten side by side are in juxtaposition. Advertisers use such images because they cause us to stop and take notice. But real-life juxtapositions are even more powerful. A Richmond Times article on former President Jimmy Carter showed the late Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin, former leaders of Egypt and Israel respectively, standing together in a peace accord brokered by Carter. It was and remains an unusual thing to witness. The juxtaposition of opposites has great power to reveal the essence of those opposites. It helps us see things we didn’t see before.

January 22nd always holds an unusual juxtaposition for me. Two things occurred on that day that, when seen side by side, clarify the meaning and purpose of my life. January 22nd is my mother’s birthday. (I’m not sure she’d want you to know the year, so I’ll leave you guessing). January 22nd is also the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in this country. Because of Mom’s birthday, I have a birthday. Because of Roe v. Wade, over 40 million children never did. World Magazine reports an estimated 862,320 American lives were lost to abortion in 2017 alone. I urge you to read their report in this month’s issue.

Think of it. With one stroke of a legal pen America lost many times more than all the people she lost in all her wars put together. Most of those wars were fought against oppression of one kind or another. They were fought to preserve the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not only for our-selves, but also for other nations. I wonder sometimes, what would the men and women who fought to free us from English tyranny, Nazi oppression and Communist domination think of what we’ve done with our freedom?  What does God think?

The Lord Jesus liked juxtapositions. He said, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matt. 17:20)

We need to remember that when we think of abortion. The size of the problem compared to our ability to fix it is downright laughable. But my Mom’s birthday and your Mom’s birthday have given us the opportunity to do some mustard seed living. Here are some practical things you can do. Support your local Crisis Pregnancy Center. We’ll be hearing from a representative of the Selah Center in Clarkesville in our worship service this week. They help young women make it through to a life-giving conclusion to their crisis. Write your Congressmen and Senators and tell them if you support restrictions on abortion. Become a Mentor/Role Model for an “at risk child.” These kids are more at risk for having abortions and other life-threatening choices. Encourage and vote for the streamlining of adoption laws. Vote for pro-life candidates in this year’s elections. Finally, pray, that all children will have the joy of celebrating their own birthdays, and their Mom’s.

7 PRO-CHOICE ASSUMPTIONS and why they are wrong

7 PRO-CHOICE ASSUMPTIONS and why they are wrong

The pro-life laws passed in nine states this year have released an avalanche of pro-abortion media, entertainment, and political pressure on lawmakers and voters alike. Some of the pressure is pure power play, like Netflix’s CEO’s threat to pull production from Georgia over its new law. But much of it comes from cleverly crafted messaging designed to play on our sympathies and sense of fair play.

It’s hard to be rational when our emotional levers are being pulled. But some common assumptions underlie most of these messages.  I’ve boiled them down to seven and attempted to provide answers from a biblical worldview. I hope you find them helpful.

First assumption: Man, not God, is the measure of all things. Life is only sacred under certain conditions, conditions chosen by man.

But if a thing is sacred only under certain conditions, then it is not sacred at all.

Second assumption: Because man is the center of the universe, society is able to optimize conditions for everyone everywhere at all times, and has the responsibility to do that for every unplanned pregnancy.

But are we really that powerful? Does anything in human history teach us that we can rescue everyone every time, especially when they don’t want to be rescued? And does our inability to achieve moral perfection in one area justify blatant immorality in another?  Does the fact that we are unable to optimize conditions for every person mean it’s OK to kill them?

Third assumption: that the natural environment is the most significant determinant of the well-being of children and that human beings can end war, spend the money on improving social well-being, and create environmental Utopia.

Three responses are required.

First, all reliable research shows that the most significant predictor of successful development for children is a home with a mom and a dad in a traditional marriage. That is true across the board, from criminally polluted Shanghai to environmentally pristine Washington State.

Second is another worldview assumption: that humans will one day stop fighting one another and all wars will end. Five thousand years of human history tell us otherwise. The best that can be hoped for is that the strong will protect the weak from the predators that have been with us since Tubal Cain.

Third, life has no value if the Utopian ideal for society cannot be achieved. This reveals the dark thread that runs through the entire pro-abortion argument: Anything short of perfection as we define it justifies death for the unborn.

Got a problem with the world as it is? Just kill the kid. Problem solved.

The fourth assumption: That somehow society is responsible to provide comprehensive and responsive healthcare, a decent standard of living and economic opportunity for everyone so that every child will be provided for.

In the real world, economic opportunity is created by entrepreneurial risk-takers who put their own well-being on the line to found successful businesses that employ others with a living wage and pay taxes that enable all the elements of a decent standard of living.

But if we somehow fall short of that Utopian ideal? Never mind, just kill the kid. They don’t have any rights anyway.

Fifth assumption: The LGBT argument for abortion. Pro-abortionists know that no one is arguing against moms and dads of any and all ethnicity having children. They know that Asian-Americans have the same rights as African Americans who have the same rights as every other American couple that wish to have children. But the LGBT argument for abortion says that if same-sex couples can’t have children then we’ve failed as a society and that justifies abortion.

The thing is, life is never born to two men, or two women. It’s a biological impossibility. A man and a woman are always necessary for the creation of a child. A child born of surrogacy is a child robbed of its ancestors.

But that’s OK, if we disagree with the LGBT agenda, just kill the child. They won’t know the difference.

Sixth assumption: we should stop spending money on war machines and the people that use them because they are only and always about ending life. They aren’t. In the right hands they are about protecting civilization by ending the lives of aggressors.

Again, five thousand years of history tell us one thing: nations that do not provide for their own defense cannot provide peace, equality, justice, education, healthcare, or a clean environment for anyone. They must be well-regulated and accountable to civilian authority and just-war ethics. But until Christ returns, warriors and the weapons they employ are necessary evils.

But in the pro-abortionist worldview, and in America since Roe v. Wade, the most defenseless of all have no right to be defended by anyone.

Seventh assumption: If we didn’t intend for a human life to be created, or if that life is somehow defective according to someone’s standards, then it’s OK to kill it.

This one requires four separate responses.

First, pro-abortionists don’t come right out and say this, but the way the argument is cast makes it sound as if most abortions are due to rape, incest, failed birth control devices, or some form of coercion i.e. religion. The facts are otherwise, and they know it.[1]

Second, pro-abortionists nurse a Utopian view of technology and a truly naive view of human sexual passion when they argue that birth-control methods can somehow be made 100% effective. Life has a way of overcoming every barrier and the effectiveness of all of them (short of surgery) depend on some level of self-control.

Third, pro-abortionists routinely recommend death for Down Syndrome children and others with birth defects. The reason is that they come with special challenges for the parents to raise and life-long challenges for the child to overcome. Granted. But have you ever asked the parents of a Down Syndrome child if they wish the child were dead? And are they somehow less than human because of their defects? Is that what makes it OK to kill them? I have friends who’ve lost limbs and been brain-injured in accidents. Are they somehow less human? Is it OK to kill them?

Where does it stop? That’s the real problem. It doesn’t end there. Once we decide one form of human is less-than-human and therefore disposable, we are only a step or two away from the Nazis, the Hutu’s, the Turks, and every other civilization that justified genocide.

Fourth, pro-abortionists pound away on the word choice, as if most of the women who get pregnant have no choice in the matter. But barring sexual assault, addressed above, all women have a choice in the matter. In fact, they have more than a choice, they have tremendous power in their relationships with men. But that power lies in an understanding of their person-hood and sexuality that has been systematically dismantled over the last sixty years.

This isn’t popular, but it is truth: Women have the power to demand mental, emotional, financial and physical support—in short faithfulness—from men in the covenant of marriage. Within that covenant, all their rights are protected, and all their children are provided for.

But the new sexual orthodoxy teaches women that sex is for play, marriage is optional, and babies are disposable.

And we wonder why depression and anxiety disorders are on the rise.

Abortion is almost never necessary. It is always a choice based on assumptions, all of them bad. Choose life.

[1] 1.5% of abortions are due to rape or incest. https://www.focusonthefamily.com/socialissues/life-issues/dignity-of-human-life/abortion-statistics

[2] http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/05/breakpoint-the-bedroom-and-the-pew

ABORTION SURVIVOR’S LAMENT

ABORTION SURVIVOR’S LAMENT

The details are vague now, so many decades hence. He sat on a curb or was it a granite ledge? outside the downtown clinic. Either way it was cold, barren, like his heart. The girl—yes, still a girl only 17—was inside, had disappeared into the sterile glass door of the nondescript building. She had found the place, or had he? He couldn’t remember. Either way, it hadn’t been there long, a new edition to the healthcare—cruelest euphemism—landscape. But he had found the money. Oh yes, that he clearly recalled. He found the two hundred dollars it took to end the life in her womb. In blind, self-centered cowardice he thought he was solving a problem, keeping their secret. But the cold reality of what he’d done began unconsciously seeping into his soul that day like the humid chill coming through the concrete. He paid the doctor to kill his son.

How could he have done that? How could he not see? The evil was obscured in those days. “It’s just a blob of cells,” they said. But he should have known.

Little did he know in 1977 that he was only a grain of sand in the mammoth cultural landslide that was the sexual revolution. Free love never was victimless. Roe V. Wade, that revolution’s greatest victory, remains the longest bloodbath in history with the longest trail of traumatized survivors.

Time moved on and so did he until about a decade later, when his first child was born. Something clicked, a window opened inside, and he began to see. Life is precious! He should have taken the blow, not the girl. Not the child. He should have taken the guilt and shame with her and provided for them both. That’s when he started attending the annual pro-life march downtown on January 22nd. It was the least he could do, the only thing he knew to do besides giving to crisis pregnancy centers, to publicly repent and repudiate his past. To do something about the future.

It wasn’t enough. At least, it hasn’t been so far. The Pro-Choice propaganda political action machine continues to cover the selfish cowards—yes you men, I’m talking to you not the girls, not the women; you are the ones God holds responsible to protect the defenseless and provide for your children—among us. It did so again this week when forty-four Senators refused to back the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the one that requires doctors and nurses to save the life of a baby who survives an abortion.

How could they? How could they be so blind? So selfish? So cold and hard? How can the doctors and the nurses, sworn to “first do no harm” stand aside and watch them die? They can no longer hide behind youthful ignorance or scientific uncertainty. They know. They KNOW what we are doing. They know the landslide has killed millions of innocents and yet they refuse to protect and defend.

In his forties a young man walked into his life. Energetic, intelligent, eager to serve alongside and be mentored. It took a while because he was so busy with family and work, but finally it clicked. Another window opened. “The timing is about right,” he thought. “This could be my son.” A strange wave of grief and gratitude washed over him. “God you are so good to me. I don’t deserve this privilege, but I accept it as a gift from your hand.” Many more surrogate “sons” have come and gone since, and slowly the wound has healed.

“Perhaps,” he wondered, “perhaps now, with the evil so blatant that they celebrate infanticide, this new generation of brave young men and women will finally have done with the death dance. Perhaps now, if enough of us will tell the truth of what we did and what it cost and how merciful God is—perhaps now they will ignore the propaganda, listen to the still small voice of conscience, and end this revolution for good.”

PLAYGROUND FAITH In a Toys R’nt Us World

PLAYGROUND FAITH In a Toys R’nt Us World

Our church took a step of faith this month, spending about $10,000 on a new playground that should serve us for another twenty years. But the faith had nothing to do with raising money. Being a frugal bunch, we had been setting aside funds for capital improvements for years. No, the faith had to do with spending it on play-equipment in the first place. The way things are going in America, playgrounds could become a thing of the past, relics of the baby-boom gone bust.

Consider the trends: Seventy-year-old icon of childhood, Toys R Us, just closed all 800 stores, blaming the Amazon insurgency along with Wal-Mart and Target for its market decline. They were also over-leveraged, but the root of the problem is declining demand. “Most of our end-customers are newborns and children,” they said in a statement, “and, as a result, our revenue are dependent on the birthrates in countries where we operate. In recent years, many countries’ birthrates have dropped or stagnated as their population ages, and education and income levels increase.”[1]

Bottom-line, men and women aren’t getting married as often or as young as they used to. When they do they aren’t having as many babies, if they have any at all. Breakpoint’s John Stonestreet reports that the U.S. fertility rate is near 1.77 children per woman, or below the replacement rate necessary to sustain our population at current levels.[2] Children are expensive to have and costly to raise, we reason, and that’s true. But the more we treasure our treasure the less we value life.

The roots of this lie in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the advent of “the pill,” when we divorced sex from marriage and devalued children in the process. But it has greater ramifications than the closing of a toy store chain. The supply of young workers that keep an economy growing and social programs funded declines as the population grays and demand for social services increases. Financial crises loom as this population mega-shift occurs.

But there’s more to it than that. Having children pleases God and drives spiritual growth.

From the Genesis mandate to “be fruitful and multiply,” to Jesus’s command to “let the little children come to me,” the Bible is a pro-children book. “Children are a reward from God … a crown to the aged,” wrote Solomon.[3] Ask any grandparent and you will hear “Amen!”

Raising children from diapers to diplomas is the most demanding thing anyone can do, and the most spiritually rewarding. Kids expose our selfishness and call out service: will I buy that new boat or put money aside for braces? Volunteer to coach soccer or stay in bed on Saturday mornings? Children also challenge our moral inconsistencies: “Daddy, should you really be driving that fast … on the way to church?” Most uncomfortably, children reveal our character flaws just by sharing our DNA. It’s humbling to realize that those little ones who “look just like Daddy!” also share his penchant for show-boating, self-pity, arrogance, and mendacity.

Finally—and this is only a partial list—children teach us total dependence on God. Ask any parent who has ever said, “My child will never (fill-in-the-blank),” and they will tell you that there is only one God and we aren’t him. We have no ability whatsoever to control outcomes in the lives of our little ones. God created them, gave them free will, and allows them to use it. Sooner or later—and the sooner the better—we release them to him and pray, trusting when they fall that he will raise them up, and rejoicing when they succeed.

So, building playgrounds is an act of faith. But having babies is even greater. May God bless us all with more of both.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/15/toys-r-uss-baby-problem-is-everybodys-baby-problem/

[2] http://www.breakpoint.org/2018/04/breakpoint-toys-r-us-to-close-down/

[3] Psalm 127:3 & Proverbs 17:6

Can We Hear Them Now?

Can We Hear Them Now?

Facebook, 2018: A young father shared the moment he felt his daughter in her mother’s womb.

“I’d only briefly felt this baby move before. I tried to feel her move again and again to no avail. But finally, lying there last night next to her mom, snuggled up close because of the cold, I felt kick after kick. Long after my lady had gone to sleep, there was our little one still kicking away. There ain’t words to truly describe what my heart felt.”

I read that post and smiled, remembering what it was like to be a young father many years ago, when before my daughters had voices they spoke to us with kicks.

Another story I saw this week took me back even further, to the moment the world stopped hearing the voiceless words of children in the womb.

Dr. Richard Selzer, an enlightened surgeon, fully committed to the latest medical philosophies, and desiring to learn the best techniques, wanted to watch a new procedure. He’d heard of it, but never seen one performed so he asked a fellow physician if he could attend.

The patient was 19 weeks pregnant, lying on the table, prepped for the procedure. The surgeon took a syringe filled with a prostaglandin solution, sank the needle up to its hub into the woman’s belly, pushed the plunger down and left it there for a few moments.

Selzer described what happened next. ““I see something other than what I expected here. … It is the hub of the needle in the woman’s belly that has jerked. … Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing line nibbled by a sunfish.”

Slowly, the desperate fight for life faded. The needle stopped jerking. The voiceless screaming ceased, but not in Selzer’s head. “Nothing can argue against the truth of what I saw that day.”

That story, “What I Saw at the Abortion,” originally appeared in Esquire in January 1976, and appeared most recently in Marvin Olasky’s World Magazine interview with pro-life feminist Frederica Matthews-Green.*

The trajectory of Green’s life was changed by that brief paragraph in Esquire. Up until then she sported a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t labor under a misconception. Legalize abortion.” Now she is known by her most famous quote: “No woman wants an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

Would that the trajectory of the world had changed with her.

Ideas have consequences and, as John Stonestreet says, they also have victims. The two greatest victims of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s were women, who lost the protection long afforded to them by traditional mores and the covenant of marriage, and children, who lost the protection not only of a two-parent home, but of the womb. Both suffer in abortion. Both need our help.

The women were voiceless until 2017, stifled by fear, or powerful men, or both. Now they are speaking and the nation is listening. Maybe in the context of so much truth-telling those other heretofore voiceless victims will also speak.

Can we hear them now?

*Marvin Olasky, “Path to Pro-Life: Overcoming Pro-Abortion Peer Pressure with Facts.” Interview with Frederica Matthews-Green by Marvin Olasky in World Magazine, January 20, 2018. https://world.wng.org/2018/01/path_to_pro_life

TRUMP AND THE DECLINE OF ABORTION

The inauguration of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States is just two days away and many Americans still cannot believe it’s happening, or how he won in the first place. Some say, “The Russians did it!” Others point to corruption in the Clinton camp that predated any FBI investigation. Most, however, miss a critical moment in the last debate when Mr. Trump described late-term abortion, and called it “not acceptable.”

Clinton’s connection to and unconditional support for the abortion industry were pillars of her campaign. Trump’s statement, connected to his promises to repeal Obamacare– which promoted, mandated, and funded abortion at every turn–and to nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court, who will no doubt hear more challenges to abortion rights, probably did more to persuade conservative evangelicals to hold their noses and vote for him than anything else.

Regardless of Mike Pence’s and other notable evangelicals’ support, whether or not conservative Christians have made a deal with the devil remains to be seen. I give it a fifty-fifty chance of being just that. What is clear is that the cultural winds are shifting away from abortion and in favor of life.

Some notable facts are worth mentioning:

The callousness and corruption of the abortion industry have been exposed in stories like that of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, and Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby parts for profit. Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who catered to immigrants and minorities in a grimy inner city clinic, was convicted on three of eight counts of murder for taking the lives of infants who survived birth in his facility. A documentary movie about Gosnell and the abortion industry, American Tragedy, has been produced and is now making its way across the country.

Planned Parenthood representatives were filmed making deals for baby parts, and bragging about how careful their abortionists were to preserve vital organs for research during the process. The mammoth abortion provider viciously fought back against the producers, The Center for Medical Progress, managing to have them arrested and charged for tactics developed by news organizations like 60 Minutes. But all charges were dropped and, most importantly, the truth got out.

The Freedom of Choice Act, which Mr. Obama promised to sign in his first term, and would have made it illegal and actionable in all fifty states to restrict abortion in any way, never made it out of committee.

Twenty states have passed incremental restraints on abortion and more are on the way.

Obamacare and its onerous mandates requiring all insurance plans to fund and all healthcare providers to offer abortion, have been resoundingly rejected in a national election.

Most encouraging of all, abortions in the United States dropped below one million for the first time in over forty years.

Those of us who have prayed, paid, and worked to end abortion for the past forty-four years have much for which to give thanks. But we dare not put our hopes in this, or any other, president or politician. We need to keep praying, keep paying, and keep working until every human life, inside the womb and out, is equally valued.

WELCOME TO THE MAD HATTER’S TEA PARTY

Andrée Seu Peterson, commenting in the April 30 edition of World Magazine on the Strange Sympathies of voters who supported Donald Trump over Ted Cruz because Cruz was “pompous,” wrote, “If Cruz is rejected and Trump accepted on the grounds of pompousness, then we are truly living at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.”

Well, welcome to the Mad Hatter’s. Cruz is out, Trump is in, and there is no one left to keep him from winning the Republican presidential nomination.

No one predicted this, and no one can predict the outcome of the November elections, but some veteran reporters are beginning to believe that Trump can, in spite of polls to the contrary, beat Clinton in a national referendum. Ben Carson believes that 2016 is, “the year of the outsider,” and if the anger in the electorate over healthcare, immigration, the economy, homeland security, and the political status quo is what I think it is he, and they, are right.

I’ve been carefully watching, and actively participating in our nation’s politics for thirty-six years, and I’ve never been so disappointed with our options. But they tell us more about ourselves than anything else. We have repeatedly chosen style over substance, corruption over character, provocation over peacemaking, and the tyranny of the few over the freedom of the many. We have become a nation so obsessed with sexual license that we rip up religious freedom with spiritual fervor, and snooze through sales of aborted baby parts. We are such committed materialists that we care not about national bankruptcy as long as cheap dollars keep coming.

We used to be a Christian culture. We are a Casino culture now.

How are Christ’s followers to respond? I’m not about to suggest who you should vote for, but I will remind you of one thing: all politics is downstream of culture. If we want to improve our political leadership we have to improve ourselves. No earthly king can achieve through policy or force what Christ can accomplish in the hearts of men and women if his people will obey him. He is our King and his agenda has always been the same: “Love your neighbor as yourself and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

American culture has been in an historic slide ever since I was born. We were never perfect. There will never be a perfect culture outside of Eden. But if we measure ourselves by the stability of two-parent families, by educational achievement, by economic opportunity, by crime rates and imprisonment, by drug abuse and sexually transmitted disease, by the number of children born to unwed mothers, and by many other metrics, we are a culture in decline.

Some of us have been politically opposing that slide for 30-40 years. It hasn’t helped. But we’ve learned something. Oppose the dominant culture, criticize and critique it, and you may be crushed. You certainly won’t fix anything. Build a better culture and, “the world will beat a path to your door.”

It is time for the followers of Christ to stop complaining and start building. We need to concentrate on being the Church, the pillar and support of the truth, in the world, and on creating good culture.

WILL THE REAL LEADERS PLEASE SIT DOWN?

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last and the servant of all.” Mark 9:35.

John Kasich, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio all have credible Christian testimonies. All four take their faith seriously and care deeply about this country. It is time for three of them to sit down. The question is: who among them will accept the responsibility to lead by serving? Who among them will volunteer to be the very last?

Neither alternative to one of these men is desirable for anyone who thinks from the Biblical Worldview. One is a serial liar whose career of corruption reaches back to the seventies and who stands a very good chance of coming under FBI indictment before the show is over. The second is a ruthless business man, bully, and political opportunist whose positions change depending on which microphone he’s speaking into. And the distant third is a Socialist Pied-Piper whose major policy positions would make America Greece again. All three of them could be counted on to continue to strip Americans of their religious freedom and second amendment rights, promote Planned Parenthood’s death-mills, double-down on the disaster ironically named The Affordable Care Act, and fertilize geo-political destabilization.

Yet that is what we will get if Messieurs Kasich, Carson, Cruz and Rubio continue to put winning ahead of leading. All four of them have enough of the right principles to lead this country well. All four of them claim to follow Christ. All four know what is at stake if they continue to split the vote of Constitutional conservatives. Three of them need to sit down now and throw their support behind the fourth in order have enough nominating delegates to stop this train wreck.

What can you do? Pray, of course. But do more than that. If you are a conservative, write the candidate you support, as I have already done for mine. Be honest and straightforward about the situation. Tell him, if you’ve sent money, that you are sending no more. Ask him to put the country ahead of his pride and his personal prospects, to listen to the Lord instead of his advisors, to put leading ahead of winning, and to please sit down.

If we do that perhaps, in the providence of God, the nation will be treated to something it hasn’t seen in a long time: men who lead by serving.

 

YOU CAN MAKE THE CASE FOR LIFE

Do we believe the case for life is really true? Are we willing to share it with others? Do we believe that our voice can make a difference?

Megan confidently took the stage and presented her case. This was no easy audience: 500 young men and women at a New England Catholic high school. Many of these students were Ivy League bound, and already skeptical that a case for life could even be made.

Later, Megan got this email from Alex, president of the student philosophy club:

“I want to thank you again for speaking. I’ve gone to Catholic school my whole life, and I as well as my classmates have been fed the same argument against abortion for years: that God and the Bible say that it’s wrong, so it’s wrong. As a result of this, discussion on abortion became almost binary. Most regarded it as simply opinion, and never bothered trying to make a case of their own or debate the other side.

I’d like you to know that you changed that. This was the first case against abortion I’ve heard that does not require a leap of faith. You proved your points with science and philosophy.

I’ve checked out prolifetraining.com, and I look forward to listening to the podcasts and reading the resources that are provided there. Thank you for your time, and thank you for changing the way the students see the battlefield of moral dilemmas.”

Do we believe the case for life is really true? Are we willing to share it with others? Your voice can make a difference!

How To Pray for Life:
You may never be asked to speak to a group of cynical teenagers like Megan, but you may be asked to have a conversation with a friend, neighbor, or family member who is not pro-life. Pray that you will have courage when that time comes.

Many people, like Alex did before Megan’s presentation, think that the question of abortion is one of opinion, not fact. Pray that pro-lifers will learn to thoughtfully and lovingly present a compelling case for life that changes hearts and minds.

The truth is on the side of life. Pray that God will provide opportunities for the message to spread person-to-person. Pray that God would raise up more pro-life apologists like Megan, and grant them opportunities to persuade audiences.

This post, along with the previous two weeks, was provided by the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Posted by permission. I’ll be back next week. DS.