“One problem
is that we have watered down the gospel message to make it palatable to the
non-believer as opposed to letting the Holy Spirit change the hearts of people.
Jesus called for repentance of sin (Go and Sin no More), yet our churches talk
about love being sufficient…Though there is no need for hate speech, preaching
the true gospel as Jesus did, is not hate speech and unfortunately it seems to
be labeled by the world AND A LARGE PORTION OF THE CHURCH as such.” – Jason
Laurie, of School of Fish {www.schooloffish.wordpress.com}
I then read this post by Rachel Held Evans, and have been
ruminating on the pendulous views of these two believers; for I see therein the
scope of contemporary Christianity regarding abortion. Thus I return again to the topic, for
clarification, for those who may not yet have the courage or ability to speak,
and for those who simply aren’t sure what to say.
FOR GOD SO LOVED THE
WORLD…
There is no price
for which I would kill my only son.
There is no price for which I would sacrifice my only daughter. Frankly, should you all be damned, I will
never sacrifice my children on your behalf.
Thank God I’m not Him.
But God, in His
love, sent His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for you and for me. Yet before Christ was sentenced to death, He
sought out people who were ravaged by sin, so mired in it, so broken by it that
the religious people of their day would have nothing to do with them. And He saved the lost. He healed the broken. He restored the sinners. Jesus, Divinity incarnate, sought out these
people not to demand repentance of them so
that He could heal them; Jesus healed
them so that they could repent. And when
Jesus admonished the adulteress woman to “go and sin no more,” it is only after
her accusers have dispersed (John 8:2-11).
It was a moment shared between only God’s Son and this sinner. Meant for her heart – not for public consumption. Meant to work out her salvation in her, meant
to form her spirit, meant to protect her from the further evils of which each
human being drawing breath is capable. Repentance
is not a clarion call the religious folk are told to make prior to offering God’s
Grace – it is Christ’s, it is the Holy Spirit’s, it is God’s. For each one of us is filthy and decrepit and
worthless. Each one of us is a condemned
sinner.
BUT FOR THE BLOOD OF JESUS.
Of the
75 times the Bible calls for repentance, 48 are in the books of the prophets. These men issued the call for repentance to
the Nation of Israel because she had abandoned her primary role of caring for
the “least of these” (Jeremiah, Daniel, Matthew 24). Effectively, most Israelites were leaving those
who had no standing in the patriarchal society that was bent on keeping the
outcast, foreigner, single woman, and orphan from the promised blessings of
Yahweh (land, generational proliferation, relation to the messianic kingdom) to
fend for themselves. Abandoning those
who, without assistance, would never be able to be free from their poverty,
station, or un-cleanness. Forsaking these people so that they were without
hope, without protection, without help.
Yes, the call to repent was a call to return to Yahweh; but that return
required behaving as Yahweh had instructed: to care for these who could not
care for themselves and who were just as loved by the Almighty as those who
brought fellowship offerings out of their abundance.
In the contemporary
context, one must admit that the unborn
must be among “least of these.”
But what about the
women, pregnant and frightened, who feel they have nowhere else to turn – that they
have no one other than the friendly folks down at Planned
Parenthood to trust?
Dearest one, let me
be perfectly clear: Love is not accepting or tolerating or
enabling sinful behavior. Love is
recognizing that not a single person is free from sin – save JESUS CHRIST, Himself. Love is the truth that every person ever is
guilty of sin unto death. Be it murder
of the unborn or self-focused pride. Every
single one of us deserves death. I,
beloved, deserve to die. As do you.
BUT FOR JESUS.
Jesus first healed, restored, and saved people
from their illnesses, demons, and sins, because no person can come to the Lord
righteous and clean without this work of Christ first. Jesus didn’t require public repentance,
didn’t first demand righteousness from those in need of Him. He knew that He was their only hope. As His followers, should we not emulate Jesus
and seek these people out where they are – to find them in their hurt, to
minister to them in their confusion and brokenness, to go ourselves into the
sinful places so that we might bring this hope and light with us?
One wonders – How
many Christians have sat in the waiting rooms of Planned Parenthood – ready
only to hold the hands or catch the frightened tears of those in line to
exterminate their babies? How
many Christ-followers are there now, wanting only to show love to these lost
and broken women?
Yes, that is an
extreme thought, but dial it back a bit: HOW MANY CHRISTIANS HAVE EVER EVEN
CROSSED THAT THRESHOLD? Or
stood outside, not in angry picket lines, but with a tender smile and the offer
of a cup of coffee over which to talk and a listening ear, not to preach, but
to know – to witness – the hurt and fear of the woman struggling with this
life-ending choice?
It’s safer to sit
behind our computer screens and pass judgment, to meet in our coffee shops and
blast the lost for being deceived, to smugly pat ourselves on the back for not
being one of those. Or, worse, to posit such ambiguity and
confusion regarding the topic of abortion under the guise of
I-don’t-know-what-to-do that we are left impotent and useless on a national
stage. *
I’m going to
suggest, dear one, that until we as a church can say that we have done this,
until we’ve taken a deep breath and ventured into a Planned Parenthood Clinic {dear,
God – WHY are they most prolific in the poorest neighborhoods?! What does this say about whom we as a society
value—the richest, the whitest, the most suburban of all children?}, we cannot
sit self-righteously in condemnation.
For the propensity of this evil lives in each one of us: we are all capable of murder. Jesus said thus in his Olivet Discourse. We are all guilty of murder in our
hearts. And only God is righteous to judge.
Friends, we must
remember that it is not our place to accept
anyone into the kingdom – that honor rests solely with Almighty God, for it is
His Kingdom, and His alone. We are the
adopted children, filthy sinners, who have been invited in and covered in His
Son’s clothes of bloody righteousness.
We are not the arbiters of
who’s in and who’s out. And the moment
we forget this, we become the Pharisees.
We have been given the distinct privilege and honor of sharing the
Gospel, and of rejoicing with the angels when this truth is rooted into another
life.
Because, as capable
of evil as every human is, Christ followers -- empowered by the Holy Spirit are
capable of the most beautiful light. We
have the power and ability, through the resurrected Christ and the Holy Spirit
indwelling us, to alter this world for good.
To change one life at a time. To
save one baby. To rescue one
mother. To restore one father. To advance the glorious kingdom of Almighty
God, for the good of all humanity and creation, by the power of Grace within
us.
May we ever be
amazed by the Lord’s Grace. May it never
cease to be as magnificent as when we first received it. May we, like a fount, overflow it into the
darkest places in our fallen world. For
the coming of Christ and the Kingdom of God.
~Amen.
*{This article by Rachel Held Evans and all
the comments thereto are a tragic example of what contemporary “progressive”
Christians think about abortion. I am
compelled to clarify that I generally admire Ms. Held Evan’s work on behalf of
women, and advocate for her views thus.
But as this article and its comments show, an entire generation of
Christians (and non) have absorbed the lies spouted by the abortion industry,
yet try to hold this view in conjunction with their faith and end up with a
discordant struggle because the two are necessarily, mutually exclusive. Confusion of the issue, as Ms. Held Evans
presents here, is exactly why we are a nation in desperate need of truth – both
in their realm of science (no self-respecting embryologist would claim that
life begins at any point other than at conception) and in our churches.}
