a tirade.
Over Life Chain weekend back in October, I noticed an influx of opinions in the "letters to the editor" section of my local paper. I noticed the same thing in WORLD magazine. They all said one of three things:
~Killing babies is wrong, and you know that's the definition of abortion.
~Abortion is merciful. These babies are going into the foster system with every disadvantage in the world, and no future.
~Pro-lifers need to practice what they preach.
The last two are particularly provocative.
Everything a Christian does should support their position on abortion. Holding a sign once a year doesn't cut it.
And as I stood out there on Life Chain Sunday, holding my sign, I couldn't help but think about the absurd hypocrisy of my demonstration. Pro-life, huh?
~When I push aside siblings and little "unimportants" unless they're convenient at the moment?
~avoid facing punishment and accepting responsibility for my crimes (disrespect for parents, anger, laziness, lack of self-control)? Why do I expect another woman to take responsibility for hers?
~When my goal is to spend my life glorifying myself? Be honest here. Any inconveniences to my pre-programmed agenda just have to be ignored. I'm gonna be a great linguist (you fill in the blank) someday, and everybody better get out of my way. (So. With that attitude, how would I deal with a hypothetical crisis pregnancy?)
~I hate my brothers in my heart. (Murder! Murder!)
~I'm emotionally insecure in friendships.
~Not to mention (this eats me, though I know it's not particularly wrong for someone in my sphere of life), I do nothing tangible that helps these women that I condemn. I don't volunteer at the crisis pregnancy center. I don't do ANYTHING! Not even, say, making baby clothes.
So. Here I am, holding my sign, as my conscience shouts (rightfully so) "HYPOCRITE! First take the plank from your own eye, so that you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Being pro-life involves positive, offensive action on the part of the whole Christian community. But I look around, and I see. Families self-absorbed. They have their perfect kids to raise, and they can't adopt someone else's crack baby. Noooo way. They don't have any experience (where, pray tell, would you get that from?), enough money, a big enough house, or any time. But let me tell you, there are families with $20,000 a year incomes who have multiple mentally handicapped or physically challenged children who are all healthy, happy little kids. They choose the way in which they spend their time.
And it takes work and committment. That's where alleged pro-lifers get shy. We can encourage women to take care of their own babies, through life service centers. But there are other aspects to being pro-life that we as a community strategically ignore. Foster care. Inner city alcohol-addicted infants. Abusive homes. In other words, nasty places we just don't want to be.
If they won't come to us, we won't come to them. (Any Christian will be thinking, at this point: WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!) But do you strategically search out vermin, so you can keep them company? Search yourself first.
The director of an adoption agency wrote to WORLD magazine just a week or so after Life Chain Sunday, complaining of this very thing. In effect, she said this: For all the hundreds of people praying out on the curb on Sunday, hardly one will take an abandoned black child on Monday. Is something wrong here?
Yeah, I know. Adopting kids is not your calling. Well, don't condemn the struggling, unregenerate and pregnant woman for aborting her child. Maybe having a child wasn't her calling either.
Something to think about. :P
~Killing babies is wrong, and you know that's the definition of abortion.
~Abortion is merciful. These babies are going into the foster system with every disadvantage in the world, and no future.
~Pro-lifers need to practice what they preach.
The last two are particularly provocative.
Everything a Christian does should support their position on abortion. Holding a sign once a year doesn't cut it.
And as I stood out there on Life Chain Sunday, holding my sign, I couldn't help but think about the absurd hypocrisy of my demonstration. Pro-life, huh?
~When I push aside siblings and little "unimportants" unless they're convenient at the moment?
~avoid facing punishment and accepting responsibility for my crimes (disrespect for parents, anger, laziness, lack of self-control)? Why do I expect another woman to take responsibility for hers?
~When my goal is to spend my life glorifying myself? Be honest here. Any inconveniences to my pre-programmed agenda just have to be ignored. I'm gonna be a great linguist (you fill in the blank) someday, and everybody better get out of my way. (So. With that attitude, how would I deal with a hypothetical crisis pregnancy?)
~I hate my brothers in my heart. (Murder! Murder!)
~I'm emotionally insecure in friendships.
~Not to mention (this eats me, though I know it's not particularly wrong for someone in my sphere of life), I do nothing tangible that helps these women that I condemn. I don't volunteer at the crisis pregnancy center. I don't do ANYTHING! Not even, say, making baby clothes.
So. Here I am, holding my sign, as my conscience shouts (rightfully so) "HYPOCRITE! First take the plank from your own eye, so that you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Being pro-life involves positive, offensive action on the part of the whole Christian community. But I look around, and I see. Families self-absorbed. They have their perfect kids to raise, and they can't adopt someone else's crack baby. Noooo way. They don't have any experience (where, pray tell, would you get that from?), enough money, a big enough house, or any time. But let me tell you, there are families with $20,000 a year incomes who have multiple mentally handicapped or physically challenged children who are all healthy, happy little kids. They choose the way in which they spend their time.
And it takes work and committment. That's where alleged pro-lifers get shy. We can encourage women to take care of their own babies, through life service centers. But there are other aspects to being pro-life that we as a community strategically ignore. Foster care. Inner city alcohol-addicted infants. Abusive homes. In other words, nasty places we just don't want to be.
If they won't come to us, we won't come to them. (Any Christian will be thinking, at this point: WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!) But do you strategically search out vermin, so you can keep them company? Search yourself first.
The director of an adoption agency wrote to WORLD magazine just a week or so after Life Chain Sunday, complaining of this very thing. In effect, she said this: For all the hundreds of people praying out on the curb on Sunday, hardly one will take an abandoned black child on Monday. Is something wrong here?
Yeah, I know. Adopting kids is not your calling. Well, don't condemn the struggling, unregenerate and pregnant woman for aborting her child. Maybe having a child wasn't her calling either.
Something to think about. :P
posted by Unknown at 3:55 PM
6 Comments:
Very convicting. I've sometimes wondered about these questions, too, but always manage to squeak away with the excuse that I'm too young and too naive to be of any assistance at a crisis pregnancy center (besides sorting maternity goods, which I've done from time to time).
But there's so much more to be done than just helping out like that. It all seems like a tiny fleck in a great ocean of sand.... Remember, though, the great machine can be stopped by one little twig getting between its grinders....
I have this tendency to use very strong language when talking about certain things. This is basically a brooding rant that had been in my head for months and months. I should probably delete it. Oh well. It truly went through my head almost exactly as you see it there. Sadly enough. :P
Yes, I agree that there's so much more out there than just this. My only point was this: when supporting a cause, one should consistently live it out in every day life to the best of his/her ability.
...Hey. Cut it out with these posts, you're making me feel morally and mentally inferior. *sigh* I've never even so much as held a sign....
So I click on the first archive of this blog on a whim and something interesting comes up.
Now I am going to comment on a post over a year old . . . just because. (They say a first sign of insanity is talking to yourself? Does commenting on old blog posts count?)
Good post--sometimes strong language needs to be used. And honesty. Don't delete it.
Perhaps a different way to address this issue is to ask the question "Are we acting in the image of Christ?" We can apply this examination generally to our life . . .
. . . but to take it to the issue you have raised, we ask the question "Is the action of picketing an abortion clinic (or whatever) inheirently un-Christ-like?"
Is "standing out there with a sign" pure Pharisaical self-righteous hypocrisy?
You raise the question of whether you are acting as a hypocrite because of other actions in your life which reflect back on (and inform) your protesting. But what if your sense of hypocrisy comes from the fact that as a follower of Christ your picketing is like picking up stones with the Pharisees and thus your heart condemns you. What if you are never righteous enough to throw the first stone? . . . I mean, to protest.
Christ has called us to declare his gospel. Is the gospel "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins."
Or is it, "Abortion is murder. Abortion is sin."
Did the Apostles go out into the world and picket the pagan temples where every type of abominable activity took place? For certain those pagan temples were vile, but the apostles did not battle these cesspits of sin by gathering up picketing crowds to protest the sin of idolatry at the pagan temple gates. And, in a way, the abortion clinics of today are just one form of temple to the "spirit of this age" where we sacrifice our children . . . as to Molech of old.
So . . . how do we follow the example laid down for us in Scripture? Is perhaps the most effective "counter" to every sin of this godless age (abortion or otherwise) the declaration of the gospel?
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