While driving home from Bible Study last night I heard a snippet of talk radio in which a Catholic man was being interviewed about his political work as a representative of “Catholic Answers”. The topic was a voter-guide pamphlet that has been published by his organization in which five non-negotiables are listed for Catholics to consider when they go to the polls. The non-negotiables, as listed for Catholics, are these:
Candidate must be opposed to:
Abortion
Euthanasia
Embryonic Stem-Cell Research
Human Cloning
Homosexual Marriage
Now, while I believe Catholics are responsible for one of the biggest religious perversions of “Christendom” existent in our day, I believe they are dead-on about this list. The talk show host then asked this man why these are the non-negotiables (Why not the economy, securing the borders or our involvement in the Israeli conflict?). The answer was a bit nebulous, but to be fair, I did not get to listen to all of the segment.
Why can’t we just say that God is the author/creator of life and, thus, it is sacred!? Four of these listed behaviors directly or indirectly involve the destruction of life. The fifth on the list is a slap in the face of God who repeatedly condemned homosexuality—the very act, much less the inclusion of that heinous sin in the definition of the marriage relationship that He also invented, instituted and protected in His Word!
Most importantly, why are the Catholics louder and more organized about this than we are in the body of Christ? Several years ago my husband was in a preacher’s meeting in which the idea that preachers should be saying things from the pulpit that could be construed as political was met with fervent opposition from some in the room. There are congregations today in which elders and deacons are supporting political leaders who are supportive of all of the items on the above list. They pledge allegiance to these leaders based on economic promises. Never mind that their political heroes are responsible, as a conglomerate, for the deaths of one out of every three pre-born babies in America today.
As a result of our failures to teach, our girls are getting abortions. Our teens are experimenting with homosexuality. Several times within the past few weeks I’ve been painfully reminded that our silence is paving the way for our own members to participate in the sins that will lead them to hell at the expense of the innocents. A member (in good standing) of a congregation in the Southeast U.S. makes her living as a nurse who preps women for abortions. She justifies this by the rationalization that she is not actually taking the life; she is only taking the blood. Besides, “Someone else will take the woman’s blood, if I quit this job.” Another Christian sister in another state wrote to me descrying that fact that her grand-daughter, brought up in the church, also works in the abortion industry. I recently was upbraided for trying to convince a sister that the dozen or so babies that she has placed in a freezer (as she is enjoying the one or two she chose from the test tube) are living children and that she has a grave responsibility to them. She brought those lives into existence. (What are we thinking?) My husband recently traveled to another state to counsel a young member of the church as she revealed she had become involved in a relationship with a “girlfriend” at school. And, yet again, my husband was recently visiting in the home of Christians in another state when they revealed to him that their child was involved in homosexual pornography. And the list goes on…
Thankfully, all preachers are not silent. All elderships are not blind to the dangers. I applaud and am grateful for those brave church leaders who are vigilant even when the political landscape is a battleground. Not all of these instances might have been prevented if we were boldly teaching the truth, even against the political and cultural tide. But some of them and some others would have. Some lives that are currently being snuffed out, would be preserved. Some children, and now many adults would be living and working and some would be leading our churches if we had been vocal all along.
I’ll close today with a news article that I recently received from a friend.
A NICU nurse, who worked a long time at a Baptist Hospital in _________said, “When I first went to work in NICU I helped to care for a baby this size until it died, because it was too small and the lungs were too underdeveloped for the doctors to be able to do anything for it. We put it in an isolette and kept it warm and did all we could, but though it slept, and didn’t seem uncomfortable and didn’t cry or grimace, it couldn’t breathe right and I think it died in under half an hour. I then had the sad job to help to get it ready for burial, and take it back to its grieving mother.”
“Baptist had a special kit with a tiny hand-sewn dress, a ceramic footprint mold, a tiny little fleece-lined box like a bed, a sympathy card with a sweet poem about the baby’s early departure, etc. I think that particular baby was a girl, because the little care package I used was pink. That was the difference in the doctors’ attitudes at Baptist vs. the ones at a hospital across town. At the other hospital they would have treated it like a “fetus.” At Baptist they treated it like a baby. I was so blessed to work in an environment like that.”
The saddest thing about this letter from my friend is not that it was her daughter who held this baby until it died. The saddest part was that she went on to state that her grand-daughter, this NICU nurse’s daughter, is now a nurse at the “other” hospital. Will you join me in praying for these three anonymous women? While we are at it, let’s pray that we, as Christian women, will have some non-negotiables as we vote and as we raise our children…as we vocally (not silently) remember the conveniently orphaned children who are daily being killed in the “other” hospitals around our country.
