Life’s just so busy. The temptation is to just skip the blog post today and spend time unpacking from last weekend and packing for this one. But you know who’s busier than you and me? The devil.
I remember when I was a child I heard our preacher (and a favorite uncle of mine), Bob Duncan, say (probably a hundred times), “Sin is always worse than the sinner expects it to be.” The statement has come home to me in relevant and practical ways in recent days. A young man who saw no harm in looking at pornography that first time is having a really hard time putting his home back together. A woman is tempted by alcohol as she tries to get her life back after her husband left her for a homosexual relationship. A child, too young to understand, wants a relationship with a Dad who wants little to do with him. A young unwed mother just may turn her back on all that’s right as she learns that the father of her baby is not the caring father he claimed to be at all; his best friend is actually meth. The list goes on.
Then there are national sins; big ways we’ve gone astray as an American people. The Social Security system seemed like a good idea back in Roosevelt’s day. What started as a way to help good but desperate people has produced an entire sub-culture of indolence and run our nation into irreconcilable debt–and we just keep upping the tab.
We took the Word out of schools. Kids now have access to birth control rather than behavior control. They can easily find sources of alcohol and drugs at school. Their days are lived to the soundtrack of cursing and God’s name blasphemed, but they cannot find anyone who can legally use the words “Jesus” and “sin” in counseling sessions at school. There are confused school systems in our nation now that allow transgender students to use the girls’ or boys’ restrooms and locker rooms at their discretion.
Today the national sin-that-keeps-on-sinning that’s on my mind is the declaration in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court that unborn babies may be killed inside the womb (and even, in many cases, as they partially exit the birth canal). Sin just has huge repercussions that sinners cannot possibly foresee upon commission. Horribly dark questions keep coming to my inbox–things that I’m confident those nine men in black robes never foresaw as they exited the courtroom that January day forty years ago. I know of women who are guilt-ridden because they have a dozen or so fertilized eggs (little people) in freezers in laboratories. These women are trying to enjoy raising the one or two children (the “most viable” of their children) that they chose to implant, but the thought of their children yet in the freezer is difficult. (I understand this is a stark way to say this, but, if babies are babies upon fertilization–and they are–our consciousness must be stirred to admit what is true.) I know of women who still hear their aborted babies crying, even two decades after the fact. Chemical abortions leave women who take the “morning after” pill unsure of how many babies they may have aborted. Other chemical contraceptives, we learn, have a scary propensity to create an inhospitable environment in the womb, thus creating the real possibility that fertilized eggs may be rejected before implantation. And now we learn that most vaccines we give our children and many that we take as adults are products of research done on babies aborted decades ago and that the cell lines on which these vaccines grow even today were indeed extracted from aborted babies (www.know-vaccines.org). We now know, for instance, that multiple babies were used in the development of the MMR vaccine that’s most commonly used. While none of these babies were aborted for the specific purpose of research, doctors who advised abortion were apparently working closely with doctors who were researching.
The more we know the more we understand the words of my uncle: “Sin is always worse than the sinner expects it to be.” Sarah, Judah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Nadab and Abihu, Achan, Samson, David, the prodigal son, and Judas the betrayer are but a few of those in the Word who still shout the truth about sin’s consequences to us.
There are days when I really get so fed up with sin that I don’t want to think about it any more. I surely long to escape the thoughts of 55 million babies legally slaughtered in our country since 1973 (and that does not include those aborted chemically with pills). This number far and away exceeds all military deaths combined in our short history (http://www.htmlbible.com/abortstats.htm). May God have mercy on us!
But I cannot stop thinking about it. The devil is making sure we have to keep thinking about sin; battling it in our personal lives and sorrowing over the sins of our nation. Godly sorrow works repentance, though (II Cor. 7:10). So, for me, the question is “How can I order my days (in relation to sin) so that when I’m old and reflect back on my busy days, I will escape the regret that comes with apathy and enjoy the peace that comes with knowing I did all I could do to ‘work repentance’ in my own life and in the society around me?”
Here are five things I plan to do relative to abortion. I hope you will make a personal plan, too. All it takes for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. In the words of Dr. Seuss in “Horton Hears a Who”, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Here’s my list:
1. Keep speaking and writing about the on-going slaughter and it’s various forms. Sometimes we fall to the temptation to think about abortion as “old news”. It is new to every new fetus.
2. Speak to my physicians and request ethical forms of vaccines when needed.
3. Try to support only pro-life ob-gyn physicians.
4. Try to stay informed through www.nationalrighttolifenews.org and use recommended avenues for making my voice heard in legislative venues.
5. Pray for Providential opportunities to fight this battle and wisdom in using them.
Finally, those of you in Tennessee have some unique opportunities right now to let your voices be heard. It seems that, because all eight of your bordering states have laws requiring regulation and inspection of abortion facilities, that your state is fast becoming the “place to get an abortion” for women in surrounding states. Notice this statistic:
In 2008, 23.7% of abortions in Tennessee were performed on women residing out-of-state. Tennessee ranks fifth nationally in the number of out-of-state abortions behind the District of Columbia, Kansas, North Dakota, and Delaware.
Community meetings will be held for pro-life supporters residing in the following Tennessee Counties: Benton, Carroll, Chester, Henderson, Houston, Humphreys, Madison and Stewart. The first will be in Camden on October 5th at 10 a.m. You may call 615-298-5433 for more information. If you live in Tennessee, I hope you will do what you can to stop Tennessee’s prominence as an abortion destination. Visit the Tennessee Right to Life website at http://www.tennesseerighttolife.org/index.html
