Aborting Apathy

I’m quite sure January 22, 2013 came and went with very few in our central Minnesota locality realizing that last Tuesday marked four decades since Roe vs. Wade. It was the anniversary of forty bloody, violent, horrific years of government sanctioned mass slaughter of helpless, innocent Americans. The conservative estimates of surgical abortions alone now number around fifteen percent of our present population. These estimates, combined with the incalculable number of chemical murders by abortifacients, could well be responsible for the undisclosed holocaust of something like 60-70 percent of this nation’s progeny for two generations…OH LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US!!!

As a minister of the gospel, I am commissioned with the sobering responsibility of declaring the immutable glory of the triune God weekly in my church. If I were to ever lead the flock to believe the obscenely heretical notion that our Heavenly Father cannot see all…I ought to be immediately deposed for blasphemous ministry malpractice. We should never permit His name to suffer such slander from our pulpits.

But what about our collective apathy toward this covert genocide among us? Are we not confessing by our relative indifference that this is an atrocity even God forgets about sometimes because the babies are out of sight and, as such, out of mind? Let not His name suffer the blasphemy of a nonchalant attitude toward the most widespread human sacrificing cult movement in modern history.

At times, I wonder if a well deserved judgment will bring an occupying nation through the borders of America one day. I wonder if they will recoil in horror at the incessantly flushing, mass grave toilets in urban area “clinics”. Perhaps they will build a Hidden Holocaust Museum so the world never forgets the nation that foisted “the final solution” on so many, many countless innocents. Maybe in a different era, ethically coherent citizens will be stupefied by the Nazi-dwarfing carnage wrought by a culture that so hypocritically vilified Hitler’s social policies.

As I was sipping my coffee, walking down Laurel street, hoping I hadn’t missed the sixty or so gathered for Brainerd’s “March for Life”, freezing tears suddenly began clinging to my eyelashes. I imagined I was routinely walking to work on a mundane weekday in an ancient Mayan city. I could picture myself oblivious to the routine and familiar screams of disemboweled victims echoing from the temple in the center of town. I pictured myself ignoring the dull tumbling thud of bodies falling end over end, head over heels, down the pyramid staircases. I would likely remain distracted and desensitized as another priest, vaunting body-length hair thickly matted with the blood of butchered children, walks by leading his drugged and delirious victims to the town square…

If my musing strikes you as extreme, I implore you! To pretend that America is any less barbaric than suicidal cultures like the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs is to entertain a damning delusion. Obstinate pathological hypocrisy will only further cauterize the heart against the anguish and repentance our institutionalized sins demand.

Let me call the New Testament apostles as my witness. Acts 2:28-30 provides an example of confrontational dialogue between these ministers and the depraved culture of their day.

First, Peter declares: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Secondly, we see this condemnation jarring his hearers to their spiritual senses: “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Thirdly, the redemptive element is presented: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…”

Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 is an extensive example of this model and additionally records the effect of gospel confrontation when the hearers remain obdurate. Following Stephen’s unambiguous indictment confronting his hearers with their sins which demonstrated that they had violated the word, will, and law of God…they promptly killed him. It is clear from Stephen’s last words (“Lord do not hold this sin against them”) the aim of his message was grace-based redemption. It is also imminently clear that Biblical preaching from point A (realizing sin) to point B (realizing salvation) involves risking our very lives when the true gospel is so radically impolitic to a stiff-necked people.

This is most certainly the principle situation in America today on this issue, not to mention homosexuality, secular education, socialism, confiscatory taxation, or any other golden calf to which the Word of God proves iconoclastic.

Influenced by these thoughts as well as the historical record of spiritual and societal reformation in Nehemiah chapter 9, I proceeded to open our local pro-life event in prayer. Standing in the commons area of the old county courthouse I declared the God of scripture sovereign over the United States of America. I extolled Him as omniscient, omnipotent, and immutably just. His righteousness thus demanding contrition and humility, I voiced repentance for our national sins and the sins of our fathers.

Before our meeting disbanded, I testified briefly of the beautiful and restorative power of grace evident in my own family’s experience. After encouraging those gathered that our battle lines will advance only when Christians open their hearts, hands, homes, and wombs to children, I closed with a prayer of mercy, hope and thankfulness grounded on the wrath absorbing blood of Jesus Christ alone.

For what this pastor’s opinion is worth…we ought to march to the public square for another forty years or as long as we continue to frame murderous injustice by presumptuously aberrant statute (Ps 94:20-21). Our vision should never rest, however, on hope through strength in numbers or the spectacular visual of millions parading for a cause. Instead, let us assemble with the appropriate fasting, sackcloth, and ashes until social repentance is forthcoming. And Let our confidence rest on the immortal Word of our sovereign God even if we are lonely like Jeremiah, understaffed like Gideon, or martyred like Stephen.