Back in
January, the National Right to Life Committee examined information from the
Center for Disease Control and other organizations and concluded that since 1973—when
the Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal in the US—roughly 54 million
abortions have been carried out in the United States. That is close to the
population of California and New York combined.
By contrast, the total number of US war casualties over our entire history
stands at 1.3 million.1
The
statistics on abortion are staggering and numbing to both the mind and the
soul. So how can we respond to an issue such as this that feels so
overwhelming? Last week, we conducted a biblical examination of abortion and
concluded that Bible-believing people should be morally opposed to the this
practice. Today, we are going to talk about how we can respond to the culture
of abortion that now exists in our nation. I am going to focus primarily on how
you as an individual Christian can respond to this issue which often seems so
overwhelming that we feel helpless to do anything about it.
Last week,
I stated that we were going to talk about responding to abortion with our head,
our heart, and our hands, but I think John 1:14 provides a much better
framework for discussion through its description of Jesus Christ: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have
seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and
truth.” That final statement is profound. Jesus taught the truth and put
it on display by the way He lived, but He always did so with grace by carrying
out acts of service from a heart of compassion.
This
framework of “grace and truth” is the framework that I want to use this
morning. I want to begin with “truth” because I think we need to spend more
time with “grace.”
1. How can we respond to our
culture of abortion with truth?
A.
Be informed about the facts
We can’t
spread the truth until we know it ourselves. That’s what last week’s sermon was
all about. Last week, we talked about essentially four basic facts which show
us that the baby in the womb is a human being in its own right, and thus it
deserves the same dignity and protection that we would give to any other human
being. I think we can remember these four facts fairly well with the acronym
B.A.B.Y.:
· B—Biblical teaching. The most important point to
remember from our study of Scripture last week is that the baby in the womb has
its own soul, which makes it distinct from its mother. Many of you already
remember that Psalm 139 talks about the unborn child in the womb. If you can
remember that reference and the idea that the child has its own soul, then
you’ve got a good, basic grasp of the biblical teaching.
·
A—as in DNA. We noted last week that the child
in the womb has its own unique DNA, which shows that it is distinct from its
mother.
·
B—Brainwaves and Beats (as in heartbeats). The
child in the womb meets the medical criteria for “life” since it has detectable
brainwaves and a detectable heartbeat from its earliest days.
·
Y—“I” sound in that letter reminds us of “immune
system.” The mother’s immune system considers the unborn child to be a foreign
object in the body, and her immune system would destroy the child were it not
for substances secreted by the baby which keep that from happening. Thus, the
mother’s own body does not recognize the baby as being just another part of the
body.
With this
acronym, you can remember some good, basic facts about a key question in the
abortion debate—what is the fetus, or the child in the womb? There are many
other ways that you can stay informed as well. You can subscribe to newsletters
or magazines from pro-life organizations. I would like to personally recommend
a book by Randy Alcorn called “Why Pro-Life?” There are many other good books
that you can read as well.
Once you have become informed yourself, you can…
B.
Spread the truth as you have opportunity
These
opportunities may come up in private conversations as we’re talking to friends,
family, or co-workers. Many of us are sweating right now at the mere thought of
having such a conversation, but if we speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) and
balance truth with grace, there is no reason to simply assume that such a
conversation will become a fight or an argument.
You can
also spread the truth in public forums. You could write a “letter to the
editor” for a newspaper or a magazine. You could make your opinion known at a
town hall meeting with our politicians. Now, in our area, we have strong
pro-life representation from our politicians at both the state and national
levels, and I’m very thankful for that. But our elected officials need to hear
that you support the pro-life stands that they have taken because such a stance
can get lonely.
Students,
if you have to take a speech class, you could choose to give a speech on the
issue. We can also engage people in discussion online through Facebook or
e-mail. Now, we do need to proceed with caution when we bring up this subject
online. Most of the forwarded e-mails that I receive about a subject like this
simply deserve to be deleted because they may speak the truth, but they do so
in a spirit of anger or arrogance. I don’t care if the bottom of the e-mail
says, “If you really love Jesus, you’ll forward this to everyone you know.”
Well, Jesus said, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments (John 14:15),”
and one such commandment is to speak the truth in love.
And as we
speak the truth, we had better make sure to present the One who said, “I am the
way, the truth, and the life!” We
must present Jesus and proclaim that through Him there is forgiveness for sin!
There is forgiveness for women who have made this choice; there is forgiveness
for parents or boyfriends or husbands who pressure women into making this
choice; there is forgiveness for those who perform these procedures. In Jesus
Christ, there is freedom from a life of bondage to guilt and shame!
If we fail
to proclaim forgiveness, then we fail to proclaim the whole truth. If God
offers forgiveness to those who acknowledge that they had sinned, then we offer
false testimony about Him if we fail to do the same.
We do need to be willing to speak up and spread
the truth, but our efforts at spreading the truth will be greatly enhanced if
respond to this issue with grace.
2. How can we respond to our
culture of abortion with grace?
I think to
answer this question, we should think about “grace” in terms of acts of
service. Unplanned and unwanted pregnancies give us opportunities to serve both
the child and the mother. Let’s think about how we could serve them directly.
A.
Directly
An
unplanned pregnancy could give us many ways to serve the mother who finds
herself in that position. In some cases, you may have the opportunity to take a
woman into your own home to help her. This situation could be most common with
a family member or a close friend. A young lady may get kicked out of her home
when she becomes pregnant, or she may be surrounded by people who are
pressuring her to abort her baby. Obviously, these decisions require wisdom,
but you may be able to take a young lady into your home to provide support for
her.
In other
situations, you may be able to provide financial help to a young woman, or
household items that she may need to raise a child. You could offer to provide
childcare to a woman who doesn’t know how she will juggle the demands of
motherhood and work or motherhood and school. Your offer to provide help to the
mother after the child arrives may give her just the glimmer of hope she needs
to believe that she can get by if she chooses life for her child.
You could
also serve mothers and children by adopting a child or providing foster care. I
really think that more Bible-believing people should seriously consider these
options. I think they are a logical conclusion from a pro-life position.
Sometimes pro-choice people criticize us by saying that we’re not really
pro-life, we’re simply pro-birth—we just want to see to it that children are
born, but after that we don’t really do that much to help them. Now that
criticism is greatly exaggerated, but is there a small degree of truth to it?
Maybe not, but even still we should do what we can to just squash that
stereotype altogether.
People who
are pro-life should promote and uphold the dignity of human life from the
moment of conception to the moment of death, and adopting children or providing
foster care is one way that we could do that. Now I have been humbled recently
by the realization that some of the reasons people give for choosing not to even
consider adoption are some of the same reasons that women give for choosing to
have an abortion. Consider these reasons:
·
“It will be difficult to raise this child.”
·
“It will be a hard adjustment for the children I
already have.”
·
“It will require financial sacrifices.”
My friends,
are we allowing some of the same logic that leads to abortions to keep us from
even entertaining the thought of adopting a child? I really am not saying that
everyone should adopt a child—I am simply saying that we should examine our
motivations.
B.
Indirectly
There are
also many ways that we can serve mothers and children indirectly. Now when you
hear the word “indirect,” please don’t think of the word “inferior.” There can
be a big temptation to think that Christians who would take a pregnant woman
into their home or Christians who adopt are super-Christians, and the rest of
us can never hope to reach their level of spirituality. We need to see that
temptation as the lie that it is and remember that indirect acts of service are
still acts of obedience to God that are pleasing to Him.
Indirect
service simply means that you are helping the people who are directly serving a
mother or a child. So you might serve indirectly by supporting a crisis
pregnancy center. You could make financial donations, volunteer your time, or
provide household items that are passed along to mothers. You could provide
accounting services for them or mail out flyers. They could probably find a way
to use just about any talent or skill that you have!
You could
also help someone who is seeking to adopt a child. You could help them cover
the cost of adoption or provide legal help for them if you have that training.
You could provide childcare if they already have children and have to travel to
complete the adoption.
You can
also serve indirectly by raising awareness about the issue of abortion and the
truth surrounding it. I’m the kind of person who will probably remember my
B.A.B.Y. acronym until I go senile because that’s just how my memory works. But
you might be able to raise awareness in ways that can be much more powerful
than a sermon or a lecture. You might be able to paint a picture that captures
the dignity of the child in the womb. You might be able to write a song or a
poem that you could share with others. You might be able to write or present a
one-man play about this issue and use drama to touch people’s hearts. You might
bake a pie for a maternity class at the crisis pregnancy center, and 30 years
down the road a mother will remember the taste of that pie, and it will remind
her of the kindness that she received when she faced an unplanned pregnancy.
Sometimes
as we consider the reality of our culture of abortion, the needs can feel so
overwhelming that we question whether we can really do any good. Let me close
with a story that illustrates an important point.
There was
once a young girl who was walking along a beach, and as she looked down into
the sand, she noticed a butterfly that was half-covered up. She didn’t know it,
but the butterfly had been driven onto the beach by a storm the night before.
The little girl thought the butterfly was dead, but she stooped down anyway to
pick it up, and to her surprise it was still alive. The butterfly’s wings had
become caked with wet sand so that it couldn’t fly, but as the girl gently
brushed away the sand, the butterfly was able to escape. The girl was pleased,
but as she looked at the sand again, she began to notice that there were
hundreds of butterflies in the same predicament. The girl began to frantically
attend to one butterfly at a time, desperately trying to save them before they
died.
A man
nearby had observed all of this, and he was moved by the little girl’s
compassion and by what he perceived as her naïveté. After a moment, the man
spoke up and said, “Young lady, I admire your compassion, but you can’t save
them all. Your work won’t make much difference.” The young girl never looked
up, but simply picked up one more butterfly, brushed it off, and let it fly
away, and then she said, “I made a difference to that one.”
That is
truly how great movements and great changes happen—one person at a time! No act
of service is insignificant to the person who benefits from it, nor is it
insignificant to the Lord. Jesus Himself spoke about acts of service in Matthew
25, and He said, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you
did it to me (Matt. 25:40).”
Notes:
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war Accessed 9/12/12
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