We are Called Now to be Soldiers

That Pro-Life Schtick ^ | January 13, 1999 | Alan Keyes

[Askel5]

Our Obligation of Love
Conclusion to "That Pro-Life Schtick"
New Orleans, Louisiana | January 13, 1999

Our Lord tells a story of the Good Samaritan. And in doing so, He introduced a Moral Revolution into a world that, until He spoke, had seen only the glory of Pride and Strength and Power and not the glory of Love and Mercy and Compassion.

But He told us that it was our responsibility not just to do the bidding of those who have the strength to make us do it but rather to Respond and to be governed by the plight of those helpless and lying in the ditch, mugged by the circumstances of life. Get down off our high horse and to lift them out of the ditch into which they have been cast by evil and circumstance.

Now I know that very often we interpret that story as if the only thing were supposed to think about there is the body and the feeding of the body and the clothing. And it is told in that metaphor -- right? -- he's been mugged, his clothes have been taken away, his body is mangled. But we know it's true that man does not live by bread alone. But, in truth, the greatest mercy is the mercy that leads souls to salvation, the mercy that turns the heart away from darkness to the light of God's Truth.

I think in a very literal sense our nation is like that wayfarer who's been mugged and thrown into the ditch. The interesting thing being, of course, that the concept that you've been robbed means you had something and it was taken away from you.

Our nation had truth.
It had, perhaps, the central and most powerful and most important truth: that God Is and that His Will Governs. And that He cares enough to respect our life and to establish by His hand our dignity and by His mercy our rights. And yet, in the course of the last decades, by stealth and by open denial, we have been robbed of that Truth.

Literally, now, our nation lies mugged and bleeding in the ditch. Bleeds from a hundred places in the hallways of our schools where children devoid of moral sense take one another's lives, it bleeds from a thousand places in the streets of our cities where minds blasted by materialism put more value on Money and Things than they do upon Life. It lies bleeding as well in a million and in tens of millions of places … in all those abortion clinics and in all those young lives snuffed out because we have substituted Human Choice for God's Choice and accepted the Lie that We determine the Dignity of All. Our nation lies mugged and bleeding in the ditch.

And I think that it is indeed our obligation of Love … whatever may be our own hope for salvation … to turn aside from our past and to try as best we can to help this nation reclothe itself in Truth, heal the wounds inflicted by those Lies so that it may rise again and walk the path of decency and justice that God in His providence seems to have marked out for us.

To me, that is the real significance of the Pro-Life cause for our country and for the world in which our country may still do so much good. Motivated by that understanding, then, I hope we'll realize that we have to show a dedication to this work that goes beyond every possibility of the usual success.

I often get that question these days because people think that everything in life should be based on some Stupid Calculation or other. And so they keep wondering "Oh, how can you can keep doing this and speaking out … why, this, … you'll be defeated here and mangled there and destroyed in the other place!"

Everyone is pulling long faces at you, though ... colleagues who won't be quite as comfortable with you if you're outspoken. The family that won't be quite as friendly with you if you're outspoken. The friends, the community, the neighbors, the this or that who will turn away from you because: "Well … we just don't want to … we don't want to be bothered with that … we want to have a more POSITIVE and HOPEFUL environment than you bring with all your Gloomy Talk"

Justice.

In some way or another, each and every one of us faces the choice between the Truth and our Ease, the Truth and our Convenience, being witnesses for that Truth or going along with this world's ways.

And I believe that of all that is at stake, we are each of us called upon – just as our forebears were – the ones who died on the battlefields and marched in the marches and did all that they could to move this nation and its place in the world toward greater Justice and Dignity for All, we are called now to be soldiers on the front lines of this struggle for renewed dignity.

We are called to do it in our businesses and our families and our work and in our neighborhoods and in our politics and in our religious places … from every platform that we can lay hold off we are called upon to be Witnesses to this Truth!

I can't be sure … I can't be sure how in some temporal sense that turns out.

You win some. You lose some.

You want to know the truth? (It's a truth that in a very personal way in recent times, I've been by the grace of God discovering every day …)

There is a kind of Peace, a kind of Hope, a kind of Certainty that comes from walking through the darkness by the light of God's will that you get no other way.

I believe with all my heart that it leads to that place of Light and Peace where we may not win the plaudits of the world but where we will hear the One Voice of Approval, where we will see the One Smiling Face …

Favor and Mercy that will last not for a moment--it will last not as human fame lasts, even for an age of Man--but will last Forever, because it is God's Word and God's Voice and God's Favor and God's Smiling Face that welcomes us to our eternal home to be there as we have been here … grateful servants of His Truth.

[Askel5]

† Theresa Marie Schindler, Martyr for the Gospel of Life, pray for us †

[econ_grad]

This is not God's world. Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's. Change the law if you like, or better yet, vote out those Republicans in the FL legislature.

[Anti-Communist MOM]

I think the lib's are going to be very surprised by what happen's from now on. I think every day more and more people choose to speak up. We have to speak up, because I think the reason America can do great things for others is through God's grace. If we abandon God he will eventually abandon us. Pray for these people.

[Askel5]

=== Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's.

It's Caesar. And your comment's very appropriate where concerns the vantage point of those memorialized in our Congressional Record who speak in terms of "down breeding" or "Genetic Quality" and the breeding of superior people as well as the culling of inferior or burdensome people.

But regardless their conceits in this regard, citizens of the New Rome are not slaves of the empire like citizens of the Old Rome. Terri was not the State's to take.

This is a great argument -- particularly now -- where the collecting of taxes to pay for our wars of liberation are concerned. I don't think it wise, however, to accustom one's self to thinking of people in terms of State Chattel.

Regardless how they've "educated" us into Planning our children, Planning our deaths and supported their state-funded manufacture of Excess Lives from which to make the lives of the Living more perfect, I stillthink you're on extremely dangerous ground applying Christ's teaching on currency and coin to liberty and human beings.

[Askel5]

=== Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's.

On second thought ... considering the way the biometic national id sailed through the Senate ... you may be on to something where U.S. citizens are concerned ... and sooner, rather than later.

[econ_grad]

Stipulate govt to its Constitutional provisions, and people in power wouldn't have the guts to take someone's life. Govt now controls every facet of our life and that gives them the guts to control our conscience. Vote for less govt and you will have a more moral society.

[Meldrim]

All young American men are called to be soldiers. Some respond like James Webb, others like Newt Gingrich.