Posted on 11/26/2012 1:17:49 PM PST by victim soul
I wasn’t a Christian when I became pro-life. I was kind of anti-Christian. I was converted on the basis of science, reason, ethics, and human rights.
A year later, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. But I also don’t think one has to be a Christian to be pro-life.
I do, however, believe that one has to be pro-life to be a Christian.
Why? Well, because, duh.
I mean, is it really necessary to go into deep biblical study over this issue? Is it necessary to quote Exodus 21:22-23, or Psalm 139:13-15, or Matthew 18:10, or Jeremiah 1:5? Is there even really anything to argue about? I think the big “argument” about whether you can be a Christian and be pro-choice is B.S. I think that deep down, every Christian who knows the truth of abortion knows the answer to this.
Is it possible to have even a rudimentary understanding of Christianity and think abortion is okay? Can any of us really imagine Jesus Christ holding a woman’s hand and encouraging her to have an abortion?
I was astounded when, a few years after becoming pro-life, I discovered that there were denominations of Christianity that were not explicitly pro-life. I was shocked when I learned there were Christian denominations that were explicitly pro-choice.
I did a little research, and of the major branches of Christianity, the only ones I found with a strong pro-life platform were the Catholics, the Southern Baptists, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Evangelicals. There are thousands of Protestant denominations, so I’m sure I missed some, but of the major ones, these are the only ones I have found. Please correct me if there are more
I’d love to hear that there are more. That there are so few Christian denominations who have an official pro-life platform is troublesome. What is even more troublesome is that there are many Christians who, despite having submitted to the authority of a church that tells them abortion is a grave and mortal sin comparable to almost nothing else, believe in abortion “rights” – and vote for them, against clear instruction from their church. Southern Baptists and Evangelicals who are pro-abortion are less common, and, ironically, they do not have the same belief that their church can separate them from full communion with Christ through excommunication, as Catholics do.
According to large denominations of Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Quakers, Church of Christ, and more, abortion is not incompatible with Christianity, which is the same as saying abortion is not incompatible with Christ.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that pro-choice Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, et al. actually believe that?
I don’t. I don’t buy it for a second. I don’t for one second think, if Jesus Christ appeared before a congregation of “pro-choice Christians” and asked them their opinion on abortion, they would look Jesus in the eye and say abortion is okay. I don’t believe for one second that a “pro-choice Christian” would stand in a clinic with Jesus Christ and watch a woman have an abortion.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they have really convinced themselves that abortion is kindness to women, and somehow not cruelty to and the killing of an innocent, dependent human being.
And hey, maybe my understanding of Christianity is completely bass-ackwards. Maybe Christianity is not really about loving and helping those in need, protecting the innocent, telling the truth, and bravely defending justice and righteousness. Maybe Christianity is about intentionally and specifically ending an innocent human life if it is inconvenient or difficult, and encouraging women to “solve” their problems with violence against their children. Maybe “suffer the little children to come unto Me” is just pretty words, or just a poetic way of telling people to make sure the children they allow to live outside the womb go to Sunday school.
Jesus wanted Christians to be kind. No one argues with that. But kind to whom, exactly? And what does “kind” mean? Just going around being “nice” to everyone is lovely if you’re a saffron-robed Tibetan monk, or a spaced-out hippie. But if you’re the slightest bit aware, and if you have any concept of justice, you must admit that, like David Mamet said, “[k]indness to the wicked is cruelty to the righteous.” We have to get over this idea that encouraging terrible behavior is ever kind.
So, if we apply this truth – “Kindness to the wicked is cruelty to the righteous” – to abortion, who is the wicked, the mother or the child? The mother, obviously. We don’t mean that she utterly sinful and repulsive, but it is she who created this situation in almost every case, and it is never the innocent child. Also, if we choose to do “kindness” to her instead of the child, someone will die. If we choose to do kindness to the child, no one will die.
Then there is this: choosing to do “kindness” to the mother by encouraging or allowing her to abort her child is not kindness. It is telling her that doing something despicable and wrong is okay and will help her. That is a lie. Lying is wrong, kids.
It’s fun to pretend Jesus was a misty-eyed hippie. Except he wasn’t. The culture we live in tells us Jesus was okay with, for example, adultery, because he saved a woman from being stoned to death for committing it. They leave out the part where told her to “sin no more,” because nowadays the only sin is believing in sin. Our culture too often confuses mercy with leniency. They are not the same thing.
I have no doubt that Jesus was kind, but I don’t think he was nice – not in the way we mean it today. He told us to love everyone. Loving everyone does not mean smiling and shrugging at everyone’s sin. I don’t expect mine to be smiled and shrugged at. If I wanted that, I would be a Unitarian Universalist. Telling people killing their babies is okay is not loving. It’s not true. It’s not righteous. It’s not Christian.
Saying publicly that abortion is not Christian is judgmental and mean, or so I have been told repeatedly. Well, I’m judgmental and mean, I guess.
Look, I know I am a sinner. I sin all the time. I’m horrible and lowly. I fail constantly. But I am a Christian, and I rely on the mercy of Christ to save me. What I don’t do is pretend my sins are not sins. I have done it before – we all have, probably – and I had to repent. You can’t go around indignantly declaring that grave, life-destroying sins are fine with Jesus because it makes you more modern and hip and “with it,” or because it sounds “nice,” or because hell yeah women’s rights.
All sin is a conscious choice to choose a known wrong over a known right. Does a presumption that God will automatically forgive any sin once repented factor into your decisions to sin?
Peace be with you.
There is no one-size-fits-all plan for Salvation. Each has a unique plan, drawn-up by God from before the beginning of time that is perfected for every moment and circumstance in our lives.
Faith is an act of the will and unless and until we forsake freewill we must constantly strive to hold fast. Works, demonstrated in the Fruit of the Holy Spirit, are evidence of our faith. If we do not manifest abundant Fruit we are not saved.
Peace be with you.
“All sin is a conscious choice to choose a known wrong over a known right.”
No it is not. We often sin, not being aware we sinned. Once and a while, my eyes are opened to see something I had never considered. It was sin the whole time. I was unaware I was committing it! Yikes!
I'm not needling you, ksen. Really, I'm not. I'm just curious.
Tagline :o)
I wouldn’t take that question as needling Mrs. Don-o and I’m happy to answer it.
I’m assuming you mean the Catholic church. If my assumption is wrong please let me know. No, I was never a member of the Catholic church so that’s not what I left or what I was referring to.
I became a christian in a small independent baptist church. Years later we moved to Florida where I found another similar church for us to join. We were very active and I even served a term as a deacon and attended a seminary and received my Master’s degree. Then the preaching subtley started changing to focus more and more on don’t do this or don’t do that instead of preaching jesus christ crucified. It became more and more apparent to me that the pastor was using the faith of the attendees against them and becoming more and more controlling.
One night I went and talked to him about what I was seeing and what my thoughts were. Of course he disagreed with my take and tried to manipulate me by telling me I must have some hidden sin I was trying to run from or some such. I told him I had heard enough and that the previous Sunday was the last time my family and I would be there.
I spent months looking for a new church home but they were all the same. I even tried different denominations to no avail. What I found is that there is a severe lack of love in modern american churches. I may not know a lot of things and I may have forgotten a lot of things but one thing I’ll never forget is that Jesus preached love and freedom to sinners. He reserved his most harsh speech to those who tried to use religion for their own purposes.
That is why I gave up organized religion. And years later my conscience is still clear.
That puts you at odds with 2,000 years of Christian theology. (See Luke 23:34)
Sin is a personal act that must be done with with full knowledge and deliberate consent. Your definition would make a rape victim guilty of adultery and fornication.
Peace be with you.
Having hard knocks at church is really a painful thing to deal with, especially as in your case, when you were seriously invested in the church as a deacon, serving in a volunteer ministry, committed to some active aspect of parish life.
We had a situation like that in my family, where my husband and two sons were quite dedicated to a vibrant new (non-RC) mission (I was only a sympathetic observer, because I was then, and still am, a Catholic, and yet very willing to affirm the whole rest of my family being involved in --- we'll call it "St. Herman's Hermitage") (ha). Well, for 5-6 years it was encouraging and inspirational, and it turned a corner and at first slowly, then acceleratingly, went down hill. Same issue as yours: nothing "scandalous" in the sense of embezzlment or sex or suchlike, but dismaying pastoral malpractice.
In the final 4 years, the parish ended up splintering into two belligerent factions, jurisdictional split, lawsuit for the property, dissolution. Ouch.
Much more than "ouch." It was deeply wounding to my husband and to other good-hearted people.
You do need to get away from somebody who's spiritually abusive. I absolutely see that.
I will still say, though, that Christ unquestionably founded a Church, unquestionably it was not just offhand or nebulous, but as a force, a channel of enlightenment, an essential mission in this world; and that mission does not fail. He intends it to be a school of love. At the least, it gives you good practice learning to be halfway decent to people who rub you the wrong way.
And as Fyodor Dostoevsky said, "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams."
Peace to you and good night, ksen.
Actually, the view I expressed puts me right next to Isaiah 6:5 ff, when he saw his own sinfulness that had always existed, but was now revealed.
It puts me right next to the Apostle John, who fell before Christ as a “dead one” when he saw his holiness and realized his own pitiful state.
As to your other comment about rape, you either misunderstand or are a crude Cretan. I don’t know which. I hope the first.
Peace to you.
agreed,(”Quick answer:Yes”) before I scroll on.
Anti-life positions are of the unfruitful works of darkness and must be fought, exposed (Eph 5:11).
Add too that since virtually the whole Demoncat party is anti-life, its impossible to be “Christian” and vote Demoncat.
Alan Keyes took it on the chin in his run for the US Senate against zer0 for saying as much but Dems Da Facts.
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