The killing continues. The destruc­tion of the preborn is as old as sin, but the way it happens in our land is espe­cially horrible. It occurs here because our social institutions condone it — the judicial system ... the press ... and even education. Our society has become a society of death.

It is necessary for Bible-believers, Christ-followers, to keep talking about this dreary sadness, for their response to legalized abortion on demand has something to do with the quality of their faith-life. Those who manage to blank out this reality, while they keep on praying and church-attending, com­promise their faith and put themselves in moral jeopardy. This monstrous evil demands response from those who claim that Christ is their Lord. If they are serious about their confession, they must talk, and they must act.

We need to remind one another of the need to act because, let's be honest, we are becoming accustomed to abortion. It has been around for a long time. A generation of young people has grown up with it so they know no other kind of world. For them, it is simply another of the many fiendish options that are there to make sure their enjoyment will not cost them anything. It's like drinking beer and buying a Berretta — it's just there and if you need it, you use it.

All of us have become at least accus­tomed enough to abortion to be able to put it out of our minds for days on end. After a while, you tend to forget that it is going on: one child every 20 seconds. Over time, you become ac­customed to people making cruel statements about considering abortion. You begin to feel there is something normal about the dank death cloud that has descended on our nation where people talk about medically as­sisted suicide as if it is a reasonable option. It is normal to talk this way, of course, once you have agreed that it is reasonable to destroy our most defenseless citizens before they see the light of day.

The Homicide Issue⤒🔗

Let's use this occasion, then, to remind one another of the real issue here. Actually what we have is a cluster of issues, and each of them is dreadful­ly serious. The first of them is, of course, the sheer destruction of these children. The slaughter exceeds any­thing we could ever comprehend. These are human beings, after all. Among us, there might be some varia­tion on how we would describe them. I have no problem with calling them persons, though, admittedly, their per­sonhood has never had a chance to develop fully. But these are members of the human race, destroyed for con­venience sake. The magnitude of this crime defies our ability to describe it adequately.

Some insist that this is murder, but actually it is not murder in the conven­tional sense. Abortion is a very specific crime. We talk about murder in first degree and the second. Abortion is neither of these. We talk about genocide; abortion comes close to this, because it is directed against a specific class of people. In reality, though, it is a unique, specific homicidal action which derives its gravity from the fact that it is perpetrated against an in­nocent, cornered and defenseless human being; it requires the coopera­tion of more than one person to carry it out; and it involves the corruption of the judicial and the medical profes­sions, two of the cornerstones of our society. It is not murder; it is far worse; abortion is abortion. The very word abortion has managed to achieve a measure of respectability. We must recover the full cruelty of this despicable homicide.

The Cultural Issue←⤒🔗

So this is the first issue, the homicide issue. But there is also the cultural issue. The presence of abortion in our culture is a fearsome symptom of the depths to which our culture has fallen. In an interview in the US Catholic last June, Stanley Hauerwas said:

Abor­tion is not some little mistake. Abor­tion is a reflection of who Americans are. People in the U.S. are supposed to concentrate on themselves and pur­sue happiness; thus, they ask them­selves, 'Why should we bother having children?'

In a Time magazine inter­view, Randall Terry also emphasized that we are looking at something here that indicates a total degeneration of our society.

This wonderful North America of ours, which has been exceptionally blessed with opportunities for people to pursue happiness, has called this cursed ugliness upon itself because, somewhere along the line, happiness has become the presiding god. Everything else must take second place to the enjoyments and the sensations that are considered the primary right of every human being. It is this total sell­out to pleasure that now causes the deaths of our babies. Americans, who have long looked askance at the brutal killing in the Soviet Union, must now view the Stalinization of their own land where the government does not kill unwanted citizens, but parents do who make their decisions in vaunted privacy.

This is thus, a case of abysmal cul­tural degeneration. We may blame the government for allowing this to occur, but we cannot blame the government for each act that now occurs. The people are doing this, the very people who carry on our work, produce the newspapers, write advertising copy, conduct education, determine the direction of business, and decide how the sick will be treated. Abortion is a populist movement, and you must as­sume that a high percentage of the people you sit next to on the train or shop with in the supermarket have been part of this outrage.

This is national degeneration at its worst. We may be appalled by the crimes of a former SS trooper who is found somewhere and brought to trial in Germany, but let's not forget that ordinary men and women are deciding to kill children every day in our own country. And they will never be brought to trial. In this, we have gone beyond the law, not just the law of our nation but the very law of God.

Christian people must be well aware that they are living in such a land just now. In such a situation, it is immoral to be simply patriotic; our patriotism must have the edge of severe opposi­tion to the degeneration that has over­taken us. If Christian people isolate themselves and ignore what is happen­ing around them, they participate by default in what is defiling their country.

The Religious Issue←⤒🔗

The third issue here is the religious issue, and by that I do not mean simply that a commandment against killing is being broken on an unprecedented scale, and that with impunity, but I refer to religion as an all-embracing world view. Abortion is a horrendous evil in itself, but it is also a characteris­tic of the massive world religion that has stood against Biblical religion since mankind began to worship anti-god.

It is possible to describe the entire Bible as a divinely-authored polemic against an enormous all-embracing world religion that dominated both the Old Testament eras and is aggressively present in our day. This great world-religion can be thought of beneath the umbrella term idolatry. Idolatry is as much with us now as it has ever been; in fact, it would be possible to point out that we are currently confronted by a powerful expression of this great anti-biblical religion which is conquer­ing millions with its deceit. This great world-religion consists of worshiping the creature rather than the creator. It is characterized by the worship of sen­sation; it is highly sexual. It is the religion of death rather than the religion of life. It kills children.

The great failure of the Old Testa­ment people of God was their failure to root out this horrible religion. Psalm 106 chronicles their dismal history and its ugly consequences when it says (34-­39):

They did not destroy the peoples as the Lord had commanded them, but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They wor­shiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood.

When the people of Israel mixed their religion with idolatry and destroyed the children of the covenant, whom biblical religion protects, they sealed their doom. Be­cause of their abject failure and en­thusiastic consort with this loathsome idolatry, they were carried off into captivity — "Surely these things hap­pened to Judah according to the Lord's command, in order to remove them from his presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done, including the shedding of innocent blood. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was not willing to forgive" (2 Kings 24:3, 4).

We are currently living in an orgias­tic culture. The extreme emphasis on sexual fulfillment even at the cost of the unborn who are the product of conception must be viewed as an ex­pression of the grand idolatry that mankind always embraces whenever biblical religion is abandoned. This means that Christians must realize that so long as the current state of affairs continues, they are living in a culture that is doomed. If the Bible is true, and we believe it is, there is no ques­tion about God's reaction to idolatry. And there is no question whatsoever about His reaction to the shedding of innocent blood.

Psalm 94 acquires an ominous reality when we read it and think of the uncounted little eyes and little ears that have been mutilated and destroyed by the abortioner's curette:

O Lord, the God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long will the wicked, O Lord, how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting. They crush your people, O Lord; they oppress your inheritance. They slay the widow and the alien; they murder the fatherless. They say, "The Lord does not see; the god of Jacob pays no heed."

Take heed, you senseless ones among the people; you fools, when will you become wise? Does he who implanted the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?

Of course He sees the gruesome offal collected in dumpsters, he sees it all; and behind it all He sees the rebel­lion of a nation that insists on having its own way. And when the judgment falls, the hapless Christians who in­habit this fallen land will feel its im­pact along with everyone else. So, we must ask one another: what must we do, we followers of the Lord of life?

Our Task←⤒🔗

Surely, we must keep the issue alive. We must not succumb to the battle fatigue that inevitably sets in after all these years of trying to bring about change. We must not give way to the boredom that is the natural result of the tedium of our endless sinning. We must talk among ourselves. Preachers must cry out in opposition and en­courage their people to do whatever must be done to bring about change. We must spend much time on our knees just praying that we will not be­come oblivious to this horror.

Surely, we must do whatever we can to make sure that our Christian sub­culture does not gradually wear down its own defenses and begin to act like the rest of the idol worshipers. We must tell our boys and girls from the first day they begin to catch on what sex can lead to, that abortion is never, absolutely never, an option. If the con­stitution of our land does not offer protection to the preborn, the Bible still does; Christ still does; Christians still must.

And surely, each of us must find a way to be involved. There is so much that needs to be done. There is legisla­tion to be challenged. There are all the myriad of details that must be attended to if this nation is going to be turned around. This will involve political engagement of the most unpleasant and fiercest kind.

And there is also need for the gentle counsel that can be given in crisis preg­nancy centers. It is encouraging that so many Christian communities now sup­port such work. In such centers, those who are considering abortion can often be persuaded to walk the path of life.

And some of us, no doubt, will feel compelled to rescue the perishing. Operation Rescue is an option now, one that is fraught with danger and not without its own questions. One must balance the necessity of rescuing those who are about to be aborted with the necessity of maintaining a framework of law and order in our society. This is a difficult conundrum when in this case the law has become lawlessness. But some will feel compelled to lay their very lives on the line in this manner. Those of us who may have misgivings, must honor them and encourage them with our prayers and moral support.

There is nothing whatsoever good to be said about abortion. Understand, I am not talking now about necessary abortions which cannot be avoided if a mother's life is to be saved. I am talk­ing about the legalized abortion on demand that now dominates our lives, the kind that can be had for any reason and for no reason. Here is an evil through and through. Those who decide for such a fate for their unborn children engage in a morally reprehen­sible act. This does not mean that there is no forgiveness for them. This is not to say that all of us are not in desperate need of forgiveness. This is simply to state the facts of the case.

Abortion kills. It is as simple as that. It kills preborn children. It kills the human conscience. It kills society. It can kill us all when God responds with His inevitable judgment.