Posted on 08/15/2013 7:10:04 AM PDT by Morgana
Lately I’ve been noticing a new pro-life trend. Quite active on Facebook are groups and individuals who condemn any attempt to convert an abortion advocate without taking a religious approach.
What I can glean of their message from social media and blog posts is that unless you lead with Jesus, you are denying His power to change that person’s mind. In other words, taking any approach other than “here’s what the Bible has to say about abortion” is irreligious folly.
I have several issues with this, but let’s start with my own personal experience.
I’ve shared my conversion story with Live Action readers and in The American Feminist, the magazine of Feminists for Life of America, so I won’t rehash it again. But allow me to reiterate that had my lovely friend, with whom I chose to debate abortion one fateful night, used religion as a basis for her argument, I not only would not have been convinced, I would have dismissed her entire thesis outright and probably ended the conversation.
Would I have been, frankly, an idiot for doing so? That is debatable. (By which I mean: yeah, kind of.) But I would also not have become, that very night, a pro-life advocate.
I was converted on the basis of human rights, science, and reason. Was God behind it? In my opinion, yes, He was. He is always behind Truth. I believe God created human rights, science, and reason. So using these to argue is not terribly different from mentioning Him by name.
Because my friend was, to get Biblical, “wise as serpents,” I became pro-life that night. A year later, I was no longer an agnostic but a Catholic. Coincidence? I guess. If you believe in that sort of thing.
I spent the first few months of my uncomfortable pro-lifeness (after initially trying desperately to become pro-choice again, and failing) splashing around in the shallow but welcoming online pool of the non-religious pro-life. There were pro-life pagans, agnostics, atheists, humanists, homosexuals, and so on. They, like I, had found the argument for the sanctity of unborn human life compelling enough without believing in a Christian God.
For me, this new belief in the unborn led me directly – eventually – to that same Christian God. I doubt I am the only one for whom this has been the case. It has given me an even deeper love for the fetal among us: they saved my soul.
So not only does a Bible-first approach to explaining the evil of abortion not work on everyone, it outright excludes a small but important faction of the pro-life community, whom I believe we should welcome.
Craig Gross, pastor of XXXchurch, devotes his ministry to helping porn stars leave the sex industry. In explaining his controversial personal friendship with porno legend Ron Jeremy, he explained to “Nightline:” “To me, the message of Jesus unites and doesn’t divide. You know what we’re all against, but you never know what we’re all for. Like, to me, I’m for Ron.”
There might be a very profound message in that simple statement.
If I care deeply about the soul of a pro-life pagan – and I do! – is it for me to tell her she has no place in our movement? Will that endear her to my religion? Will it go any way at all towards bringing her to understand the love of Christ?
No, of course not.
My goal as a Christian should be to bring Christ to everyone I meet. How best should I do that? By yelling Bible verses through a megaphone? By handing out pamphlets? By excluding them from the Godly work of protecting Life?
I recall encountering, for the first time, the priest who would become my first pastor. I attended a tragic funeral for a young man at his parish. It was the second time in my life I had been in a Catholic church, and this happened one month after I became pro-life. (Again, “coincidence.”) Normally quite hostile to Christianity, I felt peace and – indeed – holiness in the sanctuary. I also felt what I would later come to know as the Holy Spirit emanating from Monsignor Donald Fischer. I would feel it every time I was in his presence. I would feel it in that same sanctuary when he confirmed me a Catholic, one year later.
All this – all this Godliness – because my friend didn’t mention God.
God has His ways. I believe they have been called “mysterious.” Perhaps we should be humble enough to accept they don’t always involve us being loudly right at everyone’s face. Are you right to say God is the number one reason to oppose abortion? In my opinion, yes. But being right is not always how you win an advocate for Life – or a soul for Jesus.
It is a difficult thing to humbly submit to the will of God when nothing makes sense. Maybe pro-life paganism or agnosticism or atheism or homosexuality don’t make sense to you. Maybe they are an affront to you. But just like Craig Gross and his friend Ron Jeremy are both “for Ron,” aren’t we all working towards the same goal? Don’t we all want to protect life in the womb? Does God frown on you when you embrace a pro-life atheist or does He say, in the immortal words of Dire Straits, “That’s the way you do it”?
I’m thinking it’s (something like) the latter, and I personally welcome – and rejoice in – all the pro-lifers. We may disagree about graphic signs, the death penalty, politics, and more, but any friend of the unborn deserves a seat at our table.
1 Cor. 9:19-23
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
That's certainly not what Jesus said. He said the Gospel would be incredibly divisive.
Of course they are welcome to the pro-life movement. It is their right to express their views. NO less than a pagan pro-abort has the right to express their views.
How is it a question?
That's a definition of what abortion does, not an explanation of why it is immoral.
Antibiotics interrupt the normal process of bacteria killing you.
Currently the President of the United States is a man who celebrates abortions of all sorts. He was elected twice. The MSM has made a political icon of a vile woman in Texas who promotes late term abortion. America is in an advanced state of decadence. Anytime anyone comes to a rational insight on abortion, it is a welcome occurrence.
Well said
There is a moral judgment involved in determining that interrupting pregnancy is good, while interrupting cancer or pneumonia is bad. At the most basic level, it’s the judgment that continuing to live is good, while dying is bad. Almost everyone makes that judgment about himself - life good/death bad - at all times.
Did you not read what I said. He still said it was wrong.
What a ridiculous premise.
Of course someone can be pro-life without necessarily being religious or being of different faiths or being atheist. After all, it the conviction is called pro-LIFE not pro-religion or pro a particular religious ideology.
http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html
http://www.l4l.org/
“O less than a pagan pro-abort has the right to express their views.”
This article is about Pro life pagans not pro abort pagans. Yes they do exist.
Not many people of that if that idea. Most people when they think “Pro Life” they think of Catholics praying the Rosary or protestant street preachers yelling at women as they enter the clinics. No one ever thinks of pagans as being “pro life” but I have met quite a few.
Let me rephrase that. Not many people think of that idea. Sorry not had my coffee yet.
I understand he said it was wrong. But he did not provide you with a reason why it was wrong, only with a definition of the process.
Many things we do interrupt natural processes. There is a general consensus for most those interruptions as to whether they are good, bad or neutral ethnically.
Abortion is one on which people disagree as to morality. It being an interruption of a natural process does not provide any guidance, of itself, as to whether it is right or wrong.
Cancer is a natural process. Surgery and chemotherapy are attempts to interfere with that natural process. Doesn’t make them wrong.
The one thing that major religions agree on is that abortion is wrong.
Any sane person can see that jabbing a needle into a babies head to kill it is wrong.
True. But the judgment is that ending life is wrong, not interrupting a natural process.
BTW, contraception also interrupts a natural process. Most non-Catholic conservatives don’t therefore believe it to be wrong.
I have no data on Cherokee attitudes towards birth control. :)
Please don't think I am putting you down (though I tend in the “Natural Law” direction.) I think the question is important and needs to be examined and discussed.
So, herewith: :-)
Consider: It is “normal,” to judge by history, for some humans to enslave others. Yet we claim there are “natural rights.” (natural <- natus <- nativity => rights that come with or pertain to birth.)
Consider: Some feminists argue that if contraception is not funded by government programs, then neither should Viagra (etc.) be so funded.
IMHO the comparison is flawed because contraception interrupts the “that for the sake of which” (or one of them) the genitals are made, while Viagra restores a function lost through some defect. It would seem to make no sense to say that contraception is the same kind of thing as setting a broken arm, yet because the arm in question is a short one, that distinction is ignored.
Again, that's not meant to be an argument. It's only a hint at another view.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few large (though declining) denominations that disagree with you.
“I understand he said it was wrong. But he did not provide you with a reason why it was wrong, only with a definition of the process.”
Dude he is a Cherokee they are like that. Kinda like Master Yoda. It’s wrong so don’t do it. End of story.
When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith in the earth?
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