Put Away the Guilt
“At the very least, we must cry out to God.”
This was the response to a question our Pastor was asked after a sermon. Unrelated to the sermon (my mind does this sometimes) I started to apply the statement to some reading and thinking I have been doing about abortion.
I have been reading about the effects of abortion on the mother who chooses to murder her child. She may do it for her convenience or at the insistence of parents or the father of the child who refuses to take responsibility. Guilt, shame, depression, and, in many women, a susceptibility to other kinds of illness later, can be the result of having an abortion, especially if the woman understands she is killing her child.
I do not have firsthand information about how abortion mills “counsel” a woman seeking abortion, but it seems they do not warn mothers of these serious, life altering consequences of killing your child.
(At this point I feel I must say that in God’s grace there is forgiveness for the mother who repents of this sin of abortion. Not for the one who acknowledges it or starts going to church on Sunday to atone for it, but for the one who truly cries out to God confessing her sin of murder and the depth of the sin that it requires to kill our own children. Thank God for His forgiveness!).
In our culture, it seems we have come far from the biblical call to repent of sin. We are willing to acknowledge sin – especially someone else’s – but we rarely truly repent of it. Many seem to have some sense of atonement i.e., if I do this many good things it will balance or be better than the total of the bad things. The Lord calls our works to atone for sin “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).
Recently, I saw this on Facebook:
If this is true, our nation and the Church of Jesus Christ are going to see the consequences (just as we have been seeing). Because Christians murder their own children, sacrificing them for our own idol of comfort or ease, and we also stand by while many others shed “innocent blood,” (Psalm 106:38) it is clear that we are a people who have forgotten God. We have no fear of Him. We do not tremble at His Word.
“At the very least” should this shedding of innocent blood not move God’s people to cry out to Him to give us, as His people and as a nation, just punishment on those who practice it? Can we shake up a complacent Christian world-view that says, “Not my issue?”
Abortion’s long term effect for the baby is horrible as it is torn apart in the womb. Death. The long term effects for the mother are also bad and not discussed. Can Christians work to change this? Should we sit by and let it go unchallenged?
Not everyone has the freedom in their schedules to be at an abortion provider pleading with women not to murder their babies but to trust God. But, we can all:
- …educate our children about abortion before the world does (in our homes and in our churches).
- …inform brothers and sisters in the Lord who do not understand the consequences of “shedding innocent blood” what is at stake when we disobey God (Numbers 35:33; Proverbs 6:6-7, Jeremiah 22:17-18).
- …undo the concept of many politicians that abortion should be “legal, safe, and rare.” No abortion is ever “safe” for the baby or the mother.
- …cry out to God to end this atrocity in our land by whatever means He wills.
So you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD. Deuteronomy 21:9