Is the tide turning in the American culture war?

I don't usually post other messages on my blog site, but thought this was sufficiently significant to warrant this post. Go to thechristians.com for daily updates on contemporary Christianity. This piece was posted in their daily email, May 6, 2013

A sequence of surprising recent reversals have knocked the pro-choice cause

By Link Byfield May 6, 2013

When the most militantly pro-abortion president in American history cruised to his re-election victory last November, rueful pro-life Christians had no comfort beyond Paul’s advice to the Galatians: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Pro-lifers did not give up, and today, a mere six months later, the situation is starting to look quite different.

Somehow the pro-choice steamroller – juggernaut – call it what you will – has lost momentum. They expected Obama’s victory to mark their final triumph in the culture war. It has proved to be far from that.

Unforeseen problem one for pro-choicers is Obama himself. He has stalled. He is not exactly unpopular, but even his Congressional allies now admit he can’t seem to get anything done right or done at all. As veteran pundit Peggy Noonan put it, it’s too soon to say he’s a lame duck; he’s just lame.

He did manage to push through his “Obamacare” health care insurance plan, forcing Americans to pay for abortions through their health insurance premiums. However, the massive public insurance initiative is turning out to be such a costly and complex legal and administrative fiasco that it may have to be in large measure dismantled.

Unforeseen problem two for pro-choicers two is Kermit Gosnell, the now-notorious Philadelphia abortionist. Bad enough, from the pro-choice perspective, that the friendly mainstream media were shamed into belatedly covering the Gosnell trial. (Update: after three days of deliberation the jury was sent home for the weekend.) Now pro-lifers are showing that Gosnell’s alleged infanticidal activities may not be all that rare.

Unforeseen problem three for pro-choice is Lila Rose and her group Live Action. Since Gosnell hit the headlines, Live Action has released three video interviews secretly recorded by women in their third trimester asking workers at Planned Parenthood-affiliated clinics whether they provide late-term abortions (the clear response is yes), and if the child is born alive, will they try to save its life (the clear answer is no, even though it would then be a legal person under U.S. law).

Rose, a UCLA history graduate from San Jose who is now age 24, founded Live Action when she was 15 and is seen by many as the most effective new voice in the culture war. Adept at bypassing mainstream media through social media, Live Action has amassed considerable evidence that abortion clinics, especially those affiliated with or belonging to Planned Parenthood, are flagrantly tolerant of sexual abuse, racism, gender selection, sex trafficking, deliberate disinformation, infanticide, and medical incompetence and malpractice.

Rose has reduced abortion industry spokesmen and their media allies to spluttering incoherency – as for instance the lawyer for an exposed abortionist in D.C. protesting that Live Action’s video-sting constituted an “outrageous intrusion” on doctor-patient privacy.

Unforeseen pro-choice problem four is their slow defeat at the U.N. As far back as the Cairo Conference in 1994 pro-choice activists have invested massive covert funding and political capital in making legalized abortion the centre-piece of “women’s health” world-wide. Their strategy was to link “overpopulation” to global recognition of “reproductive rights.”

But as Wendy Wright reported last week from New York, U.N. depopulation officials are now admitting that in two decades they have made no political progress. Babatunde Osotimehin, U.N. population fund director, told an on-site Planned Parenthood gathering on May 2 that his organization still “gets push-back from just about every part of the world: Africa, Asia, Central America, Latin America and Europe.” In short, all attempts of the past generation to make abortion a universal human right tied to health care have failed so often that member nations are reaching the point of refusing to debate it.

Just as the Live Action videos were hitting the Internet last month, Planned Parenthood trumpeted on Tuesday, April 23, that two evenings hence, on Thursday, April 25, President Obama would deliver the keynote to their annual gala. He would be the first U.S. president ever to address the organization. Payback time, apparently: non-profit Planned Parenthood contributed $15 million to his last campaign. But on Wednesday, April 24, the White House announced that the president would not be delivering the keynote address. Due to a scheduling conflict he would deliver a brief message on Friday, April 25 instead. Opinion was divided as to which side looked more foolish from this snafu.

Obama spoke for 12 minutes, never mentioned the word “abortion,” told them he was on their side, and asked God to bless them.

What's Beyond the Universe?

On Saturday, I watched a portion of Bob McDonald, CBC’s science expert answering questions from viewers put to him by Peter Mansbridge. One question concerned the continued expansion of the universe since the “big bang”: Where is it expanding into?

It’s a good question, for if there was something for it to expand into, there would be space or some other form of creation to provide for it to expand! Bob’s answer was non-commital: We are inside the expanding universe—that’s all there is.

I was reminded of Carl Sagan’s words opening his video series on the universe: “The universe is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be.” Reminiscent of the Bible’s affirmation about the Lord: “Who is, and who was, and who is to come.”

And deliberately so. It affirms the view that science can know all there is to know, and Sagan’s declaration is an atheist’s attempt to replace the living God with His creation—to worship created things instead of the Creator.

Of course, the cause of the Big Bang—which presumably started the expansion of the universe—presupposes the existence of something—or Someone—to explode it, and, as usual, unbelieving scientists are trying to find their way around that one!

It reminded me again of a remark by Robert Jastrow, and astronomer. He likened the search for the origins of the universe to climbing a mountain. When the scientists reached the top, he thought the theologians would be probably sitting there waiting for them!

To be fair to Bob McDonald, he is speaking purely from a scientists’ point of view. They can only comment on what they can see. Science cannot comment on what can’t be seen. But that is the Bible’s specialty:

“We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

Which Way Up?

I sent a birthday card to my wife one year, with the picture of a man standing on his head. Inside the caption read: Perhaps it’s the world that’s upside down—we’re the ones the right way up! The more I see of our declining culture, the more it’s evident that the world is upside down.

The retreat from Christianity has increased the “me first” mentality and lessened the idea of service that holds society together. Multiculturalism has resulted in a ghetto mentality, each cultural group wanting its own space—both on the ground and politically.

Let’s face it. What we call “natural” is really “unnatural”; a result of severance from our Creator. Without Him, we have no idea how to live, and simply fall back to our base instincts. The animals become our guide!

In school, biology taught us differences between humans and animals. One difference was never raised: animals grow, mature and propagate by simply following their instincts. However, humans degrade themselves if their instincts are not controlled and disciplined.

The conscious choice of discipline over instinct is a distinctive and ennobling mark of humanity. Jesus exemplified this: “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28).

Service to our fellow humans alongside misunderstanding of our faith is—or should be—the hallmark of Christianity as we conform to His image. This distinctive easily separates us from the crowd that seeks its own well-being first.

Justice for Teroroists?

I’m sure the events in Boston this week are the basis for blogs and commentary worldwide. What can one lonely blog like this add? Probably nothing new. Yet from a Christian perspective there is always something fresh to consider.

Justin Trudeau’s remarks this week have stirred up controversy. His reasoning for the bombers’ actions was based on them feeling excluded from Canadian community. Subsequent facts indicate they were well established within their societal framework after all.

Never-the-less, the liberal idea that perpetrators of this sort are victims is a common reason given for their actions, usually leaving the real victims of the attack sidelined. In fact, I’m sure we’ll hear much less about those bereaved or injured in Monday’s blast than about the bombers themselves.

Of course, we are all victims of some sort, but few of us resort to life destroying acts. Our awareness of our vulnerability should, and does, lead to empathy for others, not violence against them. The Bible exhorts us to love those we may consider our enemies.

So how do we figure justice for the remaining bomber? He, like his victims, was created in the image of God, and as such should be treated with the same dignity as anyone else. I’m glad that western courts, imperfect though they are, seek to ensure guilt before judgment—a legacy of Christian influence.

But justice also requires that the penalty fits the crime, inherent in the idea of an eye for an eye, and life for life. That regulation required just punishment but also denied escalation of revenge as well as. If someone knocked one of my teeth out, I could not knock out two in response!

I can’t help musing on where we have come in regard to the death penalty. In many western nations it has been removed completely, capital crimes now often penalized by some years in prison. This devalues the life of the victim to just the length of the violator’s sentence.

By contrast, we terminate the life of the person in the womb for any and every reason, euthanize those near death despite their innocence, and increasingly kill infants who survive the torture of forced abortion—capital “punishment” for the innocent is alive and well in Canada.

We also need to separate forgiveness from consequences. It may well be that one of the bombers’ maimed victims is a Christian, willing to forgive his assailant and cancel the debt to himself, reflecting God’s cancelled debt against us. But the bombers’ debt to society remains.

God demands, “from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man,” and the Bible forecasts that “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (Genesis 9:5–6). Human courts derive their authority from God (Romans 13:2).

The first bomber met his death while continuing the rampage he began. The second was hunted down to face the consequences of his crime. Will the punishment fit the crime? I doubt it. From past experience, sympathy for the perpetrator will outweigh justice for the victims.