Wednesday, July 27, 2016

If Heaven doesn't do it first

A year and a week ago today appeared a transcript of an address delivered by the junior United States Senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford, regarding Planned Parenthood and abortion. The subject is very brittle in almost everyone’s mind. Either they are ‘for abortion’, or for ‘a woman’s right to choose’, or something like that, or they are against it, being labeled ‘pro-Life’ or other equivalent terms.

I haven’t seen anything from the ‘pro-Life’ group that calls those on the other side of the fence ‘murderers’ or other emotionally charged names, but I’m sure such epithets have been vaulted over the net. As for those who support abortion on demand (within current legal limitations, of course), well, what can I say? After commenting on the Senator’s address in a public forum, it wasn’t long before I read myself being called a whole series of expletives starting with the mild one ‘red neck’ and culminating in the names of body parts not normally exposed to the public, strengthened by generous use of the ‘f’ word.

Naturally, I rejoiced in being thus vilified, and so I gave the comment that trashed me a ‘+1’ as a way of showing my detractor how much I appreciated his abuse. Unfortunately, the moderator deleted both his comment and my +1, leaving me quite crestfallen. Why can’t people just let me suffer the insults and outrages I deserve?

Seriously, I do not broadcast or readily admit to my position on moral and political questions, unless asked directly and unpolemically. I don’t see any reason to involve myself in arguments, since people are rarely converted to their opponent’s views by this method. I don’t correct others either, or at least try not to, but ‘nobody’s perfect,’ and when I apply this saying to myself, I couldn’t be more certain of its truth. I also don’t join the bandwagon or the crusade to ‘rid America’ of social evils.

I know my opinions don’t matter, and since I’m unwilling to lay my life on the line in a battle that I don’t believe can be won that way, and since I’m a stay-at-home, ‘armchair’ philosopher, I don’t feel qualified to waste time on mere banter, even though I am originally from Chicago.

Also, I am not a woman and can’t have babies (though I helped ‘make’ four sons), so I don’t criticize or judge women whether they keep them or lose them, but I do think morality has absolutes, even though I cannot apply them to anyone but myself. Hence my comment on the issue which drew down upon me the wrath of John Doe (not his real name) defending his Daisy’s right to flush out her uterus because baby-making is so inconvenient. Here’s what I wrote.

The greatest ‘legal’ calamity to befall this nation (USA) is not the recent ‘marriage equality’ ruling, but the continued holocaust of the unborn, whose civil rights as human beings (not to mention their lives) are sacrificed to ‘woman’s reproductive rights.’ There is no such thing as ‘woman’s reproductive rights’, only a woman’s choice to submit to sexual intercourse or not. Once she gives herself in this way, if another life begins inside her, she has temporarily forfeited her rights to her own body, just as she did when she engaged in the sex act, only for nine months instead of for fifteen minutes.

Reason itself, let alone morality (the human conscience burns when it submits to child-murder) condemns infanticide, whether in the womb or outside of it. Our society could stop it in a week by simply shutting down in massive civil disobedience. If even a quarter of our people simply stayed home and refused to go to their jobs or school or whatever until an executive order either has eighty million people of all ages arrested and jailed, or delivers our objective—banning all abortions not directly related to the life of either mother or child—the national crime could be stopped in a week to ten days.

No amount of talking is going to purge us of this sin. No amount of violent action will save us either. Only courage to nail ourselves to a communal cross has a chance to do this. Such a massive act of civil disobedience could have stopped many massive evils in history. We could still do it. When will we take our place in history? Because if we don’t, nature itself will scour us off the earth, if Heaven doesn’t do it first.

End of comment.

I believe morality exists. I believe it is diamond hard and bright. I believe that we can bury it only to become poorer. I believe in a God whose nature is to love, and that we, made in Their image, are able to experience and participate in love at our level and scale. I believe that God is not ‘out there to get us,’ or any other such obnoxious nonsense, and that Their will is so deeply and absolutely against death, that They came among us and joined Their Divine Nature to our human nature in such a way that we no longer have an excuse to behave like irrational animals. Morality is our nature as much as it is God’s, and we know that life wins, that life ‘will find a way.’ Even an infant being aborted fights to live according to its capacity. Everyone knows the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not murder,’ even when we disobey it.

I think that there are far fewer things that are sinful than our religious instructors would have us believe. I think that they are often protecting us, because we act like children. But some of us don’t stay children. We grow up, and we can follow Father and approach Him face to face. We still love Mother, but she’s done making our case for us, wheedling favors and permissions from Father on our behalf. Now it’s our turn to follow Father and do what we’ve seen Him doing all our lives, all around us—that is, if we’ve watched.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights may offend some people, religious or irreligious. They may think it goes too far. I say it doesn’t go far enough, and that Christ among us will push it further than we can or maybe want to. The same people who call Christ ‘the Revolutionary’ are to be found sitting with the unrighteous in the judgment seat reserved for Them alone who are both Worthy (Axios) and Holy (Agios).

There really are human rights that are inalienable because God’s sovereignty is inalienable, who said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image.’

The first right is that which was bestowed by the Creator, and that is life. That right is what has been denied to some millions of human beings recently in our country, and to billions in human history, by law, by lawlessness, never by right, for there is no such right.

Yes, civil disobedience, what I suggested in my short comment, works when applied correctly. Gandhi was right. Yes, because Jesus was right. ‘Offer the evil man no resistance.’ It sent the British packing. They quit India. One cannot say ‘what would have happened’ if it had been applied to Hitler. It hardly seems the way to overcome the Islamic Caliphate, but who knows? Or the caliphate of misanthropic, false feminism—May we find the way! Or as I humbly warned, ‘nature itself will scour us off the earth, if Heaven doesn’t do it first.’

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