Last week, a family in our congregation was out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The tables were close together and the women at the adjoining table were discussing unwanted children. With the fool's innate confidence, one woman blithely expressed her conviction "that an intelligent Christian should be pro-abortion, because as Christians we should know that God would not want children living in orphanages. Children in this situation would be better off dead."
Seated six inches away was our church family. They couldn't avoid overhearing what was said because Ms. Confident was Oprah-loud. And rude--had she been polite, she might have noticed her neighbors had five children, two of whom were Asian and likely adopted. ("Happy Birthday Shoshanna Grace" is the rest of the story.)
Dare I say it seems obvious to me this woman has not had any man obstruct her will for many years? Instead she has become a creature entirely given over to sentimentality. Knowing it will strike some good readers as chauvinist, I doubt her husband has ever opposed her will and it seems evident her "Christian" preacher dispenses treacle and nostrums.
In other words, those authorities God placed over her for her (and others') protection have abandoned her to the Evil One and his victory seems complete. Does she even remember the girl she was, let alone mourn the woman she has become--a woman entirely devoid of femininity and its defining trait of compassion?
But of course, she defended abortion under the rubric of compassion. Even in her most perverse sentiment she continued to testify to the glory of her sex.
If I could displace Oprah in recommending the next good-read to our Ms. Confident, I'd suggest she buy Flannery O'Connor's collection of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, and that she start with the title story. An orthodox Roman Catholic who died at thirty-nine years old, O'Connor's writing is thoroughly Christian, and prophetic:
In the absence of this (Christian) faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.
-from O'Connor's introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann.
The Western World used to be the Ancient World raised out of every form of wickedness (including infanticide, abortion, slavery, child prostitution, sodomy, and feminism) by Christians who believed the Bible and who lived and died as witnesses to the One Who stands at its center, our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, though, scholars refer to the centuries of repentance as the "Dark Ages" and they use the language of love, mercy, and compassion to lead us back into paganism's unutterable darkness.
And now the latest: hospitals in Holland are killing newborn children with birth defects.
