Wandering Lost in the Wilderness

 

Over the past couple years I been thinking about our status in the mission to protect pre-natal children.  When I say “our” I mean those people who are anti-abortion.   My thoughts could be summarized by a few simple statements, but until the fall season of 2019, I didn’t have any sort of figure, metaphor, or illustration to explain them.  

Preachers, in my experience, often don’t give apt contemporary examples of Bible stories, and in this case, I was able to do it myself in a way that seems perfect.  Our pastor had been preaching a series on the life of Moses, and the section on this particular Sunday covered Numbers 13 and 14, the story of the Lord commanding Moses to send leaders of the Israelites to scout out the promised land, the land of Canaan. 

Moses asked them to investigate the strength of the people who lived there, the fertility of the soil, and the fortifications, if any, of the cities.  He asked them to bring back some of the fruits of the land.  As you may remember, the scouts came back and said the land truly flowed with “milk and honey,” but the people were powerful and the cities large and well fortified.  Then Caleb “silenced the people” and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”  At this the other leaders, other than Joshua, complained that they couldn’t attack the Canaanites who were far too strong for them. They even began spreading false reports about the land itself, and said that it was occupied by giants, the Nephilim, who made them feel as small as grasshoppers.   That night all the people complained and wept aloud that they wished they had died in Egypt.  They wanted to appoint a new leader and return there.  When Joshua and Caleb warned them about rebelling against the Lord, and again repeated that they should not be afraid of the Canaanites and could move into this rich land, the whole assembly wanted to stone them.

As a result of this rebellion, and their grumbling, the Lord said that the Israelites would wander in the wilderness for 40 years, one year for every day they scouted the promised land, and furthermore, every person 20 years or older, those who had seen his miracles, like the parting of the Red Sea and the pillars of cloud and fire, would die in the wilderness.  The very thing the people feared that might result from trying to take the land would happen to them, and in contrast the children who the people feared would be taken as plunder would be who entered the land God had promised.  Only Caleb and Joshua were excepted, because they had remained faithful.

So, here’s my contemporary application:   In our early Life Advocates newsletters from the late 1980s, we stated as our purpose the transformation of our culture to value the sanctity of human life.  Practically speaking, our goal was to change the laws, beginning with a reversal of Roe v. Wade, so that pre-natal children would be given the same protection as born people have, but not only that, but through education and ministry, this transformation would be peaceful.  Over time, as people learned the truth about human life in the womb, attitudes and beliefs would change.  I believed that this change was attainable within my lifetime.  I don’t recall the exact year, (it would have been in the early 1990s) but, immediately prior to the announcement of the Casey Supreme Court decision, we had scheduled a press conference at Asheville City Hall to respond.  We didn’t know how the decision would go, so we had prepared two statements, one to celebrate the reversal of Roe, and the other to express our disappointment at the failure of the court to reverse it.  We were, as history shows, to be disappointed. After all these years, it is hard to believe we thought we were anywhere close, but the reality of our societal direction and the infection of death was much starker and more grim than we imagined.

The real opportunity for change came during the movement under the banner of Operation Rescue.  This amounted to nearly a decade when thousands of people across the country peacefully interposed their bodies between the likely victims of abortion and the professional killers.  A friend of mine was one of the leaders of Operation Rescue. I can’t verify this without doing a lot of research, but he said that more people were arrested to trying to save pre-natal children, than were arrested during the entire Civil Rights movement.  The principal of rescue, and usually its practice, unlike picketing, protesting, education, lobbying, etc, and even ministry to pregnant women, directly addressed the immediate situation of people about to be murdered.  I remember those days well. The showdown between life and death was in play. Christians and others were putting their lives and livelihoods on the line.  I remember Dr. James Dobson calling people to Atlanta, where Randal Terry was taking a stand. Momentum was building, and if the rescue moment continued, it would have in time inspired and compelled the transformation for which we had hoped.  

But it failed.  Because of my acquaintance with one of the leaders of Operation Rescue, I know some of the inside story of this failure. I won’t go into that right now.  In the public realm however, Christian leaders failed to support the rescue movement.  They either disagreed with “breaking the law” or they remained silent and uninvolved. Their motives, I can only guess at from this distance. Was it that they felt they could do more good not being in jail? Where they afraid? That’s how I felt, though I supported Rescue. Without the widespread support of the church, those people who actually risked arrest, fines, and jail, became discouraged, disillusioned, and demoralized. And no one emerged who was willing to become a life-long martyr.  Despite several people carrying the name of Rescue for some time, the Rescue Movement was effectively dead. At this point, the bombers and shooters moved in.  That is a whole different chapter that I will not go into now.  You can read my novel, Universal Man for further exploration of all this.

As for the biblical analogy: transforming our culture to hold to the sanctity of human life was the promised land.  Our own nation, the United States and western culture changed (the adjective of “changed,” not the verb), was the promised land.  We scouted the land, and the Christian leaders, most of them rebelled and grumbled, and then said that land wasn’t so great after all, and worse, that it was held by giants, political, financial, the places of prestige, and the town criers, the media.  They all wanted to stone (defame, undermine, dismiss, ignore) the few faithful ones who said we could occupy the land.

Our status therefore is, we are now wandering in the wilderness. Look what has happened since them.  Unthinkable terrorism, drug epidemics, the “legalization” of homosexual marriage, etc.  And more recently, the ongoing world-wide corona virus epidemic, the resulting economic suppression, and even now riots, burning buildings, and looting in cities everywhere. 

As far as I can see, the apparent leaders of the anti-abortion movement now have no coherent vision of what we should be as a nation and a culture, let alone how to achieve or reach for that vision.  There are sporadic, uncoordinated attempts to tinker around the edges of the law, with varying success. To expect an additional Trump nominee to change the “balance” of the Supreme so that a reversal of Roe is possible, is naïve.  (There always has been who we think is a reliable vote that suddenly evolves.  Take some of the strange opinions of Chief Justice Roberts, for example.

The most active front of the anti-abortion efforts now calls itself the Abortion Abolition Movement.  I am very familiar with its ideas and people who identify themselves this way.  Their idea, as best I understand it, is that we must call for a complete ban on abortion.  I have heard some of them express that mother’s who abort should be charged criminally for murder.  There seems to be an underlying belief that what we called the “pro-life” movement is evil and actually has prolonged the existence of legal abortion.  Another aspect is the belief that only through preaching the gospel will individuals and our society will change.  Few “abolitionists” seem to understand rescue.  They don’t have a developed picture of what our society would actually look like having abolished abortion, or what it would take practically and policy-wise to reach this goal. Without going into a detailed critique, I will say that they are partly right and party wrong about all of this.  The hardest part for me personally, is the attitude that somehow they have something new that’s never been tried before. The confusion and overly narrow perspective of their viewpoint is part of wandering in the wilderness.  As least they are still active and out there confronting abortion.

We all are, in fact, wandering lost in the wilderness, myself included.  All of us are compromised to one degree or another.  None of us possesses a full comprehension of the reality of abortion that includes the full spectrum of responses.  All of us have devised spiritual, emotional, and psychological barriers to allow us to live more or less normal lives that accommodate the killing and allow it to continue without being any more than mildly troubled. This is the result of long term exposure and relative inaction, at least in proportion to the true urgency of the immediate life and death situation.  I myself suffer from compassion burnout.  I’ve reached a point where, on an emotional level, I just don’t care anymore.

Many, in fact most, “pro-life” antiabortion people participate occasionally in an ineffective or partly effective campaign or project related to abortion.  Or they vote and think that fulfills their duty. Some pro-life preachers will deliver a sermon on the subject once a year.  Some pro-life preachers will not preach a whole sermon, but will mention the subject in passing once or twice a year.  Some pro-life churches immerse themselves in and feel called to concentrate their efforts on other needs, such as hunger or homelessness, while simply effectively ignoring the slaughter that takes place a few miles from where they meet.  Many pro-life people and churches were once active and now are not.  This is all part of wandering lost in the wilderness. 

Roe v. Wade dropped on us coming on to 47 years ago.  The abortion of children in the womb was “legalized” six years before that in North Carolina. By comparison, 40 years lost and wandering in a wilderness doesn’t seem so long.  My point is, if the Biblical story applies here at all, it will only be a completely new generation that enters the promised land where human life is held important and valuable at every stage.  I don’t think I will ever see it. We seem to be headed in the opposite direction.  In fact our wilderness may be much, much longer than 40 years.  Maybe another, related Bible story applies.  The Israelites were captive in Egypt for some 400 years.

So, what do we do?  The short answer is, I don’t know.  I also don’t know if we can draw an exact parallel between the Numbers narrative and our present circumstances, especially the epilogue.  When those men who are responsible for spreading a bad report about the promised land were struck down and died of a plague, all the surviving Israelites “mourned bitterly”, admitted they had sinned and attempted to enter the promised land.  But Moses said this now was disobeying the Lord’s command, and the inhabitants of the land attacked and beat them down.  In other words, it was too late to avoid the 40 years wandering in the wilderness.

A longer answer, then, is that we must endure whatever comes and be faithful when and to what we can in the areas of being present where children are being killed, of seeking to change the law and educating and reasoning with our neighbors, in creating powerful artistic expressions, and in serving women and men who face difficulties with pregnancy and raising children.  We also must admit that we are wandering and not pretend that our schemes and strategies will make much of a difference on the culture, or that they will significantly change the death count.  My prediction for the future is that true Christians will suffer persecution and be forced to endure hardships, and this is part of the purification process.*  How long or short this term of wandering will be, I have no idea.  Whatever happens in this coming election and afterwards, the results will be alarming. 

-Meredith Eugene Hunt

 

*While I can’t say I know exactly what to do as an individual, I have some ideas of what could and should happen.  I didn’t want this commentary to be about my novel, but I did put these ideas in its story. Since nobody is really reading it, it doesn’t matter if I give spoilers.  The main title, Universal Man, is a statement that I wrote the main character, who, though flawed as any human being is, represents the Church.  He wanders for a time in the wilderness of the North Cascade Mountains as he hides from the government in power that is hunting for him.  The novel depicts these ideas better than they can be explained, because they are an example (admittedly fictional) of someone applying them in life, rather than a bare treatise.  This present essay, the novel, my short stories, and numerous articles written over the years are about all I have to say.  Sure, I could continue to offer rational, creative critiques of both current and past pro-life projects and pro-abortion rhetoric, but at this point in history, it is only so much spinning of words.

 

 

The World & the Devil's Hatred

Obviously, this photo is not for everyone to see, but it represents a sample of the kind of opposition we face just almost every Saturday at Planned Parenthood.  This person is standing on PP property, imposing himself between Edie and women going inside for abortion.  He dances around to try to distract and confuse Edie who is gently speaking on our amplifier.  We also have to be wary of police who have written tickets to some of the new people who aren’t as careful as we are with their use of sound amplification.  This photo was made on 1/11/20.