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.
