I have been struggling with last week’s post just a little. It is very likely that some of you have had an abortion. And, for what it’s worth, I include both fathers and mothers here. It was not my intention to accuse you or hurt you.

So……..what if I had an abortion decades ago? What does that mean for me today? What lies ahead?

As a Christian, I believe in eternity past and eternity future…..that is……paradise. These two eternities are separated by a tiny sliver of time that we call our life. Our life seems very important and very big from where we stand today. But……if you look at the big picture……..our life is actually tiny. It is only important to the extent that we have one critical decision to make. To accept God…….or deny him. That is the only important decision because it is the only decision that we will ever make that has eternal consequences. I suspect that much of what happens to us during our life happens to prepare us for that decision.

So…….what in the world does this have to do with abortion?

Your child existed from the instant of conception………and probably long before conception. Your child is in paradise right now…….and you will meet her after your brief time in this world. What will that meeting be like?

First off, let me deal with what it will not be.

She will not walk up with tears in her eyes and say, “how could you have done that to me!”

What will happen is this:

She will run to you with open arms and shout “Mommy…Daddy, I’ve been waiting for you!” There will be a group hug, tears, laughter…….and then eternity spent at peace in the one place that you were created for.

So…….if you look at the big picture…….the eternal picture, your abortion changes the outcome very little. The only rub here is not whether your child will enjoy paradise, that is a given…….it is whether you will enjoy it with her.

And this all hinges on that one critical decision…….to accept or deny God.

I just watched the movie “Unplanned”. This is not an uplifting “feel good” movie……no matter which side of the debate you fall on. I think that we can all agree that it is a “hit piece” aimed at Planned Parenthood. There is some bias in it……the Christians are kind and gentle and the management at Planned Parenthood range from callous to evil. To me, those are not the key issues.

For me, the key issue is………is it true?

The story revolves around a PP manager who leaves the company and becomes pro-life. I think that it is an accurate portrayal of her struggle. But, that is not the heart of the film. It includes graphic scenes of a complication that occurred during an abortion. But, that is not the heart of the film……complications occur in any medical facility. There are people portrayed as kind and people portrayed as evil……just like everywhere. That also is not the heart of the film.

The heart of the film is a 30 second video clip that shows an ultrasound of an early first trimester fetus being sucked into a cannula. You can see the baby flinch just before the end. I was a physician by trade for almost 40 years. There have been 60 million abortions in the U.S. And yet, I had never seen a video like this.

This portrayal of the fact of what an abortion is…….is the heart of this film. It is shocking. It is disturbing. It is profoundly sad.

And it is true.

Pro choice advocates do not want this truth to circulate. That is why it took 60 million abortions and 40 years before a video clip like this one was made public. Pro choice advocates would prefer to conduct this conversation on the grounds of civil rights.

But hiding this truth is dishonest.

If you are pro-life, you need to see this heartbreaking movie.

If you really don’t care one way or the other you need to see this movie to educate yourself.

If you are pro-choice, you probably won’t watch it. But, ask yourself why? If the truth disturbs your beliefs…….if the truth disturbs your desires…….which do you discard? In a word, if you choose not to watch this movie…….you are discarding the truth in order to defend your desires. This calls for courage, self examination, and honesty.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”

Jeremiah, NIV

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.”

David, NIV

My prayer is that the women who are considering abortion will choose to let their babies live…….that abortion clinics will become irrelevant money losing anachronisms.

If you would like to view the video clip, here is a link to the you tube page.

Please understand…….this is graphic, disturbing, and sad.

What is evil and why is it important?

We live in a world where we are told every day that we must be tolerant. We are told that the range of human behavior is very broad and that we should accept and embrace people, ideas, and acts that are different from us. For the most part this is good counsel. We should not reject an idea or person simply because they are different. But, I think that we have become victims of “tolerance creep”. The idea of tolerance has spread to mean that we should tolerate just about everything. And this is wrong.

Tolerance in itself is neither good nor bad. It all depends on just exactly what we are tolerating. Tolerating evil is not good. We tolerated Hitler in the 30’s and got WW 2 for our mistake. The people at NAMBLA say that we should tolerate adult men sexually abusing boys. This type of tolerance is misguided.

We should not tolerate evil. But, to do this we must be able to accurately identify evil. This is no small task. Every day someone gets on our TV, our cellphone, our computer and tells us that someone or some idea is evil. Why…….because THEY don’t like it. The sad truth is that there are thousands of lists of evils floating around. Some of these lists are good and some are not. Paradoxically, some of the lists of evil being sold to us are so bad that you could argue that the list itself is evil.

How do we navigate this minefield? If our list of evils is too short, we risk being recruited into somebody else’s evil. If our list of evils is too long, we become angry and judgmental……and we alienate those around us.

We can make up our own list……..but, unfortunately, we are basically dishonest……..every last one of us. The sad truth is that anything that we really want to do is going to be absent from OUR list of evils. Our list then becomes nothing more than a tool for beating up the other guy. One guideline that I can offer……..if you are exploring a list of evils and it doesn’t include something that tempts you, then you are either a saint or the list is suspect.

Or…..we can adopt somebody else’s list. This calls for discernment. The most widely sold lists in American culture come from our political parties and the media talking heads that speak for them. I distrust these lists from both the right and the left because they are typically being promoted by someone with a political agenda (Hannity, Acosta, etc.).

I have tried out many lists in my life. My home grown lists have been failures. So, I have looked around. I have come to the conclusion that the most widely accepted and reliable list of good and evil available today is the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the most reliable moral code available to us. It offers the most comprehensive understanding of good and evil available to us today.

Obviously, this is a huge document. Nevertheless, I recommend reading it cover to cover. Check out a smart phone app like “bible in a year”. Meanwhile, to get you started, here is the “Cliff notes” version:

Love God
Love your neighbor
Don’t lie
Don’t steal
Don’t murder
Honor your parents
Sex is for husbands and wives
Don’t covet
Rest on Sunday

God, NIV (abridged)

Master this list and you are well on your way to living a good life and escaping evil.

FWIW………mastering this list…….is a lifetime undertaking.

I try to boil things down to basics. What is the basis, the ultimate foundation of Christianity? To put it another way. What is the single stone that everything else is built on?

There is the physical world…..and there is the non-physical world…….the spiritual world. The physical world is easy. We can reach out and touch it. We can measure it. We can manipulate it (for better or worse). The spiritual world is tougher. Most of us believe that there is something beyond the physical……though we vary widely in the details. But, a growing number of us belief that there is no spiritual world at all…….you die and you’re dirt. The difficulty is the point at which the physical world and the spiritual world intersect. It is really important that we get this right. Our decision to accept the spiritual world or reject it…….or, worst of all……ignore it altogether, will have consequences that will extend far beyond our brief 80 years.

What exactly is at the intersection of the physical world and the spiritual world?

Christianity teaches that at the intersection of these worlds is Jesus…….a being who is fully human (physical) and fully God (spiritual). This is pretty radical. Obviously, this changes everything. What is it that proves that Christ is both man and God? There is solid evidence that Christ lived. There are historical accounts of his crucifixion. I think that the vast majority of people, both Christians and skeptics, can agree on that. We accept that Christ was a man……that he operated in the physical realm. But, is he God? That’s where we get into trouble.

So…… the crux of it all is the resurrection.

This clearly crosses the line from the physical world to the spiritual world. In the physical world, the resurrection simply is not possible. The resurrection proves that Jesus operates in both the physical world and the spiritual world. More importantly, the resurrection gives Jesus ultimate authority. In a word, it means that we have to take what he says seriously. And what he says is the basis of Christianity……love God and love your neighbor.

The resurrection either happened……..or it didn’t. There is no middle ground. Either there is a spiritual realm as Jesus said……or there isn’t. And we have to pick a side…….ignoring the question is to deny the spiritual realm by default. The consequences for you……and for me…..are extreme. We have to get this binary choice right. And the simple fact is that most of us don’t take this critical decision seriously. We spend more time working on our “play list” than on this foundational question.

The resurrection happened. It is a fact…….and it establishes the divinity of Jesus.

Hundreds of people witnessed Christ after the resurrection. They talked to him, touched him, ate with him.

11 ordinary practical working men, men who were there, died gruesome deaths rather than deny the resurrection.

There are multiple texts that support it.

The primary reason for denying the resurrection today is that we don’t want to deal with a supernatural God who tells us what we can and cannot do. A human boss is bad enough; but……for many of us, a divine supernatural boss is intolerable.

So there it is.

There is solid testimony that the resurrection happened.
The resurrection proves that Jesus is God.
When Jesus speaks, God speaks.

We need to pay close attention, because what Jesus tells us to do is far more important than what we want to do.

Fortunately, what he tells us to do is easy.

Love God and Love your fellow man.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light .”

Jesus, NIV