Morality
We Must Not Give Up the Fight for Life
It’s easy to be discouraged over the fight against abortion in America. Since our nation made it legal on January 22, 1973, some fifty million Americans have died on the altar of sexual liberation.
That’s a horrific number–and after a decade of a declining abortion rate, the most recent statistics show that the trend is ticking up. We are cruelly killing, in the name of choice, 1.2 million of the most vulnerable among us.
Many of you–like our family–have prayed, participated in marches for life, or gotten involved in crisis counseling and adoption ministries. Yet, after almost forty years, we have very little to show for it. I feel like those who fought against the evil of slavery for many decades, and didn’t see a change.
But then something happened in the 1860s, and the slaves were set free.
In 2011, is there hope on the horizon for ending the abortion holocaust?
When I was in our nation’s capital a week ago, I met with some leaders that are on the forefront of the abortion fight. One of them participated in 24/7 prayer near the Supreme Court for months leading up to the 2008 election. They, like me, were believing that a John McCain election could possibly tip the balance of our highest court in the direction of reversing Roe. vs. Wade.
They were agonizingly disappointed when Barack Obama was elected president. He brought into office the most blatantly pro-abortion Administration that the United States has ever seen.
The prayer warriors were dejected.
Had God not heard their prayers?
It’s easy for all of us to be dejected–especially if you live on the Left Coast (west coast). California is the number one abortion-friendly state in the nation and Washington is number two. Oregon clocks in at number six and Hawaii is number four. It’s very sobering to look at the chart of where states rank in their support of abortion. I encourage you to open this page, find your state, and use it in your prayers. On the chart, “A” is bad (pro-abortion) and “F” is good (pro-life).
But on to the good news.
Then a year went by and an interesting poll came out. At the end of 2009, the national consensus on abortion had changed seven percentage points–across all demographic lines. For the first time in history, more than fifty percent of Americans believed that abortion was morally wrong.
Their prayers had not been in vain. They hadn’t influenced the election, but God had used them to change the hearts of millions of Americans.
My pro-life friends now tell me that victory in the abortion holocaust could be on the horizon. More people are praying than ever before. The tide has changed on the issue. Most Americans now see that we must go back to a culture of life in this nation.
That’s why I marched in Olympia, Washington this morning in our state’s pro-life event. There were nearly 10,000 people. It’s also why hundreds of thousands will march this week in Washington, D.C. as well–as I did with my family back in the 1980s. Just like the anti-slavery movements of the 19th century, we must have the determination and faith to never quit fighting for truth and the unborn.
I don’t know if it will take another Civil War to get this issue right (as it did slavery), but if it does, it will be worth it. On the other hand, because American opinions are changing, it might only take one more election and then one more appointment of a Supreme Court justice.
That’s how close we are to victory.
My dedicated friends believe that by 2013, that victory could be achieved.
We must not give up the fight for life.
This year a new book on the evil of abortion called Unplanned will hit the book shelves of America. It’s written by former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson and explains her conversion from pro-choice activist to pro-life advocate as she watched an abortion being performed live on an ultrasound.
Here’s the chilling scene in the book that changed Abby’s life. It’s one of the most powerful statements for life that I have ever read:
“At first, the baby didn’t seem aware of the cannula (the suction tube that will eventually rip the bay to pieces). It gently probed the baby’s side, and for a quick second I felt relief. Of course, I thought. The fetus doesn’t feel pain. I had reassured countless women of this as I’d been taught by Planned Parenthood. The fetal tissue feels nothing as it is removed. Get a grip, Abby. This is a simple, quick medical procedure. My head was working hard to control my responses, but I couldn’t shake an inner disquiet that was quickly mounting to horror as I watched the screen.”
“The next movement was the sudden jerk of a tiny foot as the baby started kicking, as if it were trying to move away from the probing invader. As the cannula pressed its side, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away. It seemed clear to me that it could feel the cannula, and it did not like what it was feeling. And then the doctor’s voice broke through, startling me.”
“’Beam me up, Scotty,’ he said lightheartedly to the nurse. He was telling her to turn on the suction — in an abortion the suction isn’t turned on until the doctor feels he has the cannula in exactly the right place.”
“I had a sudden urge to yell, “Stop!” To shake the woman and say, ‘Look at what is happening to your baby! Wake up! Hurry! Stop them!'”
“But even as I thought those words, I looked at my own hand holding the probe. I was one of “them” performing this act. My eyes shot back to the screen again. The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor, and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest moment the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone. And the uterus was empty. Totally empty.”
One book reviewer made these observations about the liiterary power of Unplanned:
“If you are able, I encourage you to read the whole thing. I have to confess to you that I almost was not. The horror that Johnson describes is almost unfathomable, accentuated by the cruelty and insensitivity of the conscienceless monsters cracking jokes as they watched the death of a tiny human unfold live before them.”
“Perversely, the most shocking aspect of this particular story is its mundanity. It occurs every single day in the United States, over three thousand times a day, and has for almost four decades. The only thing that sets this particular abortion apart is that a person possessed of a conscience and some measure of writing skill happened to be present and witness it on ultrasound. Every day, including today, probably several dozen times during the course of the time it takes you to read this article, this horror is repeated in America and no one is present who cares to chronicle it in a book about the way it changed their life. Tens of millions of times since 1973 this has occurred in this country under the color and protection of law.”
“The only way to ensure justice in a society is for the law to recognize that all humans are humans, and therefore entitled to equal protection under the law. Whenever the law takes the position that certain humans (be it slaves or those physically located within a womb) are not in fact humans at all, it is certain that moral outrages will follow, and that other moral outrages will be perpetrated to protect the unjust status quo, and that sooner or later, the conscience of America, however long dormant, will collide with those moral outrages.”
“It is at these times we remember why it is that we participate in this fight even though it wears on us from day to day; why it is that we continue to watch news shows that infuriate us, donate money to candidates that would otherwise be put towards our own retirements, and take time away from our families to pound the pavements, man the phone banks, and get out the word. This is why we ”fight,” if it is still permissible to use such terms to describe battles fought with the ballot box. And it is also why we reject the empty calls for “truce” and silence from those who have hardened their heart to the ugliness, for we know that there can be no truce with unrepentant evil – there can only be victory or defeat. And for the sake of the country we love, we refuse to accept defeat.”
To these words of courage and outrage, I heartily say AMEN.
Please pray that Abby Johnson’s Unplanned will convince more Americans to alter their view on abortion. Pray that mothers and fathers who killed their own children will become broken and repentant; Pray that the churches of America will not become complacent or silent about the number one moral issue of the 20th and 21st centuries.
I believe that victory is at hand in the abortion battle.
We must not give up the fight for life.
A Sad Day for Freedom From Sin
December 18, 2010 was a sad day for the cause of liberty. The United States Senate voted 65-31 to rescind the seventeen-year “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy in the American forces. On the heels of a 250-175 vote in the House of Representatives, largely along party lines, homosexuality is now “free” to openly flourish in the barracks or foxhole.
By this infamous vote, The United States government now openly condones and encourages homosexual behavior among our fighting men and women. The last bastion of discipline and moral order in the United States has been breached, not by an invading army, but by a destructive Lame Duck Congress.
Maybe the pen is mightier than the sword.
With the stroke of President Obama signing this grievous bill, the military, as we have known it for two hundred and thirty-four years, will be crippled.
This is a sad day for real liberty–which is freedom from sin.
We’ll get to the true definition of freedom in a moment, but first the disturbing facts about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) rescission.
Liberal Democrats, many of whom lost in the Nov 2 election, were the greatest culprits in this homosexualization of the armed forces. Both of my Senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, voted for the repeal. But eight Republicans also joined them in the tragic vote: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, George Voinovich of Ohio, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, John Ensign of Nevada, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine.
As Family Research Research Council points out, our fighters were treated like pawns by those meant to support and defend them. (Read their excellent article here.) Here’s how Gary Randall of the Faith & Freedom Network described the tragedy:
“Congress has said ‘yes’ to open homosexuality in the military. Over the loud and passionate pleas from Senator John McCain, and concerns expressed by military leaders who serve in combat, the Senate caved to homosexual activists, joined President Obama in his attempt to appease the activists and retain their vote, and said yes to a social experiment that will have both ‘intended’ and ‘unintended’ consequences.”
“The homosexual victory was aided by a number of Republicans. McCain was not one of them. He said of our fighting men and women, ‘They will do what is ask of them, but don’t think there won’t be consequences.'”
“You have witnessed another step down a slippery moral decline. And there will be consequences.
The Alliance Defense Fund issued a statement following the vote saying, ‘The Senate’s cave-in to pressure from activists to impose homosexual behavior on our military will place troops’ religious liberties in unprecedented jeopardy.’ They say the first casualty will likely be the religious freedom of chaplains.”
This is the “great freedom” that Congress gave us on December 18.
Incredible.
Abraham Lincoln, a founder and champion of the modern-day Republican Party, would also be appalled. One of his most famous quotes, which has been a clarion principle of our Christian-based republic for the past 150 years is this:
“No man has a right to do wrong.”
Let that truth sink into you deeply. It will change your view of how to define “civil” rights.
Of course, the liberal media doesn’t share Lincoln’s view. Led by secular cheerleaders such as the New York Times and the Associated Press, numerous papers, blogs, and e-letters hailed the the news of the defeat of DADT as a great triumph for civil rights. Quoting Senator Joe Liebermann, a staunch supporter of doing away with the ban on homosexual behavior,” the gleeful networks proclaimed:
“We righted a wrong. Today we’ve done justice.”
The New York Times openly stated their end-game purpose, that “integrating openly gay troops within the military will lead to greater acceptance in the civilian world.”
The progressives want a secular, not a godly America.
Barack Obama went even further when he said, “It’s time to close this chapter in our history. It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed.”
Sounds good–but it’s nonsense. You don’t choose race or gender, and religion and creeds should be protected areas of conscience.
Not homosexuality. For all of history, and in all religions, homosexual behavior has been viewed as a perversion of the normal sexual relationship with graphic and destructive consequences. It’s just as hurtful as incest, fornication, adultery, pedophilia, and bestiality.
All of these sexual perversions distort God’s moral standards and hurt human beings. They should be discouraged by any just and compassionate society that really cares for its people
And no sexual deviancy should be tolerated when you’re fighting for your country.
We’ve got it backwards–and Congress just forced it on the military.
Isaiah is considered Israel’s greatest prophet, and his book is the second longest in the Bible next to the Psalms. In chapter five, Isaiah goes to great lengths to discuss how God blessed and planted the ancient Hebrew nation in good moral and spiritual soil. But over time, they rejected his laws and principles. “What more could I have done?” agonizes the heart of God over a nation that turned away from his standards of right and wrong (Isaiah 5:4).
Nothing, really.
They just didn’t listen.
Here is the end result that Isaiah describes for those who pervert God’s justice: “Destruction is certain for those who say that evil is good and good is evil; that dark is light and light is dark…Destruction is certain for those who think they are wise and consider themselves to be clever…Their roots will rot and their flowers wither, for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty. They have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 5:20-24).
Israel was severely judged when it turned God’s standards of right and wrong or its head. Do you think it will be any different for us?
I don’t think so.
Wrong was made right through Saturday’s vote. Vast injustice was perpetrated on the US military–even against the wishes of those who fight in close quarters on the front lines (58% of Marines are strongly opposed to changing the policy.)
But the politicians don’t care for them or this country. They are committed to the secularization of America via social experimentation i.e. trashing all aspects of Judeo-Christian standards.
One of the things we learn from this vote and the cultural battle in which we are engaged is that there are two different visions of “freedom” that are being fought for in America today. These two contrasting philosophies go back to the two beings behind them–God on the side of righteousness, and Satan on the side of darkness.
Satan’s concept of liberty is pretty simple. He wants people to be “free from God and his standards.” Satan Himself rebelled against God’s created order and has been encouraging other moral beings to reject God’s ways ever since. Through the worldview of secularism, here’s how Satan markets his deceptive brand of “freedom:”
- Begin by questioning the rightness or wrongness of sexual choices. Make it a matter of “personal preferences” or “lifestyle choices.” All sin begins when we follow Satan’s lead in setting ourselves up as “God” in our moral choices.
- Draw people into immorality in all its forms. Start with the warm-ups of pornography and mental fantasy, then encourage them to “experiment” for themselves with sex outside of marriage and in whatever form or with whatever partners “they” desire.
- Convince them through darkening their minds that none of these actions are immoral. They’re just choices that all human beings are allowed to make.
- Once trapped in immorality, the heart of the Satanic strategy manifests itself. Jesus said that Satan’s clear purpose is “to kill and destroy” (John 10:10). All forms of immorality, especially the unnaturalness of homosexuality, destroys human dignity, proper relationships, family, health, relationship with God, and ultimately leads to eternal destruction.
- But that’s not all. Satan’s next step is to ridicule those who are moral and adhering to God’s standards. Make them look like the prudes and the bigots.
- Finally, the goal is to persecute the godly, beginning with “hate speech” and even imprisonment.
Notice Gary Randall’s warning of the consequences of repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in the US military: “The first casualty will likely be the religious freedom of chaplains.”
Silence Christian chaplains. Then Christians in general. Or even imprison them for speaking out against homosexuality.
Satan’s “freedom from God” destroys those who do it and those who resist it.
Doesn’t sound like liberty to me.
It’s not.
Real freedom, the one that America was founded on, was not freedom from God and his wise standards for living. It’s freedom to live for God.
Freedom is not doing what you want; It’s having the wisdom and power to do what you ought.
In the realm of sexuality it’s being smart and humble enough to do things the way God designed them, for our good, others’ good, and for his honor and glory. It means:
- Staying away from pornography which corrupts the mind.
- Not sleeping with your boy friend, girlfriend or fiance before marrying them.
- Not having sex with a close relative.
- Not having same gender sex with anyone.
- Marrying God’s choice from the opposite sex–a conjugal joining in relationship which is both natural, beautiful, and produces children (to read a great new paper on marriage published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, click here.)
- Being faithful to the one you marry for a lifetime.
- Having children in God’s way and time and raising them in the fear and love of God.
This is true sexual freedom because it is freedom from destructive self autonomy and sin.
Jesus said truly that “Everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is a part of the family forever. So is the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34-36).
True freedom is freedom from sin, not from God.
By rescinding the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, our Congressional leaders are doing nothing less than encouraging homosexuals to stay in their sin, bringing tension and sexual lust into the intimate quarters of our fighting forces, and promoting the armed forces social destruction.
On December 18 we lost an important battle. But we must continue to fight because we love God and we love people. Let’s pray that this action will be overturned in the 112th Congress because it breaks the bond of trust that must exist between the military and those who oversee the armed forces in the Pentagon and Congress.
Let’s ask the new House in January to defund the repeal of DADT. Then we will work to get fresh voices in the Senate and move to reinstate the law.
A pillar of America’s exceptional past is freedom from sin through Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray during this Christmas season that God’s Son will lead us back to true liberty.
Wake Up Left Coast!
I recently had lunch with a Washington State businessman who’s run a successful company for nearly forty years. He has fought many battles over those decades with county inspectors, state regulators, and cultural trends. He’s had his share of family problems, including some dark days when one of his children was far from God.
But I’ve always known him to persevere. He wants to make a difference in our world and is one of the greatest givers to God’s work that I’ve ever known. He’s a fighter, a scrapper, a man of his word that does not give in easy.
So I was surprised during the meal when he looked me in the eye and said that he was considering moving his entire family to another state for their spiritual and economic health.
He wants to get off the Left Coast.
I’m beginning to understand what he means.
Left Coast is a political term implying that the west coast of the United States is politically left-wing. This means the population is more secular and thus hostile to Judeo-Christian values. The implication is that the states of California, Oregon, and Washington (particularly, the coastal counties and cities within those states) vote predictably for the Democratic Party, or that the people who live there have a generally more liberal attitude than the rest of the country. The phrase plays on the fact that the west coast of the US is found on the left of the contiguous 48 states when looking at a map.
I would include the state of Hawaii as a part of the Left Coast. They have become another bastion of liberalism, including the 2010 election of Neil Abercrombie (D) as governor with a 58% vote and the defeat of many conservative Christian candidates around the state.
In the 2010 elections, many secular-liberal politicians were swept away in most parts of the country. Conservative Republicans picked up over sixty seats in the US House, but few of these were on the Left Coast. The governors map changed radically in the center, south, and east of the nation where conservatives won the states of New Mexico, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even Maine. Overall, the Republicans picked up twelve governorships to the Democrats two (California and Connecticut)
If you need a visual, imagine a significant amount of “red” being added to the 2008 map that is shown above–but not on the Left Coast. In governor’s races, Jerry Brown won by twelve points in California and John Kitzhaber eked out a one point victory in Oregon. Washington’s governors race will take place in 2012, but liberal Democrats have controlled all aspects of Olympia for twenty years.
What does that matter, you ask? Well the secular-liberal stranglehold on the Left Coast brings some serious consequences.
Taxes. Left Coast states produce big spending governments that overtax and overburden their people. Hawaii is the number one taxed state (per capita) at $3,050 per person per year. California is number nine at $2391 and Washington is number thirteen at $2238. Washingtonians had the good sense to reject an income tax proposition this fall, but the Evergreen State’s gas and sales taxes are among the highest in the nation.
Jobs: Whereas states like Texas keep churning out jobs due to its conservative policies, Left Coast States are in the lower half of job growth due to their anti-business climates. Washington has an unemployment rate of 9.0 percent though it sports some of the great entrepreneurial companies in the nation (Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon.com etc.) Boeing has moved its headquarters to Chicago due to the bad business climate. Oregon has a 10.6 percent unemployment rate which ranks it 8th in the nation.
But California, which just re-elected Governor Jerry Brown has a whopping 12.4 percent unemployment rate, and for the first time in fifty years, more people and businesses are leaving California than arriving. California may face default this coming year due to a mind-boggling 500 billion dollars in unfunded pensions. That liability around its neck won’t create many jobs.
Morality:It’s hard to place a rank on these categories, but it’s beyond question that the sexual mores of San Francisco and Seattle have made them a hot-bed of immorality and the push for gay marriage–which would totally unravel the moral fabric of America. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is being challenged in California (of all states), and two of the three states in the nation that allows its people to kill themselves with the help of doctors (physician assisted suicide) are Oregon and Washington. The third is Montana–which is almost a bed-room community to the Left Coast.
This list of the consequences of secular-liberalism could go on–but I think you get the point. The liberal worldview does not create prosperity or strong families. It leads down a road to tyranny, poverty, in-ability to economically compete, and moral confusion.
So, with much of the nation in 2010 turning back to Judeo-Christian principles and conservative applications in government, why is the Left Coast still stuck in the grip of liberalism?
That’s the million dollar question–and I don’t profess to have the answer. I do have some hunches that might be contributing factors.
First, the independent spirit of the West fosters a tendency to reject God and his principles for living. The cowboy mentality can easily morph into a spirit of rebellion that displays itself in humanistic laws and sexual dysfunction. On the Left Coast, I believe that demonic powers have been given a stronghold that impacts the lives of our people and political leaders (Ephesians 6:12).
I remember flying out of the Soviet Union in the 1980s while it was under communist oppression. On one flight, the experience of leaving “tyranny” and heading into “freedom” caused spontaneous applause on the aircraft! You could “feel” the leaving behind of demonic dominions and traveling into “freer space.” It was a tangible experience, undoubtedly related to the reality of spiritual warfare.
Many people say the same thing about the Left Coast. They feel a heaviness and discouragement here that is not felt in other parts of the nation. It’s not just the clouds (in Washington). The peoples of the Left Coast have attracted the presence of demonic principalities that are affecting this region of the country.
Second, the Christian foundations on the west coast are much weaker than any area in America. Many of the Left Coast states are later entries to the Union. California was 31, Oregon 33, Washington 42, and Hawaii 50. We missed most of the spiritual awakenings in our history; We didn’t have Pilgrims or Puritans to lay our social foundations; Our governing documents don’t contain phrases and concepts that pointed to God’s sovereignty and his natural laws; We were the “younger spoiled kids” of the Republic who did not form our corporate character at Valley Forge or Gettysburg.
Thus, our foundations are not as rooted to the rock of Christ as in others states. We were planted on wild, slippery soil, and our roots don’t go as deeply into the truth of God’s Word.
Third, there is the reality that actions have consequences. For example, Washington is the only state in the nation that legalized abortion via a vote of the people before Roe v. Wade in 1973. Activist judges didn’t send our innocent babies to their deaths. We the people, voted their demise at the hands of abortionists–the only state to do so.
That was a horrendous decision that opened us up to the presence of evil and judgment of God. In many societal realms, are we simply reaping what we sowed? Only God knows, but there is certainly room for state-wide repentance on this and other moral issues.
But there’s another interesting theory that I learned from a respected scholar.
Dr. Gregory Boyd points out in his insightful book God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, that Satanic power and presence have been historically associated with raging, chaotic waters–in particular, the raging seas–especially oceans.
Boyd says, “The authors of the Old Testament shared significant elements of the common Near Eastern perspective that the earth was part of a cosmic war zone. The chaotic waters and sea monsters were demonic creatures against whom God had to fight…The Israelites believed the earth rested upon waters, but that Yahweh pushed back the waters to make dry land appear. ..Something about the cosmic environment of the earth–the waters–was, and still is, hostile toward God and humanity.”
It’s a much bigger discussion (three chapters in his book), but Boyd says that in the Old Testament, water was either a symbol of demonic chaos, or even a place of demonic habitation.
In the New Testament, when Jesus cast out a legion of spirits from a man, the demons specifically asked to not be sent to the “waterless places” but rather into some pigs, who stormed down the bank and were drowned in the water (Luke 11:24-NASB). When the Book of Revelation describes the new heaven and earth, it specifically says “and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1). The only water mentioned is the River of Life whose trees bring healing to the nations (Revelation 22:1,2).
So, in the Bible, large amounts of raging waters are associated with evil. Fertile land is associated with blessing and good.
What’s the point? It’s interesting to me that the regions of our nation near the large raging waters (the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the Great Lakes region) appear most susceptible to liberal influences. The states that are inland–closer to the soil–tend to be more conservative.
And in 2010, the only region that resisted the conservative tide was the Left Coast. Is this just coincidence, or is there something even in our geography that we don’t fully understand?
Regardless of the true reasons for our troubles, what should we do about the secular-liberal stronghold of the Left Coast? Should we all pack our bags and leave for inland havens? Should we follow my businessman friend to greener pastures elsewhere?
God may lead some to go, but many of us must stay and fight for freedom and God’s blessings:
- We must participate in an empowered prayer movement that will bind the principalities and powers that are deceiving and impacting the Left Coast.
- We must mobilize the Church to care for, educate, and encourage our fellow citizens to embrace a new heritage in God.
- We must get involved in the political process, and work for good candidates who can help us change our laws and culture. Reformation is one of the gifts of God. It can come to the peoples of the western states.
Gregory Boyd comes to the same conclusion: “All who name the name of the Lord are called to identify and resist, in the power of God, the structural forces of evil that work to thwart God’s plan for the earth…When we fight, we do not do so in our own power, but God Himself reenacts his primal victory over these destructive forces through us.”
So let’s get to work.
I’m not going anywhere.
Our most important response is to reject discouragment and not give up. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He can bring it in our individual lives. He can also “wake up” the Left Coast with his grace and power.
Send this article to your friends on the Left Coast. Ask them to pray and act.
Let’s make the Left Coast the “Righteous Coast” of the United States of America.