“Our once great western Christian civilization is dying. If this matters to followers of Jesus Christ, then we must set aside our denominational differences and work together to strengthen the things that remain and reclaim what has been lost. Evangelicals and Catholics must stand together to re-establish that former Christian culture and moral consensus. We have the numbers and the organization but the question is this: Do we have the will to win this present spiritual battle for Jesus Christ against secularism? Will we prayerfully and cooperatively work toward a new Christian spiritual revival ― or will we choose to hunker down in our churches and denominationalisms and watch everything sink into the spiritual and moral abyss of a New Dark Age?” - Mark Davis Pickup

Thursday, June 30, 2022

BUILDING A POST-ROE AMERICA

 



I never thought I would live to see the day Roe v Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. It seemed that the terrible and aberrant decision of 1973 was so entrenched that It could not be rooted out like an ugly noxious weed. Roe paved the way for a deadly 50-year holocaust of killing the youngest members of the human family—in unfathomable numbers. Who can get their head around 63,000,000 children slaughtered in utero? On 24 June 2022 it happened! Roe v Wade was aborted by the Supreme Court and I’m still here! What a remarkable life-affirming day it was for America! 

 

The 5 courageous Justices who turned the course of American history were Justices Samuel A Alito Jr., Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas. They righted a terrible judicial wrong that deeply compromised the character of the greatest nation on earth for close to 50 years. They knew they would set off a firestorm of outraged shrill howlings by abortion supporters, a biased media in their favour and liberal politicians. The three remaining justices on the Supreme Court cried that the sky is falling! They warned that now Roe v Wade is overturned, terrible things will follow: What will the magnificent five overthrow next? They don’t succumb to the usual protests, threats or intimidation tactics of the left!

 

Actually, now that Roe is in the trash bin of history, a new and brighter tomorrow awaits. My pro-life American neighbours can take new opportunities to cultivate a culture of love and inclusion for all human life, from womb to tomb, and in every stage and state between those two points.

 

Embrace fully the concept of universal human rights, not selective rights that exclude the smallest and most vulnerable members of the human family: Unborn children, even those who are unwanted. Reach out to your adversaries who think abortion is a human right. Reach across the divide with a spirit of reconciliation to rebuild American unity that tolerates opposing views. Build bridges around the walls. 

 

Work to unite fellow Americans as fellow Americans first—people who can disagree but not be disagreeable. Strive toward a national ethos that sees the natural dignity in each other. Reach across bitter divisions with a hand of friendship meant to bring people together for the sake of America. Promote a unity of people who are more devoted to the American flag and what it stands for than personal agendas. 

 

Understand that abortion advocates are white-hot with anger and your overtures may be rebuffed or met with bitter vitriol. Do not respond in kind. Invite civil dialogue and peaceful conversations that do not end in shouting or threats. Be patient with them to understand that every life matters, that human rights begin when human life begins, and that we have a moral responsibility to each other. To paraphrase 17th-century poet and divine John Donne, no one is an island entire unto themselves, every person is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. 

 

Help those who espouse abortion as a way to solve problems to change their minds and embrace the beautiful ideal that America is a place where people are interdependent more than independent. Help them understand that inclusive words like we, us, and together are better than me, my, mine; perhaps they will come to see that community and family are more important than self and self-interest. Words matter. An authentic community is diametrically opposed to autonomy. I have been repeating this across North America, like a broken record, for more than 20 years. 

 

I believe with all my heart that it is within the greater connection of community that people can rise to their fullest potential. I believe that human purpose loses its meaning outside the context of a commitment to those around us and the common good. 

 

In recent days, since Roe v Wade’s collapse, I have been attacked online for celebrating its demise. Someone on Twitter sent me a tweet saying: 

 

“…When babies you forced to come into this world are actually living humans, you will turn your back on them and call them socialist freeloaders. Your (sic) a twisted sick religious creep. You would have made a great abortion!” 

 

Yes, I’m sure others think I would have made a great abortion. In 1952 when my mother was carrying me, if there would have been a way to identify that her son would develop aggressive multiple sclerosis, that he would be forced onto disability pension at the age of 38 and be a burden on the state (what the Nazis called a useless eater) I suspect some doctor would have suggested my mother abort me.  

 

Babies are not forced to be born, Mr. Tweet. it’s the most natural thing in the world. They don’t become living humans, they already are humans, beginning 9 months before their birth.  Have you ever noticed, Mr. T, that pregnant women who want their babies know the child is a living human? It’s only when the child is unwanted that they cease to be a living human. Then they become “potential life” or a “clump of cells” or a “fetus”—anything to strip them of their humanity. It makes them easier to kill. That’s why the Nazis dehumanized Jews. Depending on the seriousness of pending food shortages we are being warned about, due in part to the Russia/Ukraine war, will the existence of people like me be considered burdensome to the state (what the Nazis called ballastexistenzen?)  


Now, as far as turning my back on children once they are born, that plays into the abortion advocacy myth that pro-lifers only care about a child before it’s born but don’t care once it is born. That’s not true. There are crisis pregnancy centers dotted across North America that prove it’s not true. They offer women life-affirming choices for themselves and their babies.  Crisis pregnancy centers that I’ve known (including the one I helped start) do not give out misinformation as the abortion lobby asserts. They provide real alternatives for women (and their partners) to choose from, other than abortion. If abortion is about choices, then there must be choices.

 

Someone else told me that abortion helps decrease crime. She sent me a tweet saying, “You going to come up with great crime reform then? Over 50% in the decline of crime is now attributed to legalized abortion.” It is a strange crime reform strategy that kills potential criminals before they commit crimes because they will be born into poverty. Public policy must never presumptively kill possible criminals—it changes their environment. That’s Crime Reform 101. 

 

Killing children prior to their births is no way of solving potential crime rates at some point in the future. The answer comes through supportively encouraging women in crisis pregnancies to complete their education or further their education, or gain work experience. It helps provide childcare, job counselling and life skills—the very things many crisis pregnancy centers (being torched) already do!

 

If even a fraction of government funding presently going to support abortion was sent to CPCs to provide life-affirming options to women in crisis pregnancies … now that would be progressive crime reform policy. That levels the ground to make real positive choices!

 

Someone else sent me an article written by a doctor involved in the IVF/ART industry claiming life does not begin at fertilization. I asked Dr. Dianne Irving[1] to respond. Here is part of her reply:

 

“Well, he's 100% wrong -- but given that he works in the infertility business (IVF/ART), no surprise that he tries.  If he admitted the accurate scientific facts then he would no longer be able to justify all the abortions and destructive experimental research that he engages in.  Please note too that he is an MD, not a Ph.D. scientist (different course work, different degrees).  M.D.s are NOT SCIENTISTS.”

 

“The accurate objective scientific facts as to when human beings begin to exist is fully documented by the Carnegie Stages of Human Embryonic Development, known and acknowledged internationally since 1941 by an international committee of Ph.D. human embryologist scientists from around the world (FIAMC), and verified every year since up to the present. …”  

 

The most outrageous claims are being made to try to support abortion. My body, my choice is only describing a deadbeat mom. Besides, there are two bodies involved: the mother’s body and her developing child’s body. It will be her child’s body that will be torn apart by abortion. 

 

Let the slogans, and angry pro-abortion rhetoric, demonstrations and chants in the streets pass. Speak with love. We need not put things in blunt terms when trying to win abortion-minded people. 

 

Granted, there are those pro-abortion ideologues who will never change, but we must leave a door of friendship and welcome open to them. I’m not saying you have to become pals, just allow them an opportunity to save face now that Roe is dead. Remember, many bought into a lie long ago and it may be deeply embedded into their thinking. Still, those of us who have worked against abortion for decades should reach out in a spirit of friendship and cordiality, for the sake of a better tomorrow in the wake of Roe v Wade. 

 

 MDP


[1] Dr. Irving's professional activities include teaching positions at Georgetown University, Catholic University of America, and The Dominican House of Studies. She represented the Catholic Medical Association of the United States, and the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, at the Scientific Conference in Mexico City, Mexico, October 28, 1999 and presented a paper on "The Dignity and Status of the Human Embryo". Dr. Irving is a former career-appointed bench research biochemist/biologist (NIH, NCI, Bethesda, MD), an M.A. and Ph.D. philosopher (Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.), and Professor of the History of Philosophy, and of Medical Ethics.

 

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

THE WORD,TRUTH AND FREEDOM

 


Oprah Winfrey once said “The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.” I’m not sure in what context she said speaking, but she alluded to words that Jesus said, “If you abide in My word, you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32, NKJV) As a Black child born in the 1950s into poverty in Mississippi, I can understand how she may have felt powerless, but her quote above taps into Christ’s words and is out of context of what He meant. 

 

Christ said the words about truth setting us free to the Pharisees who held the religious temporal power. He did not. His power was of a different kind. He held the keys over life and death, and we can read the proof of that two chapters later in the 11thchapter of John when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.[1] Imagine that! Lazarus’ body had already been in the grave 4 days. The stench of putrification had begun. When Jesus called “Lazarus! Come forth!”, Lazarus’ heart began pumping again, congealed blood was restored, and his decaying body was restored and came to life. 

 

Ask yourself if that really happened? Did Jesus physically raise a dead man back to life? If you believe it didn’t happen, then Jesus Christ was not the Christ, the Son of God. If it did not actually happen, then He had no power over death and He did not rise from the dead either and nor will you or I. If it did not happen then I am amongst 100s of million of pitiable Christians throughout the centuries who believed a lie.[2] We have staked our lives on a myth in the Bible. If, however, Jesus raised and restored Lazarus from a dead rotting carcass—which I believe with all my heartwe are confronted with the essential question: Who is this Jesus? He certainly can’t be dismissed as a good moral teacher. C.S. Lewis said this about that:


“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[3]

 

The truth Christ was talking about was/is Himself when He said the truth will set you free. Elsewhere, Jesus said, “I am the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except through me.”[4] The word He meant was/is Himself. We read in the 1stChapter of John that in the beginning, Christ was the word that was with God and was God.[5]

 

The word?

 

From a layman’s perspective, it seems to me “the word” is something like a divine thought that animates everything seen and unseen, known and unknown; the word is alive and active in people’s lives, a divine idea that penetrates to the essence of every person, dividing soul and spirit with the sharpness of a two-edged sword. The Word judges every person’s thoughts and actions.[6] Perhaps it has something to do with human conscience; [7] but that is only a reflection of the word, the divine idea. An eternal thought.[8]

 

This eternal Thought is love[9] and a desire for relationships between the most special creatures of creation (man), and the eternal thought which is God.[10] Humanity is special and set apart in creation because God, that divine thought, that unfathomable Being, Perfect love, imbued humanity with the image and likeness of the divine thought which is God who animates the cosmos.[11]

 

From the perspective of my puny unlettered mind, which is governed by space and time, it is impossible to imagine something that exists outside those realms because space and time are all I know. The only thing I know that seems not to exist within space and time is thought, but that is not quite true. It takes a tittle of time, a millisecond, for thought to be generated, and yet I can imagine a thought existing after death when time and space are removed. 

 

The Incarnation was a reversal. That which was timeless and immaterial entered time and space. The spiritual became physical. The Creator entered creation for His love of the apex of His creation: humanity.[12] The Creator loves and desires to be loved by His image-bearers. Isn’t that the nature of true love? To love and be loved. The Word desires to be known, the divine Thought desires to be thought of constantly and loved in an intimate communion of love.[13] The problem is that the creature is unable to love the Word and divine Thought because the creature became corrupted, distorted, and separated from the Creator.[14]

 

God is perfect. Originally, paradisal man in Eden was perfect but became imperfect through disobedience and sin, thus introducing Original sin into the world—what the John the Baptist called “the sin of the world.” 

 

Jesus (the Word) said, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”[15] But how can a grossly imperfect man like me be perfect like his Creator? I’m so distorted and corrupted by sin, I cannot find my own way to God. We are all corrupted by sin. Man had a wounded spirit that is inclined toward evil and unholiness.[16] We are in a hopeless situation because we are incapable of perfection (holiness) by our own means. Consequently, since sin was first introduced into the world, a relationship between God and man became impossible without blood sacrifice. Something, or as it turns out, someone must restore the possibility of relationships between Creator and creature: God and man. That someone was Jesus Christ:[17] Truly God, truly man. The Incarnation. I am unable to love God the Father, but I can love God the Son[18] through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.[19]

 

Unfortunately, it seems that suffering plays a significant role in bringing Christians closer to it.[20] The most imperfect, of whom I am the worst, must pass through a refining fire to burn away the dross. But even that proves insufficient. Christ is our perfection through faith.[21] For much of my adult life I have suffered from paralysis, and yet I have been freed even when a threatening storm of quadriplegia rumbled on the horizon, but my spirit soared I met the truth—who is Christ—and I had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I still do. — MDP 



Notes

[1] John 11:1-44.

[2] 1Corinthians 15:12-16

[3] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[4] John 14.6.

[5] John 1:1-2.

[6] Hebrews 4:12.

[7] Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 10:16, John 1:9.

[8] John 1:1-5, Hebrews 1:2-3.

[9] 1 John 4:7-8.

[10] Genesis 1:26-27 & 5.2, John 1:3, 11,14,16,29,3:14-17, 1John 4:7-16.

[11] CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC), 355

[12] CCC, 343, 355.

[13] Deuteronomy 6:5, 10:12, 30:6, Matthew 22:36-37.

[14] Genesis 3., Romans 5:12-13,

[15] Deuteronomy 32:4, Psalm 19:7, Matthew 5:48, 

[16] Jeremiah 17:9, Ecclesiastes 9:3, Mathew 15:19.

[17] John 3:16-17, Romans 5:8.

[18] Romans 1:16-18, 

[19] John 14:17, 2Peter 1:4.

[20] Deuteronomy 8:2-3, Psalm 40:1-2, Matthew 5:10-12, Romans 5:3, 2Corinthians 12.9, 1Peter 1:6-11, 2: 19-13, 4:12-14 & 16-19, 5:10-11, 12:1-2, Philippians 1:29, 2:5-8, 3:8-15, Hebrews 2:9-11, 11:35, 12:1, Revelation 2:10.

[21] 2 Corinthians 5:21.