Right to Life Oratory Contest Entry
The following is my 3rd place winning Indiana Right to Life Oratory Contest oration. It was a pleasure to participate.
Abortion as the Antithesis of the Gospel and the Incarnation
In the gospel, Christ says, “My life for yours.” But in abortion, we hear, “Your life for mine.” Jesus Christ brings righteousness to all who trust in Him by faith. Abortion brings bloodguilt. In Genesis 4 after Cain had murdered his brother Abel, God said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”
One time after sharing the gospel of redemption and warning of the depraved nature of abortion, a professing Christian woman who was driving by pulled over and walked up to me and asked why I was being so loud. I simply responded with this: the sin of abortion is the loudest sound in our state. Much like Abel's blood, the blood of preborn babies is crying from the ground. The Christians lovingly pleading for the preborn in South Bend are not bringing chaos; because of abortion, there already is chaos, and we are fools not to recognize it!
This is the antithesis:
- Christ or chaos.
- The great commission or the recent Shout Your Abortion campaign.
- The image of God or disposable life.
- Eternal life or abortion pills forever.
So, what's our responsibility as Christians in light of this antithetical contrast? As God’s people, Christ has rescued us. It is therefore our duty to rescue others. Indeed in Proverbs 24 we read, "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter." Those who reject this message as it pertains to all those made in God’s image are waging an attack on the incarnation of our Lord.
Christ was not made incarnate in the manger; before the manger, there was the womb of Mary. Our great God and Savior was once a two-celled zygote. What is the best argument against the blasphemous attack of abortion? John 1:14.
But not only is it a blasphemous attack, it is an old one. King Herod went on a murderous rampage to slay the infants of Bethlehem. In Revelation 12 we see the plan of Satan to kill the Child as He was being born. The Child who would rule the nations and subdue His enemies under His feet. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and in our country that ancient foe is not content to wait to until children are born, and he now has access to the most precious of life-giving spaces through legalized abortion, to destroy those made in God's image.
This is the antithesis that Milton describes toward the beginning of Paradise Lost: "Where all life dies, death lives.” Justice Sotomayor asked a question during the oral arguments of Dobbs V. Jackson: "When do you suggest we begin that life? Putting it aside from religion." By asking this, she was effectively asking, “Apart from the fount of all life, and the life and light of men, can you define when life begins? Put aside life and please, tell me when life begins. Take God out of the equation, and ask which of His creatures bear His image.” Often we read Christ's brilliant answer of rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God’s in a dangerous way, forgetting the fact that while Caesar's image was on the coin, the image of the Almighty God was ineffably imprinted upon every detailed part of Caesar's being.
And it is the same with every justice who has ever sat on the Supreme Court. It is not whether you legislate according to morality, it is which morality. It is not whether you have a religion or a worldview, it is which worldview. As I learned in Humanities class at Concordia High School, every worldview has a liturgy, an eschatology, a soteriology, a cosmology, et cetera. The worldview which celebrates abortion has a liturgy involving child sacrifice. This may be explicit in the Satanic Temples saying they need baby mills by virtue of their religious freedom; or it may be as simple as preborn children being sacrificed at the altar of personal peace and affluence.
Luther said in a sense whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God. So when women cling so much to the ideal of college graduation or rank in society, so much so that they give their child to be killed in order to gain these things, a fundamentally unchristian and idolatrous worldview is formed with all the baggage that comes along with it.
And in response to this worldview which is antithetical to the gospel, Christians therefore must recognize that there is no neutrality, no alternative, no tertium quid. Whether or not child sacrifice has been handed down from on high (the U.S. Supreme Court), this ruling is nullified by what was handed down from on high on Mt. Sinai: “You shall not murder.” And when God tells Moses fresh off the ark: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image”, whenever anything rises up in conflict with this clear and didactic statement of God, it is not a calling to disobey it, it is our duty as God's people.
Per Reformation theology, there is not any institution in the entire human domain, Abraham Kuyper says, which Jesus who is Lord over all cannot look to and say "Mine!"
Francis Schaeffer said, “If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.”
No longer can we treat abortion simply as a controversial issue which is subject to debate. God has spoken, and it is now a question of choose this day whom you will serve. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or Molech, and humanist ideals, under the guise of choice. "But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live." (Exodus 1:17) Do we fear God enough to obey Him as the Hebrew midwives did when the "Supreme Court" of Egypt ordered the slaughter of babies? "But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’” (Acts 5:29) We too must obey God rather than men. Are you prepared to pay the price for obedience to God as the Apostles were? Or are you unwilling to obey God because you believe the political or social costs will be too high?
Christian, if you have been unwilling to get involved in this battle, repent with me. Sure, you may lose the approval of friends and family, and be named as simply an extremist, as I and others have been, but in doing so you will run into the arms of King Jesus, and what can harm you there?