I know how divisive talk of politics can be, so I am going to try to make this my last post on the subject. After all, I've already voted, and I doubt anything I can say is going to change anyone's mind.
And let me hasten to add that a lot of my Christian brothers and sisters are supporting the opposite candidate in this national election. I bear them no ill will, and I support their right to think and decide for themselves.
I also know that God rules in the affairs of men, so God is going to work through whoever wins this election. "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord," so God can and WILL work through either candidate to accomplish his eternal will.
At the same time, God also expects us, his children, to be salt and light in our community, and a light has to shine. God has given me a voice, and I know he expects me to use it. I care passionately about many issues--one in particular--and I cannot hold my tongue while people argue about tax rates and political parties. And since this is my own little corner of cyberspace, I am going to hold forth and pontificate for a few moments.
Last night I watched a movie on DVD: Karol: A Man who Became Pope. It was a biopic about Pope John Paul II, who was a young man under the Nazi oppression of Poland. He witnessed the disenfranchisement and destruction of an entire people group--the Polish Jews--and saw how the Nazis and then the communists tried to destroy individual freedom. He believed that through God's love, the value of human life and human freedom could be--and ought to be--restored. I completely agree with him.
In March 1857, in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, the United States Supreme Court ruled that all blacks—slaves as well as free--were not and could never be citizens of the United States. As to the Constitution, which declares that all men are created equal, Justice Taney wrote that “it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration . . . .”
The members of the court who ruled against the African-American Dred Scott apparently bought into Hamlet’s argument that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Hamlet would have no problem justifying the disintegration of people to property.
But Hamlet’s argument is false. Some acts violate moral decency and divine laws. But in 1857 it was more "politically correct" to buy into the Supreme Court's argument that blacks were not human and could be bought and sold. In Hitler's Germany, it was more expedient to accept the idea that the Jews were not human and could be worked to death or exterminated. And today, millions of people have bought the argument that unborn babies are not human so they can be eliminated whenever "inconvenient."
I find it supremely ironic that Obama, a man of color, is supporting another Supreme Court decision--Roe v. Wade--that proclaims that an entire category of human beings is not deserving of protection under the U.S. Constitution. Obama voted against an Illinois bill that would provide medical care for aborted babies born alive. (These babies were taken to closets and left to die). Not even the National Abortion Rights League went so far as to oppose that bill. He also refused to support a ban on partial-birth abortion, when a living baby is almost completely removed from the womb (all but the infant's head), and then brutally killed.
On April 2, 2008, the Washington Post, hardly a conservative paper, reported: "But Obama's record on abortion is extreme. He opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion -- a practice a fellow Democrat, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once called "too close to infanticide." Obama strongly criticized the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. In the Illinois state Senate, he opposed a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of infants mistakenly left alive by abortion. And now Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be "punished with a baby" because of a crisis pregnancy -- hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life."
What if the issue today were not abortion, but slavery? Would the Democratic Party, would Obama, say that "No one likes slavery, that's why we're trying to make it rare. But we can't deny slaveholders the right to choice. And we can't even think about overturning a Supreme Court decision."
If you lived in 1857, would you agree with the Supreme Court, or would you join the abolitionist cause? If you lived in Hitler's occupation of Poland, would you be hiding Jews or closing your eyes to the destruction? You are living now--what will you do with your vote?
My friends, I don't think I will ever agree 100 percent with any particular politician. But if this were 1857, I'm pretty sure I'd be an abolitionist, even though I'm a child of the South. Being a Southern abolitionist would subject me, I'm sure, to the same scorn pro-life women feel today. (If you don't believe that pro-life women are scorned, just watch a couple of episodes of THE VIEW.)
This issue is important in this election because our Supreme Court judges are aging, and the next President will choose their replacements. Even if the present court does not lose any members in the next four years, a pro-life candidate holds certain truths--namely, that ALL life is created by God and deserves protection, especially in its most vulnerable form. This point of view influences all kinds of decisions; it is a specific world view, not just an opinion on abortion.
I know most people these days are thinking about the economy, the war, and gas prices. They're worried about themselves and their families. Well, my friends, we who believe in God know that there's a lot more to life than house payments and mortgages. We are commanded to be heavenly minded, not earthly-worried, and we know that the Father who takes care of sparrows and daisies will care for us.
An eternal issue is staring us in the face--an issue that speaks as clearly about belief in God as anything imaginable. Don't for a moment think that abortion is simply about a woman's right to choose. It goes much deeper than that. The abortion issue is about whether or not life is God-created. If it is, man has no right to destroy it in the bloom of innocence. If it is merely an evolutionary by-product, then who cares?
Who, indeed?
~~Angie
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