On Women Being Forced to Be Pregnant
Introduction
So the pagans are wailing, screaming, crying, and I’m expecting any minute for someone to start cutting themselves on national television. Although, we’ve certainly seen imitations of it already in theatrical displays of menstrual blood, taking abortion pills on camera, and AOC pretending to get handcuffed by police. But the whole thing is reminiscent of the prophets of Baal shouting and crying and dancing around their altars.
And if we know which side we’re on, our part is clear. Our job is to mock them. Our job is to mock their false gods. Our job is to point out that their gods are not real, and that they are deaf, dumb, and blind. They are probably sleeping. They are probably on vacation. They are probably in the lavatory checking social media.
Introducing Baal the Giant
But in order to do this well, in order to play our part, we really must know which gods to mock. There are several in the modern pantheon vying for preeminence. Demos-State is one of the ugly gods with a lot of external force and power. Demos-State is Statism, the worship of the civil sphere as a god, in the name of the people (demos), in the name of so-called democracy. In the ancient world, they called him Baal, which means “lord.” Baal proclaims that it stands for the “will of the people,” which turns out to mean the outcomes and decisions that they believe the people really wanted if they were as enlightened as their statist overlords (and shut up down there!). Baal is a fairly typical abuser. It’s a religion with a hefty coercive force, with lots of guns and prisons and money. This false god is all kinds of passive-aggressive, and gets most of its power from enforcing a sort of constant Stockholm Syndrome on the populous. Baal demands, threatens, confiscates, and then gives you back a tiny bit of what was stolen and pretends to wipe away your tears with stimulus checks, tax credits, and porn. It blames you for the problems, and always takes credit for improvements.
While this Demos-State Baal god is powerful, it’s actually fairly clumsy, hulking, and fragile. Baal is like a giant. It is large, forceful, can do a lot of damage, but it also moves relatively slow and is a largely unsuspecting target. A well-aimed, smooth stone could take him down. And he really is hard to miss. But I actually don’t think he’s the biggest problem, or the most revered god in our land. He gets his power mostly from another.
Next Up Eros
So the god who really must be at the center of our sights and mockery is Aphrodite or better, Eros, the sex-lust goddess. This is currently the cult that is driving the power of the Demos-State. Why must the Baal-State continue to accumulate power? Because the Baal-State is guaranteeing orgasms on demand, sex on demand, porn on demand, and promises to pay for all the damage left in the wake. Pagans have always worshipped sex. Gravity always falls down. And when men refuse to worship the Maker, they begin worshipping that which was made. And sex is consistently at the top of the list of created things people worship.
This helps explains the obsession with sex, sexual orientations, sex change operations, sex education, puberty blockers, and of course the sacrament at the center of all it: abortion. And so we return to the shrieks and howls of the Left in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, with claims that women are now being “forced” to keep their pregnancies. Oh horrors. Next, you’ll be telling me that people are being forced to keep their winning lottery tickets. In other words, conservatives need to get really good at responding to this claim with a hearty belly laugh.
This is like complaining to an Italian restaurant that you are being “forced” to eat Italian food. This is like complaining to the pilot of your plane, after landing in Denver, that you are being “forced” to go to Denver. This is like ordering a new dress or tuxedo, getting it in the mail, putting it on, and then wailing that you are being forced to wear new clothes. Shall I go on? There’s a common denominator here, and it’s one of the Left’s favorite words. And the word is “choice.” You had a choice to go to the Italian restaurant or not. You had a choice to buy that ticket, to get on that plane or not. And you had a choice about whether or not you wanted to order those clothes and put them on.
But, but… But What about Rape?
Of course the come back is: but what about rape? In the case of rape, something was forced. Yes, but don’t miss the rhetorical ploy. We went from talking about all pregnancy being “forced” to one very particular and relatively rare occurrence. Pregnancy resulting from rape accounts for around 0.5% of pregnancies each year. That’s less than 1% of all pregnancies. Feel free to check my numbers but a quick google search tells me that studies suggest around 32,000 pregnancies result from rape each year, compared to the overall total of 6,369,000 pregnancies per year, according to the CDC. So the vast majority of pregnancies were not forced at all. 99.5% of pregnancies were not the result of rape. In 99.5% of pregnancies, the sex was consensual, and the woman made a choice.
So let’s be clear that in 99.5% of pregnancies no one is forcing a woman to be pregnant. She made choices that naturally lead to pregnancy under the right conditions in God’s world.
But even in the case of rape, the fact remains that while a horrific crime was committed, and a woman’s body and honor has been violated, the resulting child is not the criminal. The child is a gift. The child is an immortal soul, bearing the image of God, with gifts and glory and potency for the good of the world. Despite the horrific cime; the child did not commit a crime. And in no scenario is it just to punish the child for the crimes of his or her father. If you want justice, report the crime to the proper authorities and ask the judge to punish the criminal to the fullest extent of the law. If biblical law were honored in our land, this would lead to the execution of many rapists. And that would be justice.
But because our land balks at God’s justice, criminals are slapped on the wrist, while babies are crushed and pulled apart like some kind of medieval execution ritual. This never accomplishes justice, and it never makes the mother feel better. It only adds injury to injury, crime to crime. And now instead of only being the victim of one crime, the woman becomes an accomplice in a second crime against her own flesh. This is like being the victim of an assault that results in a bad bruise on your leg, and then determining that in order to get rid of the bruise you need to amputate your leg. Even in the cases of rape, a child conceived is like winning the lottery. Every human life is an immortal soul that bears God’s brilliant image. Even in the horrific crime of rape, the gift of life is a cosmic blessing.
Feeding the Brute Beasts
Christians need to master this argument and be ready with the answers. It is simply false that woman are being “forced” to be pregnant or stay pregnant. First off, I (nor anyone I know) thinks any woman should be forced to stay pregnant indefinitely. I am very much in favor of the usual gestation time of human babies, in the nine month range, give or take. But second, the hidden assumption here and in many of our conversations related to sex is the assumption that people must have sex incessantly, constantly, all the time, everywhere, forever, world without end. But the assumption is thoroughly Darwinian and Freudian and pagan, and it is not Christian, Biblical, or even natural. Darwin reduced human beings to animals, and so essentially taught that they are driven by pure, brutish instincts, chemicals, and material make-up and circumstances, and Freud laced the whole thing with sexual urges and warned that people do bad things if they are not allowed to release those sexual urges. And so it is assumed that if you tell a human being that they should not, must not act out certain sexual desires, that you are harming them. And you are driving them to do evil things.
This is why you must not tell a homosexual that their desires are unnatural and shameful; that would cause them to feel bad and perhaps make them do bad things. This is the cause of the screaming demand that various Christian counseling and therapies be outlawed. Likewise, you must not tell a man who thinks he is a woman that he is in fact a man and will always be a man. The shrieks and cries go up that this is the cause of high suicide rates among transgenders. And if you’re paying attention here, this means that pro-life pregnancy centers are quickly being lumped together with reparative therapy as causing harm to women, “forcing” them or at least coercing them or tricking them into carrying their unwanted pregnancies.
So you must see the play: everyone must have sex. Everyone must be allowed to have sex all the time, with anyone, anywhere. We must act like animals. Otherwise, (checks notes), we will act like animals. If we do not serve our instincts, our instincts will turn bloody. If we do not serve our lusts, our lusts will turn violent. But this is like saying if you don’t feed the bears, the bears will eat you. If you don’t leave food out for the mountain lions, the mountain lions will eat you. And when people are eaten one after another, right on schedule, the shrieks and demands are that we haven’t yet left out enough meat for the wild animals. Let’s have another congressional committee to find out who is not leaving out fresh, raw meat for the carnivores! The reason people are dying is because you aren’t playing along. Christians are the people standing around saying, maybe we shouldn’t feed the wild animals. And they look at us like we have three heads. They think we are the problem. They think you are strange.
This is exactly what Peter said, “For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you…” (1 Pet. 4:4). And in Jude, it describes similar patterns of lust and fornication as acting like “brute beasts,” corrupting themselves (Jude 7, 11). This is why they cannot understand why we won’t join them, why we won’t feed the beasts. All of us were brute beasts in Adam, but Christ made us alive. We were once mad in our sins, but Christ forgave us and sent the demons into the pigs. He died for our sins, for all our demons, and now we are seated in our right minds and fully clothed in His righteousness alone. This is why they don’t understand, and this is the message we have for them. There is a way out. There is a living God who hears and saves. And His name is Jesus. He was crucified and raised from the dead for sinners.
Conclusion
Putting all of this together, we should not miss the thoroughly religious nature of what is happening all around us. The shrieks and protests and lip curled threats are nothing short of religious enthusiasm and frenzy. And so we must not fear. They worship sex. They worship orgasms. They worship choice. They worship raw power. But idolatry is always destructive and disappointing. Sex gods will always let you down. And you will end up with STDs, broken hearts, and apparently when it gets really exciting, blow up dolls, which are great emblems for the emptiness of this religion.
Idolatry also has a way of taking this world far too seriously and at the same time (ironically) not really enjoying and appreciating the world for the gift that it is. The Christian invitation is to take God seriously so that this world may be received as His pure gift. Take your sin seriously, take the Cross seriously, so that you may be set free. If you worship the gift, if you obsess over the gift, you will destroy it in the process, but if you worship the Giver and the Maker, it allows you to take everything a lot less seriously, because the fate of the world does not rest on our shoulders. This whole world is a gift. This whole world is grace. We don’t deserve any of it. And so every bit we get is a lavish gift, Christmas over the top, every day of the year.
So they’re over there bumping and grinding and twerking, defiling their flesh with filth and corruption, screaming and shrieking for their gods to save. It’s like a room full of toddlers laying on the floor throwing fits. Which really is kind of hilarious. It’s certainly sad, but it’s also ridiculous. They’ve puffed out their cheeks and the decibels keeping going up, but their gods aren’t listening and the world isn’t budging. God is in Heaven, and Jesus is risen from the dead.
The Spirit has been sent, and He is making all things new. We are the first fruits of that, and we are enjoying His gifts. Because our sins are forgiven, the world has been given back to us, wrapped with a bow, with love, from God the Father. It all belongs to Him, and so it all belongs to us in Jesus. So find a woman and marry her and make love to her, and make her the mother of as many children as the Lord will give. Provide a home for them, and train them up to fear the Lord, laugh at evil, dance in your living room, sing at the top of your lungs, and taste and see that the Lord is good.
Photo by Foto Pettine on Unsplash
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