They Can’t Get Away

Plenty has already been said about the baby organ harvesting of Planned Parenthood. For several good summaries and responses, I invite you to be suitably appalled and stirred up here, here, here, and here. But I want to pile on, and I want to encourage you to pile on in whatever ways God gives you.

One of the lessons of our enemies that we have been slow to learn is that when you are at war, you capitalize on every mistake of the opposition. But frequently Christians forget that this is a war and when the enemy’s gun gets jammed, we call out over the fray, “That’s Ok, we’ll wait while you reload!” Jesus said that we are to love our enemies, and we frequently mistakenly think that means helping them continue to be our enemies. But this is to radically misunderstand the nature of our war. Which means we have apparently forgotten how we got into the trenches we are currently sitting in.

As it happens, we were all once on the other side. We were all once enemies of God. We hated God, we hated His grace, we hated His Christ, and we hated His cross. But God didn’t hesitate, didn’t relent, didn’t pause to let us catch our breath or reload. He pursued us and exploited every weakness, every chink in our armor, until He conquered us and we surrendered to His grace.

Don’t you see? The gospel means that we cannot relent. The gospel means war. We cannot pause. We cannot let up. This would be like a firefighter turning off his hose when he notices the flames dying down a bit. “Better give them a little time to build up again so things are fair.” Or this would be like a doctor only removing part of the tumor in order to not be too hard on the cancer. That’s not love; that’s not kindness. That’s hatred. That’s to collaborate with the destruction, with the violence, with the sorrow. But because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have been transferred to the other side, and we are at war with all of it now. We fight our enemies with truth and grace so that they might become our friends.

And this is why in the middle of this storm, when the moderate, pansy Republicans finally come out of the closet and get all indignant for a change, there is certainly a place for eye-brow raising and all that. Yes, abortion is an act of murder whereby a small, helpless human being is brutally cut into pieces. In the very place that God has designed to keep these children safe and protected to develop and grow, they are brutally dismembered and “crushed,” and now we learn, harvested for their livers, hearts, and brains and sold at the going rate. As Trevin Wax said on Twitter, “”My body, my choice” arguments don’t work when we’re selling someone else’s heart, liver, lungs, and legs.” You can’t go around insisting that a baby is only “tissue” that’s part of a woman’s body and then go hunting for livers and hearts. Human organs belong to human beings. When you take a beating heart, you take a human life.

So let’s be clear, it’s not like Planned Parenthood has suddenly crossed some grotesque, unimaginable line. No, this is what abortion has been and always is. Based on data from the Center for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood research arm, it is estimated that there have been 54,559,615 abortions since its legalization in 1973. That’s an average of over three thousand abortions a day — that’s one child crushed and dismembered every thirty seconds. Black and Hispanic Americans comprise nearly 60% of all abortions, and Planned Parenthood has located 80% of its clinics in minority neighborhoods. If you care about race relations in America, let’s start by talking about the butchering of blacks and hispanics by the millions.

But no, this is nothing new. This is business as usual, as indicated by the casual conversation of the Planned Parenthood research director Deborah Nucatola over lunch with a glass of wine. And despite euphemisms to the contrary, this is not merely a holocaust but a highly lucrative one at that. But yes, let’s be honest that some will jump on this outrage bandwagon for less than honorable reasons. And we must not for a minute contemplate lies or slander or malice toward our enemies, but we must not let any ill-intentions distract us from the point, from the prize.

God has handed us a monstrous Supreme Court ruling in the Obergefell decision, and he has handed us yet another glimpse into the monstrous underbelly of the legal serial-murder industry in our country. We need to see all of this with the eyes of faith, and surge forward. We need to press every brick along the wall, every door, every window because this fortress of evil is not invincible. It is full of cracks and holes, and we only need one place along the line to break. And when it breaks, we need to surge through, push through, and chase the enemy. Which is why now is the time to put the pressure on. Now is the time to pile on. The gaystapo and the militant abortionists have outmaneuvered Christians precisely by their relentlessness. And we have been like Samson, sort of resisting Delilah’s demands, waking up every morning a little more subdued. But we need to turn the conversation on its head. We need to exploit every opportunity the enemy gives us to tell the truth in love. This means filling social media with the truth. This means cheerfully and graciously telling the truth to our neighbors and coworkers and family members. This means persistent fasting and prayer. This means Sabbath feasting like we belong to the King. This means letters to editors, congressmen, governors. This means refusing to support or celebrate sin in any form. This means preaching and singing and worshipping our hearts out to the Lord. We are weak; we are powerless; we are surrounded. And this is why we should have every hope that it is precisely here that God will turn the tide. As Chester Puller, the most decorated marine in US history once said, “All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us. They can’t get away this time.”

The gospel is the story of God’s relentless love of a rebellious, bloodthirsty people. Not one of us is innocent. We have lusted in our hearts. We have treated human beings like they are lumps of tissue to be bought and sold for body parts. We have lied and betrayed and killed. And God in His infinite and merciful wisdom came in the person of His Son Jesus in order to receive in Himself all of our rebellion, all of our hatred, and all the justice due our sin. And God exploited our evil. He received our anger when His hands were nailed to the cross. He took our shame when He was stripped naked and hung up to be mocked and spat on. He took our bloodguilt when a spear was shoved into His side. He cried out in pain for all of our pain, and for all of the pain and silent cries of the millions we have slaughtered.

He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities: the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed (Is. 53:5).

We are at war, but our weapons are love and peace and grace and joy. Our weapon is the gospel of Jesus crucified for sinners and raised for our justification. So pile on. They can’t get away this time.