Archive for the 'abortion' Category

A European question for Dr. Wittmer (and you too)

Published on June 27, 2010 in Church, Doctrine and abortion. 0 Comments

June, 2010clip_image002

Dear Church Family,

We went to Dachau this week. As a result, I have a question for Dr. Mike Wittmer who is preaching to the Bricks. Hopefully, he will give an answer however brief from the pulpit.

Dachau was, of course, the infamous Nazi concentration camp where people were imprisoned and subjected to awful atrocities. Most of you are familiar with those accounts. I won’t detail them further in a Sunday morning letter. (In the included picture I am listening to a English recording detailing how a camp intended for 10,000 prisoners housed 30,000 tortured image bearers by the end of the war).

What struck me about the trip to Dachau was that we rode a train through the land of the Reformation to get there. At one point we traveled from Berne to Strasbourg tracing a route that Calvin and Bucer traveled by horse. From there, we crossed the Rhine and ventured into Germany and the land of Luther and Melanchthon.

And, as many villages as there are across Germany, there are churches in the center. Churches all across the land. So, Dr. Wittmer, how could the geographical center of the Reformation give way to the Holocaust?

Keep in mind that in terms of church history, it wasn’t that long from the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries until the Holocaust in the 20th century. If church history thus far is a week long, then the Reformation was on Thursday afternoon and the Holocaust was on Saturday.

Again, how do we go from Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon and Bucer on Thursday to Hitler on Saturday morning?

I’ll let the guy preaching speak to the question. But, as your pastor, I will send this message from the land of the Reformation, “Don’t stop believing.” If we build our church on the sandy land, then we can expect it to collapse during the first hard rain. There’s a lot for us to think about. While, I was proud to see the plaque remembering the United States troops that liberated the camp, I quickly reminded myself of the “Abortion Holocaust.”

You’re in good hands. But, we miss you. We are praying for you. Christ is all.

On for the King,

Pastor Chris Brauns

Sen Mike Johanns (Republican) from Nebraska

Published on March 11, 2010 in abortion. 1 Comment

HT: Z

Pro-Choice advocate Sally Jenkins defends Tim Tebow’s Superbowl ad

Published on February 7, 2010 in abortion. 2 Comments

In a Washington Post article:

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow’s pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We’re always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow’s 30-second ad hasn’t even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren’t actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Read the whole article here.

“Stay hitched to your toddler”

Published on January 24, 2010 in abortion. 0 Comments

Again, whenever you hear an argument for elective abortion, stop and ask this question: Would this justification for killing the unborn work for killing a toddler?  If not, your critic is assuming that the unborn aren’t human, a point for which he needs to argue.  Trot out your toddler to expose the hidden (and perhaps unrecognized) assumptions in the argument.  Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life, page 32.

Whether or not they heard the muffled scream of human smoke . . .

Published on January 24, 2010 in Psalms and abortion. 0 Comments

God only knows.  But, he does know.  This is the point of Psalm 139.

Think of it this way on Sanctity of Life Sunday — When the Nazis gassed Jews and then incinerated them, the soot of image bearers curled into the air before falling over the land like coal dust.

No one remained clean.  A layer of human soot spoiled the soil.

And, whether or not the citizens of Dachau, Treblinka and Auschwitz tasted the human dust when it poisoned their cultural water, whether or not they saw the ash of the murdered when they swept it off their streets, whether or not they heard the muffled scream of human smoke, the God of heaven and earth, who knit the Holocaust victims together in their mother’s womb – - He knew, and knows, and will repay (Romans 12:19).

Read Psalm 139, the whole thing, and remember that God knows.

“In short, you didn’t come from an embryo . . .”

Published on January 22, 2010 in abortion. 0 Comments

Scott Klusendorf:

In short, you didn’t come from an embryo, you once were an embryo.  At no point in your prenatal development did you undergo a substantial change or change of nature.  You began as a human being and will remain so until death.  Sure, you lacked maturity at that early stage of life (as does an infant), but you were human nonetheless.  ‘Living things do not become entirely different creatures in the process of changing their form,’ writes Greg Koukl.  ‘Rather, they develop according to a certain physical pattern precisely because of the kind of being they already are.’

Tim Tebow (who wasn’t aborted against doctor’s advice) to appear in pro-life Superbowl commercial

Published on January 20, 2010 in abortion. 0 Comments

The LA Times reports:

The former Florida quarterback and his mother will appear in a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl next month. The Christian group Focus on the Family says the Tebows will share a personal story centering on the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life."

The group isn’t releasing details, but the commercial is likely to be an anti-abortion message chronicling Pam Tebow’s 1987 pregnancy. After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim.
The 2007 Heisman Trophy winner ended his college career with several NCAA, Southeastern Conference and school records, and two national championships. Tebow also has been very involved in his family’s Christian-based ministry.

Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, said the commercial comes at a time when "families need to be inspired."

"Tim and Pam share our respect for life and our passion for helping families thrive," Daly said. "Focus on the Family is about … strengthening families by empowering them with the tools they need to live lives rooted in morals and values."

HT: Trevin Wax

The Abortion Distortion

Published on December 15, 2009 in abortion. 0 Comments

I am thinking and praying about a sermon I will preach on January 24 for Sanctity of Life Sunday.  I recently filed this post from Al Mohler regarding an important article in New York magazine.

Al Mohler:

Week by week, New York magazine offers insight into the culture and consciousness of the nation’s trendy population in Manhattan. This magazine, combined with The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker, provides constant insight into the thinking of the New York elites.

The magazine recently featured a major article on abortion, and it just might be the most important article on this issue in recent history.

In "The Abortion Distortion — Just How Pro-choice is America, Really?," writer Jennifer Senior offers an incredibly insightful and important essay on the moral status of abortion in the American mind. Senior is clearly writing to a New York readership — expected to be overwhelmingly pro-choice and settled in a posture of abortion advocacy. Given the passage of the so-called "Stupak amendment" to the health-care reform bill adopted by the House of Representatives, many in the pro-choice movement responded with amazement that a pro-life minority have been able to muster such support. Jennifer Senior posed the most awkward question for her readers: Is America really pro-choice?

Read the rest here.

On Bonhoeffer, Abortion and Cheap Grace

Published on February 7, 2009 in Forgiveness, Soteriology and abortion. 1 Comment

On the banks of Pollywog Creek, Patricia Hunter is interacting with a section of Unpacking Forgiveness that deals with cheap grace.  She considers how that area relates to abortion.

It’s worth clicking over to just to see the Bonhoeffer quotes.

The tragedies of “cheap grace” are multiple. First, there is a large group of people who think they are Christians when they are not. A second negative consequence of “cheap grace” is that the believers fail to think discerningly about what is right and wrong. When evil is not identified and named, it soon flourishes. (emphasis mine) ~ Chris Brauns, Unpacking Forgiveness, p.69

In a brief discussion on the reluctance to identify and name evil in Unpacking Forgiveness, Pastor Brauns mentions the apathy of the Christians in Germany to stand up to Nazism with Bonhoeffer’s explanation for the church’s ineffectiveness.

But do we realize this cheap grace has turned back on us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and the unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was rarely ever heard.” ~ Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom

Pastor Brauns concludes with these thoughts…

We must see this warning as relevant for today. Just as it was to Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s, evil is on the rise in the twenty-first century. The church ought to identify and name evil, not declare that all must be unconditionally forgiven.~ Christ Brauns, Unpacking Forgiveness, p. 70

Abortion is an evil.

Read the whole thing here.

No, Mr. President

Published on January 28, 2009 in Politics and abortion. 2 Comments

A challenging segment from John Piper.

 

HT: Vitamin Z