My wife, a labor and delivery nurse in a local hospital, tells me that in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, where MINISTRY is published, abortions routinely outnumber live births each year. (The score for 1977 was 12,718 to 9,885 within the District itself for District residents. Maryland and Virginia residents who came into the District for an abortion added 16,827 cases for a total of 29,545.) By the time a patient comes under my wife's care it's obviously too late for an abortion, but the medical records accompanying the women quite often indicate one or more previous abortions. For practical purposes, abortion has become simply a means of birth control.
I don't intend to become involved in a discussion of the Tightness or wrongness of abortions, although I have some rather strong convictions on the subject. I use it merely as an illustration in order to focus on the underlying attitudes that make such disproportionate numbers possible. As I see it, there are two, and they are related selfishness and a refusal to accept personal responsibility for one's actions. These attitudes, in turn, spring from an increasing disenchantment with the idea of moral absolutes. A great many people in our world have very blurred concepts of what is right or wrong indeed, they are not at all sure that such categories are legitimate. (I suppose if we wanted to trace the philosophical underpinnings far enough we could indict the prevalence of evolutionary concepts. After all, if we are little more than precocious animals, why not act the part? But I'm digressing rather far afield.)
In the context of abortions, selfishness—a preoccupation with self—says, "Since I am the most important person to my self, I will decide what is and isn't right for me. No one (not even God) will dictate to me what I do with 'my own body.'" Likewise, a lack of personal responsibility reasons that if a way can be found to avoid the consequences of one's own actions, no consideration need be given to the effect on others. In short, man makes the rules, not God.
It occurs to me that we, as preachers, must accept some of the responsibility for such a situation. We like to consider ourselves in the forefront of those shaping society's spiritual values, so I sup pose we really ought not to disclaim our role when those values fail to measure up. But I believe our responsibility goes a bit further. Not a few of those who have such a difficult time telling right from wrong (whether it be in the area of abortions or somewhere else) developed this peculiarity, in part at least, from listening to preachers who were so eager to emphasize God's love as demonstrated at Calvary that they forgot what made Calvary necessary—the law and sin.
Of course, law and sin are not very palatable words; at least not nearly so much so as love and grace. Besides the fact that our human nature simply doesn't like hearing about the law, we have a healthy fear that law will quickly turn into a virulent case of legalism. And, of course, it easily can. Law needs massive doses of grace to inoculate against such a possibility. But to preach God's love devoid of ethical and moral content is to make of God One who connives with us in our sins rather than One who has acted decisively to save us from sin. The answer is not to preach God's love and grace the less; indeed, we need to preach it more. Never can we say enough to extol Him for His grace to us; never can we, even by His grace, deserve the least of His favors, or obligate Him to ourselves in any way. But let us preach the cross in such a way that our hearers see not only a God who loves, but a God who because He loves cares desperately how His people live, a God who because He loves can never agree that sin doesn't matter very much. Indeed, it was' precisely because sin mattered so tremendously to God that He agreed that Jesus should deal with it at such infinite cost. If sin was of little consequence, if the law did not matter, Calvary would never have happened. We err if we tell our people differently.
Let us, then, with one hand lift high God's love in the light of the cross and with the other lift up His law as the divine standard. The abortion rate may not decrease dramatically, but then again, it might. —B.R.H.
