The Power to Devalue Human Life?

By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

Editor's Note: Last week's Supreme Court decision on partial birth abortion may or may not be a bellweather of things to come in the public debate over the unborn child's right to life. Still, Dr. Mohler's commentary provides thoughtful insight into the issues at hand and the language each side uses to describe them."

In an historic 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the government’s right to ban the partial birth abortion procedure. The court reversed the rulings of six lower courts that had struck down the ban. The measure had been passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2003.

Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. Kennedy has succeeded retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as the most frequent “swing” vote among the nine justices. Kennedy also wrote the majority opinion in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision—a decision that basically affirmed the court’s infamous 1973 decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade.

The decision handed down, Gonzales v. Carhart was a stunning blow to pro-abortion forces because it represented the first time a specific abortion procedure had been successfully banned.

A closer look at the majority opinion reveals even more. Justice Kennedy acknowledged that, for many, even the most common abortion procedure is “a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life.” This is rather amazing language in itself, but Justice Kennedy then argued that the partial birth procedure “implicates additional ethical and moral concerns that justify a special prohibition.”

The explicit inclusion of this moral language marks a great achievement in this decision. So is the decision’s acknowledgement that “it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.”

Then, follow the progression of this argument:
“In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence some doctors may prefer not to disclose precise details of the means that will be used, confining themselves to the required statement of risks the procedure entails. From one standpoint this ought not to be surprising. Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details, lest the usual anxiety preceding invasive medical procedures become the more intense. This is likely the case with the abortion procedures here in issue....

“It is, however, precisely this lack of information concerning the way in which the fetus will be killed that is of legitimate concern to the State.... The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.”

Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts joined in Kennedy’s opinion. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined the decision, but issued a separate concurring opinion that included this bold assertion: “The Court’s abortion jurisprudence, including Casey and Roe v. Wade...has no basis in the Constitution.”

In an angry dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared the majority decision to be “alarming.” Most remarkably, she attacked the majority’s concern for the emotional health of mothers (due to the unique bond between mother and child) as “discredited.”
Here is her statement: “This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution—ideas that have long since been discredited.”

The acknowledgement of a unique bond between mother and child, born or unborn, is an “ancient” notion long since “discredited?”

Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Stephen Breyer joined Ginsburg in her dissenting opinion.

April 18, 2007, will go down in history as a landmark day in the struggle to recover human dignity and the sanctity of human life. This ruling is an important step toward that recovery—and we still have a very long way to go. There is reason to believe that this decision may be even more important than might first appear. After all, the majority opinion does recognize that for many citizens, any abortion is “a procedure laden with the power to devalue human life.”
Via Crosswalk.com

©2007 www.albertmohler.com, All rights reserved. Used by permission. Dr. Mohler, serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a theologian and ordained minister, as well as an author, speaker, and host of his own radio program, The Albert Mohler Program.

Sixteen Months in Darfur

". . . when I stepped into the sweltering heat pulsating from the sun-baked tarmac of the Nyala airport in South Darfur, Sudan, I was totally ill-equipped and unprepared for what would soon become my life." ~ Jonathan Drake - "Sixteen Months in Darfur" (Pulpit Helps Magazine, March 2007).

For the rest of this inspiring story of trial, challenge, and rethinking of "the way things are", click HERE. It's a three part series - just follow the links at the end of each to keep reading.

Life Together:

Small Groups and the Congregation Dynamic
by Justin Lonas

This is a follow-up to the post from 4/10 "Counting Heads or Changing Hearts"

Why is it that when Christians meet together under threat of arrest in communist China and other closed countries, they praise God with a fervor and unity seldom seen in the free environments of the West?

Why in America, where Christianity is freely practiced, do church members so often treat each other with a distrust and indifference that rivals worldly business competition?

If we want to reclaim our culture from the world’s value system and reach the lost for Christ, we have to begin by recapturing love for one another in Him. A powerful, relevant body is not a product of church size, financial assets, programs, influential members, or a prominent location. It is simply the outflow of brethren abiding in Christ’s command to love one another.

The Common Denominator
The first step to loving one another is remembering where we all came from. In First Corinthians 6:9b-11, Paul reminds us of the fact of our common redemption: “Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our Lord.”

We are all Christ-bought sinners! That’s the beauty of Christian community—our partaking in the church is not about our contribution, but about Christ’s uniting us through His blood. The sooner we take this truth to heart and put away the tacit segregations that divide us into “good,” “bad,” or “backslidden” categories, we can become a church ready for God to use. As C.S. Lewis put it through one of his characters in The Great Divorce, “That's what we all find when we reach [heaven]. We've all been wrong! That's the great joke. There's no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.”

Rejoicing in the Privilege
If we can’t live in love toward one another in the church—as 1 John 3:18 says, not “with word or tongue, but in deed and truth”—it’s no wonder that the rest of the world has serious doubts about the legitimacy of our faith. The first step to an effective witness is an abiding appreciation of our own fellow partakers in grace. That’s what has always made Christ’s teaching unique—He said that we would be known by our love for one another (John 13:35), not our achievements, adherence to morality, or relevance.

We need to experience a paradigm shift in the way we view our fellow believers and what it means to be a church together. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer addressed this in his 1939 book, Life Together, stating that we should enter into Christian community “not as demanders but as thankful recipients.” He went on to say that “We thank God for giving us those who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily.... It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.” Bonhoeffer’s call to viewing membership in the Body of Christ as a privilege should wake us. That’s why oppressed believers can rejoice so vibrantly—they are acutely aware of the tremendous cost that Christ paid so that we may have intimate fellowship with Him and with each other! Here’s where it gets sticky, though—the issue is not some intangible philosophical concept about global church unity or an argument against the proliferation of denominations. This is about you and me and our local church bodies.

Where Do We Go From Here?
Working out the teaching of love for another “in deed and truth” to a congregation is a huge undertaking because the love John is speaking of only comes from Christ’s transformation of our hearts.

What does it mean to love in truth? In practical terms, we need to cultivate intentional, continual fellowship with those in our church, to the end of deepening our relationships to Christ and to one another. The “truth” aspect almost solely comes over time through devoted relationships that carry us beyond the one or two relatively “sanitized” church meetings each week (where we so often operate behind a façade of spiritual contentedness) and into our daily lives. If God is concerned about all of our lives, so should we as believers be concerned with the lives of our fellow men.

One of the best ways this is played out is through small groups meeting together regularly outside of Sunday worship services. Such gatherings over time give participants a chance to truly know each other, to cultivate relationships, sharpen each other’s knowledge of the Word, to practice the “one-anothers” of Scripture and, above all, to exhort one another to seek God’s glory. Intentionally meeting together is much more important in an era when many church members drive long distances to attend services—in other words, congregations aren’t necessarily a part of each other’s lives outside of church anymore, so we need to make the effort to bond together in Christ.

In bringing church members closer together in Christ, small groups also help in developing a church’s attitude toward the community at large. Often, groups in my church will start ministering to the people around them in practical ways that a more “organized” church program never could. By simply working toward a true fellowship with other Christians, we are awakened to the need to be the salt and light to everyone else around us as well.

Churches with vibrant congregational life beyond Sunday worship almost always have a more vibrant congregational dynamic on Sunday morning, too. These churches, by seeking to love one another, are often the most ready to respond to community needs, the most willing to reach out to non-believers, and the most willing to take bold steps for God. This fact is too important to ignore. Unless our congregations are willing to submit to one another in love and the common gratitude of redemption, the other aspects of our church life will not flourish. The privilege of communion with one another is a crucial aspect of God’s design for our time on earth; we forget that at our own peril. When we honor that, however, we draw closer to His will in our whole walk.

Boasting . . .

What does it mean to boast in Christ?

It certainly has nothing to do with "overcoming" or "living the victorious Christian life". It probably doesn't even have anything to do with "Christian service" or "worship" as commonly understood today. It's really not even anywhere near the discussing of our spiritual experiences with one another or speaking of what "Jesus has done for/taught me" of late or of shouting out a "praise" in the prayer-request session (as I have at points past fuzzily understood it).

Boasting in Christ must simply mean one thing (though it's rather multifaceted) - the total amelioration of self into the person and message of the Lord. It means realizing the utter (and oft-repeated) truth of Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me." It means daily arising and remembering that it's not about me; remembering to pray as John the Baptist that Christ would increase and I would decrease. It means remembering that I offer nothing to God that wasn't already His; that any and all good that comes through me flows from His grace.

As Paul says in II Corinthians 10:17-18, "But 'He who boasts is to boast in the Lord.' For it is not he who commends himself that is approved, but he whom the Lord commends."

The last verse of "How Deep the Father's Love for Us" by Stuart Townend puts it further into the simplest of terms:

"I will not boast in anything;

No gifts, no power, no wisdom.

But I will boast in Jesus Christ,

His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer.

But this I know with all my heart:

His wounds have paid my ransom."

Folks, it ain't about us!

Counting Heads or Changing Hearts?

By Justin Lonas

One of the primary factors that defines who we are at Pulpit Helps is our focus on small churches, implicitly or explicitly. It’s what makes us unique.

In truth we shouldn’t be as unique as we are; small churches represent a massive demographic that is largely untapped by the Christian publishing industry. According to a 2003 Barna Group poll, approximately 60 per cent of American Protestant churches have fewer than 100 people in attendance each Sunday (while only 2 per cent attract 1,000 or more), and just over 40 per cent of American churchgoers attend those small churches.

In an era where numerical (and financial) growth seems to be the driving force behind most churches’ development, however, small churches are often viewed as inferior, unsuccessful, and even unspiritual. Because they lack the programs and services of larger congregations, they are often stereotyped as irrelevant. This is, more often than not, an untrue indictment. Still, many churches (large and small) have taken it to heart, leaving many small churches thinking that they must grow or die.

We need to ask ourselves why our first instinct for a church or ministry that starts and begins to fill a successful role is to expand it. As a society, we feel as though anything that is not growing is automatically receding. While this may be true in terms of business and finance, the same measurements cannot be applied to dealings with people.

Think back to the Great Commission. Christ’s command was to make disciples. As I brought out in an article in the February issue (“Remembering the Great Commission”), the sense of the command is that it is a process, not an event. We can’t allow a focus on church size to supplant our true mission. There is a great temptation to focus on rapid and highly visible numerical growth instead of the gradual and internal nature of disciple-making. When we hold up growth as the higher goal, we believe it’s somehow better to reach a large number of people at a cursory level than it is to reach a few very deeply and effectively.

The small church is uniquely equipped to make a move away from prevalent “dog & pony show” methods of growth and focus on cultivating a Christian community that builds real disciples.

Numerical growth can be a good thing, too, when it happens for the right reasons. From 1998-2006, I attended a Christian & Missionary Alliance church in North Carolina that grew from around 250 to 1,200 in weekly attendance in a matter of 3-4 years as the pastor made a decision to be less focused on “doing church” and more focused on sound, exegetical, expositional preaching and missions. The church never did anything specifically directed at “growth”—the pastor faithfully preached the Word and people came in the midst of the spiritual growth of our members.

Such Spirit-directed growth should be our only desire in terms of church size. Any growth pattern aimed simply at increasing a church’s numbers instead of a comprehensive focus on the spiritual health of the body can lead to stagnation and a loss of vision. People that come to a church that’s reaching out to them won’t stick around if the “advertised product” isn’t delivered. Sustained growth requires a commitment to the Word and to the church community.

We need to let that pattern of growth in Christ determine our outreaches, programs, services, etc. How we understand the importance of church growth will ultimately determine how we approach many areas of the Christian walk. If missions is about head-counting, then we don’t need to be actively involved when we hear such encouraging reports from the field. It’s enough to give occasionally and pray when we remember to. If evangelism and discipleship is about head-counting, distributing tracts, street preaching, and big-tent meetings out to have conquered the world for Christ long ago.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. We have to be committed to Christ and let our numbers rise and fall as He moves people. If we are faithful to His model of disciple-making, our numbers won’t matter.

While I do want to encourage our readers in small churches, we also have to remember that just because a church is small doesn’t mean it’s fulfilling its role as a community of disciple-makers. Whether your church has 50 members or 5,000, the success of your ministry has to hinge on how well you’re following Christ’s example (i.e.—how the fruits of the Spirit are worked out in your congregation). Is your church going to be in the business of counting heads or of changing hearts?

Living in the Tension of Death: Lessons from the Three Days in the Grave

By Amanda Held

We will never be able to experience Good Friday as the disciples did. We can call it “Good” Friday because we know the end of the story- that in three days, Jesus was alive again.

I never realized until someone pointed it out to me that the disciples had absolutely no hope of resurrection in their minds. Because they we so dense, (as dense as I am most of the time) and did not understand the teachings of Jesus concerning His death, the crucifixion seemed to be the end of the story, the failure of the Messiah, of maybe even God Himself. For years, they had given their lives for this man and His purpose. And now it was over and utterly unsuccessful.

I remember my grandfather’s funeral, the finality of it all. Nothing in me entertained the possibility of him climbing up out of that coffin. We laid flowers and drove away, never to see him again. Such is death.

Our inability to recognize and live in the knowledge of the end of the story, failure to see the big picture—this, in my opinion, is what usually lies at the heart of our despair. The disciples were lost, caught up in the darkness and hopelessness of the moment. Like them, blind to the wonderful work God is doing in His own time, I am a slave to the immediate. What is going on, what I am feeling in this immediate moment, often takes on the guise of eternality. It looms and threatens with the lie that this is all there is, that my whole life will be this way. It becomes my entire story.

I often wonder why God waited those three days. Wasn’t Jesus simply aching to get out of that grave? Perhaps God wanted to teach the disciples something about living in the tension of uncertainty. They needed to learn trust the hard way, needed to learn how to find hope in a hopeless situation. Indeed, they were completely shocked by the resurrection, as shocked as I would be if my grandfather came walking through the door.

It was so unbelievable to them that Thomas even insisted on touching the scars before he accepted it. I, too, am astounded when God works miracles in my life, when He resolves difficult situations, or brings me out of sadness. I get so caught up in the fear of the moment that I can’t even believe it when the storm clears. The thing is, He never does it on my time or in the way I would have expected. You see, God has a much greater purpose than my comfort and a much better story to tell with my life than one of ease and profit.

This Easter, I encourage you to consider the Saturday between Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Perhaps it is very familiar to you. Perhaps it is much like the place you are walking through right now in your life. What does God have to teach you before He rolls that stone away? Most of all, remember that you know the end of the story.

He is risen! There is victory in Christ!