Dear Friend,
Don’t roll your eyes just yet. This isn’t a stab at you. It’s not about rich, poor, or anything in between. It’s not a debate between Republican or Democrat, right versus left, liberal against conservative. It’s simply a conversation, one born out of love. I’ve watched my life change drastically over the past decade. I’ve considered myself a Christian who holds a personal relationship with Jesus for over [20] years, but my opinion on matters of the world has altered over the past few. It wasn’t some church indoctrination that made me change my mind, but rather the Word of God. As I became a regular reader of the Bible, meditating on [S]cripture for hours a day, my life just changed. My actions changed, how I treated people, how I loved others, and how I deciphered right from wrong. So if anything, consider this a Bible study between friends.
First, I would ask you to do me a favor. Settle your mind, and lay down personal emotions. Forget friends you know who went through whatever. Don’t think [about] personal experience or even emotion. Don’t let anger from past arguments cloud an open mind, and don’t allow issues beyond this one to come into play. Abortion isn’t about race, government assistance, political party, or socioeconomic status. It’s not about rape, incest, or genetic abnormalities. It’s not about adoption, the foster system, or child abuse. It’s not even about women’s rights, a misogynistic society, or discrimination against the female sex. I know you think it is, but those are all side-notes.
See, I’m not saying those things aren’t problems. They are. I believe black lives matter. I believe I have white privilege, and I believe my husband has more power in this world than I do. If we lined up a black man, me, and a white man for a job interview, and the white man was the least qualified, he’d probably get the job due to worldly prejudice that the hiring manager doesn’t even realize exists. I’ll probably get some disagreement from some of my more conservative friends, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’ve seen it in my own life, and I’ve even seen prejudice in my self when I look closely and honestly. So, all I’m saying is that the problems we bring into the topic of abortion are there. I’m not making light of them, but let’s not make something that is [simply] harder than it has to be. Complication is how Satan clouds truth. Truth is easy to see when we open our eyes. Let’s just have a conversation about abortion. The world says this is a tough subject, a hard discussion to have, because there’s too much to consider, but I say that’s not true. Abortion is about one thing. Life. Anything we try to bring into that is only clouding the truth. Abortion isn’t an issue. It is simply what it is. Murder. Now, may I tell you why?
See, I can totally understand people who are not Christian deciding to be Pro-Choice. They don’t understand the foundation of created life, how life can be more abundant despite circumstance, or how this life doesn’t matter as much as we think when held against eternity. To them most everything is meaningless. They don’t understand the Spirit that lives within us. Of course, they’re in favor of abortion. They don’t get the foundational truth of why human life matters, and why one isn’t better than another. But you, my friend. You break my heart. I love you, so much, but I cannot sit here and not proclaim the truth to you. The truth is, you cannot love Jesus and be Pro-Choice. You just can’t! Let me explain.
My husband and I had an interesting conversation the other day. We were discussing mistakes we had made in life. Now, realize we are not theologians, but we do have beliefs we have derived from [S]cripture. And while some of those beliefs may be an “I’ll have to ask God about that when I get to Heaven,” other ones are pretty clear per the Bible. Like, do not kill; that’s pretty clear. But what is life?
So, back to our conversation. We felt like God had us to be husband and wife, but we as young humans, having free will, slid off track. We both led sinful lives that didn’t put Jesus first, and we both entered marriages that were not right. They both ended in divorce and brokenness, something we know God didn’t have for us, but we also knew God worked all things for our good. One blessing that God had brought for my husband was his first daughter from his prior marriage. He did not regret having her, and he wouldn’t change being her dad. Yet he said something I found wonderful.
“You know,” he said, “I guess God would have brought Marlie into the world even if he didn’t do it through that marriage. He had her in mind before that.”
What he was saying is that God has each of us and our unique spirits in mind before we’re even conceived. Crazy, right, but it states this several times in [S]cripture.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. (Jeremiah 1:5)
We are more than flesh and blood, you see? In that vein, I could almost agree with those who claim a fetus is nothing but a clump of cells. Heck, I’m a clump of cells too, but what makes us more than that is the spirit God puts in us. It’s that spirit He knows before He even places us in the womb. It’s that spirit that gives us life. Our bodies will waste away and die, but our spirits will live on. When [an] abortion takes the body of a baby in its mother’s womb, I praise the Lord that the spirit of that child lives on in Heaven with Jesus, but I weep for the life it never was allowed here on earth. God gives us our spirit, and then He gives us the body to hold that spirit while here on earth. And in that body, we are given the opportunity to grow in knowledge, love for the Lord, and love for others. We are given this great chance to ready the world for the coming of Jesus a second time. We are afforded the time to make a decision to follow Christ and take joy in this earth He created. He made this world for us, and sin messed it up, but life here is a chance to accept the gift of Jesus that will one day end pain and suffering for us all, that will bring Heaven back to earth.
So, when you kill a baby in its mother’s womb you are robbing a soul of the opportunity to enjoy the gift of Jesus here on earth where they can grow into the knowledge and love of Christ. You’re stealing free will. You’re stealing salvation. You’re cutting off any chance that child would have of carrying out God’s will to make this world a better place until He comes back. You’re desecrating the temple God has placed a spirit within. You’re ripping apart, limb by limb, the body God forms in the womb, and the body He breathes His Spirit of life into. If you believe in Jesus, and you believe in God, you must follow His Word. It’s so clear.
Psalm 139:13-16 ESV
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
When you support a practice that rips a baby from the mother’s body, you support the murder of someone God foreknew, created, placed that spirit into, and planned out an entire, wonderful life for. It’s like you’re ripping pages out of His book for a life.
You may say that it’s not abortion you support, but rather the life of a mother to choose for her own body. I get how that makes you feel better. But you see, it’s like I mentioned before, no circumstance can change the fact that God’s Word states He knows us and forms us. He knew us before the beginning of time (hard to wrap your mind around, I know), and He creates our spirit (which gives us eternal life), and He places that spirit in a human being on a cellular level at conception. Then He gives a woman the opportunity to carry that life to fullness so he/she may fulfill the purpose God has for them. Women have the choice to let that life become complete as God intended, or they can make the choice to end it before it can do all the wonderful things God had in mind. I believe God is so all-knowing that He can work a life beyond the regrettable decisions we make, but who am I to cancel out what He begins? Who am I to not trust that He can work even the most horrendous circumstance into something beautiful? Who am I to think I should be God, that I should decide who gets to live and who cannot? Who are you to decide?