Saturday, March 24, 2007

Commenter's name: Rev. Don Spitz Email address: Glory2Jesus@ArmyofGod.com Commenting on: http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/2006/08/04.html#a122 I love it. "Against abortion? Don't have one". That's like, "Don't believe in shooting babykilling abortionists, then don't shoot one." SAY THIS PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I am a sinner and am headed to eternal hell because of my sins. I believe you died on the cross to take away my sins and to take me to heaven. Jesus, I ask you now to come into my heart and take away my sins and give me eternal life. SAY THIS PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I am a sinner and am headed to eternal hell because of my sins. I believe you died on the cross to take away my sins and to take me to heaven. Jesus, I ask you now to come into my heart and take away my sins and give me eternal life. # Dear Rev. Spitz, Not any relations to Mark (the Olympic swimming champion) are you? Just kidding. You don't really want to go into a battle without ammunition, do you? The hatred in your email is readily discerned. The line between purposely murdering someone whether they have a different political or religious bent is against the law, whilst abortion is not, and my blog was about what is legal and whether you still have options over abortion. Is your "army" of God here to take retribution upon those you consider sinners, or to promote a positive that teaches what abortion is about and the ramifications? I'm not going to say any prayer based on what you perceive, and if I do say a prayer it will only be FOR others, never for myself. I'd suggest however, that if you want to use Jesus in your prayers then you also disregard using the Old Testament for your salvation's sake and the "POP" value of supposedly straight from God's mouth hellfire scripture that belonged to the Hebrews. The Old Testament didn't offer you or me salvation, only fear. Jesus, however, did offer salvation. The Old Testament said it was just fine to own slaves and that one should stone an adulterer, which, of course, would mean that there wouldn't be a Jimmy Swaggart or a number of "fine" evangelical Christian preachers, now doesn't it. My point is that if you wish to try to stop abortion then educate people, but not just with the shock value of your images on your web home page. How about the psychological devastation often caused by the doubt of one's actions after an abortion? How about stepping up to the plate and placing as many babies that would be aborted into homes or creating community homes where all of those in the congregation have the opportunity to help in the lives and development of a child? There would be more church members running around than children if something like this were taken seriously. But it seems that the easy path is to preach against one thing rather than offering attractive positives such as Jesus would like to have seen, particularly with the poor. Jesus didn't use but one negative in his preachings, and that was in his expression of contempt for the loss of the sanctity of the temple, the condemnation of the money changers and lamenting the loss of true leadership in his father's house. You know, it isn't lost on a lot of us that Jesus said he was a fisher of men, for I'm pretty certain that it takes more finesse to capture fish than herd sheep. Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate whether one should be monitoring other people's morality, or checking one's own. When it comes down to that last rattling breath, it is only you and what's beyond and if that is something one fears then perhaps the totality of it all isn't what you've done nor how you've done it, but what is truly in your heart. This is one reason why I don't hold to the tenet that one can have a deathbed confession and have all of their sins absolved in the Catholic perception of Christianity. Leading and preaching, in my humble view, are not the same thing. Jesus led and explained what he meant with parable. Most preachers are just preaching and from what I've heard the hyperbole of preaching just doesn't come up to the level Jesus set by his own example. Why not set up anti-abortion clinics that offer prenatal care, psychological counseling and child placement? Why not advertise such an entity, offering both the guarantees of quality health and mental care for the full term child along with the anonymity and mental health of the birth parent? Tell me why, just a scant 50 years ago a backroom abortion was against the law (or any abortion) and somehow the tainting and ostracism of pregnant unmarried young women in trouble was perfectly acceptable to church going people? I can find the reason for the first whether it is Constitutionally flawed or not, but I can't seem to find anything in the New Testament that suggests anyone should be treated in such a way for getting pregnant yet having the child. Else, if community isn't part of the spiritual path, then why would families feel like they had to send young ladies off to some "aunt", and why wasn't there more accountability for the biological father of the child (other than statutory rape or straight rape, and where does this play into the family that has a sexually abusive father)? Or does one prescribe shotgun weddings that create a living hell here on earth not only for the adults but for the children due to an indiscretion rather than offering some level of hope? Or perhaps stoning is the correct answer? And wouldn't stoning be a form of abortion, whether pregnancy were known or not? Not to mention plain old murder. It appears to me that during my upbringing including a pastor who performed the marriage ceremonies for both my sister's weddings as well as mine (and he let me play the church organ after school as much as I wanted), that even God fearing communities like to have something they can point to that somehow makes them better than "those" people. This does NOT seem like a very Christian solution at all. Jesus didn't exclude anyone on his path. Those excluded do so themselves, and it seems to me that many profess to be on the path yet make the daily mistake of missing virtually all that Jesus taught. I don't mean to argue and I'm certainly not here to preach, but I will say that one cannot demand only ONE solution to a compound problem. When it is illegal to get an abortion, well, if it happens it is the law of the land and there are legal ramifications if caught. But when a young person makes a mistake and yet is ostracized for having made the mistake yet choosing to have the child, then the obvious thing is that there are no solutions for that person because no other solutions were provided. Unless one can offer a comprehensive and guaranteed method to combat all of the problems, one is just adding to the complexity of the problems. So you can show your pictures and lambaste me all you want. You can even try to sneak a prayer in there for me to say, but unless you know how to answer the more complex questions, or at least profess to a willingness towards coming up with complex answers for the complex questions, well, you've failed in your email to me. In the meantime, I hope that you have a better day than the 5,000 children that died in the time it took me to write this. And you know what? Not one of them died due to an abortion. 3:27:49 PM    comment []