This morning while driving into the office I heard an interesting story on the radio about glaciers in Oregon. Scientists have discovered a series of caves in a particular glacier. These caves give them unprecedented access to the interior of the ice. Prior to this they could only measure changes happening on the surface of the glacier, but now they can see what’s happening down below. Not surprisingly, their measurements show that the glacier is melting at an alarming rate. I don’t remember the specific numbers, but it is undeniable that the ice is receding – a further indication of the effects of climate change.
As I have written elsewhere on this blog site, I believe creation care is an important issue for Christians. We have an obligation to be good stewards of creation, which means we ought to take all reasonable steps to limit the negative consequences of our over-consumptive lifestyle. Reasonable Christians can have reasonable disagreements over the best strategies, but there can be no denying that we ought to exercise discipline and care when it comes to the use of the natural resources God has placed at our disposal.
But as important as that issue is, there was another story that captured my attention even more fully this morning. And this story was not reported on the morning news channel. I was not aware until this morning that today has been designated as the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity. All across the country, thousands of people are placing red duct tape across their lips as a sign of a vow of silence they have taken for the day. This is in recognition of the more than 3500 unborn children who are silenced every day because of abortion.
As with creation care, reasonable Christians can have reasonable disagreements over the best strategies for dealing with abortion, but there can be no disagreement that our God is definitively pro-life. He created life, and in the 6th commandment he strictly forbids us from taking it. This is exactly what abortion does, even though it does so in the name of such causes as “choice” or “convenience.”
As always there is no room here for self-righteousness. I believe that often times the women who have abortions are as much the victim as their unborn child. They find themselves in an incredibly difficult place where few good choices seem available, and us waving a finger of moral condemnation at them accomplishes nothing. That’s why I believe the best approaches to the issue are holistic; they seek to minister to the whole person, attempting to address the underlying social, economic, and spiritual issues that lead to abortion in the first place.
But our desire to avoid heavy-handed moralism should not lead to us be confused about the issue. Abortion may be morally complex, but it is not morally ambiguous. God is the author of life, and we who worship Him are called to honor it at every stage. I am not wearing red duct tape over my lips today, but I am committing today to pray for everyone affected by the trauma of abortion.