Lament at the Slaughter of the Innocent

I guess a new planned parenthood video came out yesterday, to little or no outcry. So maybe it’s not that big a deal, what’s going on. Maybe the few who are fussing should take their outrage elsewhere. I don’t know what to think about this phenomenon. Ten videos are released of adult people talking in detail about the dismembering of live infants, both inside and outside of the womb, and not only is the outrage Not Enough to bring about immediate political change, in many cases, all over the public sphere, having ceded the argument about when life begins, there is no great sadness over the loss of it. I am completely astounded by the lack of public sorrow.

I know there are hearings going on in congress about Planned Parenthood. I see news of them filtered gently through my carefully controlled, neatly sanitized Facebook newsfeed. From all that I can glean, it is completely a matter of Who Cares Anyway but I’m hoping to be wrong and that the hearings will lead somewhere.

If I, as a Christian, sound alarmist, it’s because I am alarmed. I am appalled. I am shocked. You cannot kill lots and lots and lots and lots of babies and be in a good place with a holy and just God. I understand that most people don’t believe in a God who is holy and just, that God has been refashioned to affirm each individual human choice. I see that we have suppressed, culturally, the knowledge that we have. I understand. Nevertheless, there he is, in his holiness, and here we are, in the most foul, stinking, appalling slaughter. It’s not that we need to wait for some kind of judgment, judgment has already come. The fact of the collective sigh of uninterest is a sign that God isn’t bothering to intervene and that means we are being allowed to do what we want. Having hardened our own hearts, for thirty or more years, God is stepping in to harden them the rest of the way. Don’t believe me? Take a glance at the bible. Or just wait. We can all just wait a little more. Time will tell what God thinks about all this.

And while we’re waiting the autumn leaves will fall. The cold crisp days of winter will fast approach. We will shop for Christmas. We will go to work and amuse ourselves on the weekends. We will carry on in the usual way even as, in the very midst of our towns, our suburbs, our cities, woman after woman has the life torn out of her and shipped off to some lab for someone to laugh at. The time we have would be better spent rushing into the street to tear the garment and pour ash on the head, to cry out for mercy, for the stinging pain of sorrow over sin to be restored to the human mind. May it be so. May God have mercy. May he have mercy.