Lives Worth Contending For

by Jojo Ruba - faithbeyondbelief.ca

A few days before my 37^th birthday, I was at the University of Calgary handing out pro-life literature to students as they passed by.  I was part of a display put on by students who want to talk about abortion with their classmates.  Having engaged university students all across Canada, I thought I’d be used to their reactions: Some take the information, while others ignore us. Many come and talk to us or just stare at the pictures on our display.

But I wasn’t prepared for what one student said as he passed by. Whispering under his breath to a buddy, he looked at our display and said, “Why are those people here? What’s that middle-aged man doing on our campus?”

My first reaction was of course to look around to see which middle-aged man he was referring to. But realizing that I was the oldest pro-lifer at the display, I knew that he had to be talking about me.

Putting aside a wounded ego, his comment got me thinking: what was I doing on a university campus at my age? Most of my peers are already working their normal 9 to 5 jobs while raising their own children, not talking to young adults about their reproductive choices.   

Besides, many Christians argue that dealing with issues like abortion or homosexuality are “political” issues that have little to do with the “spiritual issues” of sharing or defending the faith.  As one Christian Facebook commentator recently told me, it’s none of our business to judge people outside the church.

But that kind of thinking ignores a simple truth: God, if He is God, is God of everything and everyone. That means he has something to say about all the issues that affect us – including our sexuality and the personal choices we make.  When Christians abandon publically discussing issues just because they are also in the political arena, we deepen an already wide chasm in the minds of most Canadians: that religious values can provide no reasonable guide to how we should live.

Some Christians justify this chasm by stating that we can’t impose Christianity on others – and that’s true in a sense. As Evangelicals, we believe that we are to evangelize by telling others of the gospel so that they can accept it. Any conversions by force of law would then be false. But that speaks to what CS Lewis said about divorce. There are some morals we just can’t legislate, even if as Christians we know that these morals would be for our benefit.  Banning homosexuality or birth control creates laws we simply can’t enforce.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t speak on those issues. Christians have to demonstrate that the Biblical worldview has something to say about these issues because God cares enough to tell us how we should live. And that’s at the heart of Christian apologetics: that there is no chasm between our day-to-day lives and the God of the Bible – He is immensely practical and personal.

More importantly, it isn’t the case that we can’t expect non-Christians to act like Christians – at least on the most important of moral truths. We expect non-Christians to obey laws against murder, theft or rape just as much as we expect Christians to and those laws have their genesis in the Pentateuch.  In fact Western society as a whole is founded on moral ideas that have been heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian thought.

If laws did not reflect the idea that human beings are inherently valuable and their freedoms worth protecting, then Western society as a whole would collapse.  Even the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms acknowledges the supremacy of God. Why? Because human rights can only be universal rights if they are grounded in eternal values that are not limited to time, space or the current will of the majority. Otherwise, what we have in law aren’t “rights”, just wants or needs that government has no duty to respect.

This is why Christians need to talk about issues like abortion. The debate, as political as it has become, touches on two foundational ideas that form the crux of western society: that moral truths matter and that one of those moral truths is that human life is inherently valuable.

Anyone engaging in an abortion discussion with the average Canadian, especially on a university campus, will learn right away how these ideas are questioned. In fact, at the U of C display, often the first thing I had to explain to students was that pro-lifers are making objective moral claims not preference once.  Several students said that I had no right to tell people what to believe. Of course, I simply responded that they were doing the very same thing with that statement!

What is more disturbing is that an environment where all moral or religious claims are regulated to “personal preference” can never fully grasp the historical claims of Jesus. In other words, Christians can’t evangelize if we don’t learn how to explain what moral truth is to our culture and why it still matters. Talking about issues like abortion or homosexuality help us do that.

In fact, when we don’t know how to explain the truth of what we believe, Christians themselves struggle. A recent study of over 2000 Canadian young people found that the majority of those who leave the church are upset with their church’s position on homosexuality. [1]  In other words, homosexuality has become a spiritual stumbling block to many believers, whether churches deal with it or not.

But much more grave is that as soon as moral beliefs become mere preferences, then every moral idea, including the one that values human life, become arbitrary too. The abortion debate crystallizes that problem perfectly.

Remember, the Bible never says when human life begins. It doesn’t say that preborn children are human persons just like born persons. But neither does it say that Dutch people or that disabled people are valuable human persons either. Rather it is biology, not the Bible that tells us that we are all members of the human family, including preborn children.

What the Bible does tell us is that every human life made in God’s image and every human being is therefore valuable to God. No one has a right to take a human life except God, who gave us life. If human beings aren’t valuable, then there would no basis for evangelism or apologetics.  The belief that God has endowed humanity with special value as we are made in His image is the reason why sin is so egregious and why our salvation is so necessary.

Yet, when I chat with students at U of C or even their parents on Canadians streets, the idea that all human beings are valuable is questioned.  They believe that a person’s life can be taken away based on their circumstance (a product of rape or finances) or simply because their mother does not want them. Now many of these arguments are raised because they don’t believe preborn children are persons. But that’s not the case always. Many are willing to say that they would kill or be killed based on such subjective criteria. One American student once told me that she wished she were aborted to avoid the pain of being sold by her mother for drugs.

And that’s exactly where Peter’s words on apologetics rings true: that we are to provide good reasons for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15). When Christians ignore debating issues like abortion and homosexuality, we ignore the people who are struggling and searching for hope.

Our blog coalition put this series of blogs together because we believe the Christian worldview is comprehensive – that God is sovereign in all areas of our lives.  More than that, we believe His plans for humanity are always for our best and for our protection. His laws matter because they reflect how much our lives matter to Him. Even if we don’t expect all human laws to reflect such truths, we do expect that people still need to hear those truths.

It’s the same reason why I was at U of C a few days before my birthday. Hearing that young man ask what I was doing there reminded me that we speak out in the public arena, including on-line, because his life, and the life of all Canadians, matter to God. Theirs are lives worth contending for.

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[1] [1] Hemorrhaging Faith: Why and When Canadian Young Adults are Leaving, Staying and Returning to Church, James Penner, Rachael Harder, Erika Anderson, Bruno Désorcy and Rick Hiemstra, 2012.

Living in Colour: Recovering After an Abortion

Living in Colour: Recovering After an Abortion
By: McKenzie Hahn - http://blog.faithbeyondbelief.ca/

For those who are trying to put their lives back together months or years after an abortion, and can’t seem to get that grasp on life that they had beforehand: I understand. My own abortion 6 years ago did not get me that shiny, happy ending that I was promised in the counseling room at the clinic. I thought I would go on living as if I was, indeed, never pregnant. And I did…until I saw the abortion images two years later. The gravity of what I had done hit me like a truck, and I felt what would be described to me later as two emotions – guilt, and underneath that, grief.

Of course, my emotions hadn’t made sense immediately afterwards. I rode the high of relief as long as possible. I ignored the bad feelings and minimized them, thinking that I had aborted “early enough” to not really be dealing with anything worth grieving over. But we can only live that way for so long before we start limiting the amount of emotions we may feel to avoid feeling bad. As a result, I began to live in a neutral zone where the full rainbow of emotions and their expressions simply don’t exist. I turned off. I shut down, and lived in a grey no-man’s land, often in punishment where I became my own functional saviour responsible for the redemption of my situation.

Maybe you are feeling the same way, maybe you are a pro-life Christian now and don’t know how to not feel like a hypocrite. To you let me say: you will ALWAYS be the parent of your baby. ALWAYS. And they need to be grieved, for their sake and for yours. If we don’t grieve, we deny their humanity a second time, and refuse to live the life that Christ calls us to. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Rest in forgiveness. At the first sound of the word grief, my hackles immediately went up. “Grieve?! But I’m responsible!”

What I needed to do was to rest in real forgiveness – not the kind that depends on what you “deserve”, you approving of abortion, excusing it, minimizing it, denying it, or feeling sorry for yourself in punishment. Rather, what I needed was to know that forgiveness was something I embraced because I was guilty. This particular presentation changed my life and understanding of bitterness and forgiveness: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPNmzeoAWRI&list=PLNpxu2hC80H0ER5gPpzKWDKMfFhciWfk3.

Some of you may not be Christians, and in that case, I encourage you to read a lot on the Christian worldview to understand why biblical forgiveness is such a powerful truth that will free you.

2. Tell a trustworthy friend, or better yet, a counselor, what you’re going through. I fought this one – hard. And I didn’t want to seem weak or vulnerable so I tried to hide how much I was falling apart. But if you are like me, you will most likely come to a place where you cannot express what you are thinking or feeling, and you will get angry. You might think that you can fake it alone, but this means you need someone to walk through it with you. It’s better to do this early and give them a heads-up rather than spring it on someone in the middle of the deep pain. They need to be someone compassionate who’s also okay with not being able to fix someone else’s pain.

3. Have a safe space to process things, and allot time to think and grieve. Setting aside even ten minutes each day to just be safe, kept me from losing it. Doing that prevented me from melting down in a grocery store once because I knew I could curl up on my couch later. It seemed silly at first but I appreciated it later.

4. Get to know your triggers and decision-making process. A trigger is something that connects you back to your abortion experience and causes unpredictable emotional reactions. In a hurting mental state, it’s best to avoid these for the time being so you can focus your energy getting to the roots of your reactions rather than just reacting. I found mapping out my life and all its major events helpful in seeing how I react to things.

5. Kill your ego. Grieving is messy. It’s supposed to be. You will also be asked to do things in counseling that will seem silly at first which you will think are brilliant later. Stay open, and go in with as few expectations as you can manage. It will make the grieving process even harder if you resist it out of pride.

6. Find a solid post-abortive ministry. Mine was the Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre, where I met other women who had made the same decision. We worked through “Living in Color” by Jenny McDermid, which helped me grieve. While there were parts I didn’t like, and would have appreciated a bigger emphasis on objective truth, I found this incredibly helpful and healing as my understanding of what actually led to my choices (not how I wished I made them) and watched my beliefs about my abilities – and my relationship with my aborted daughter – changed and transformed.

7. Buy Kleenex, then find something physical to do to let off steam in a healthy way, and get materials to be creative. Blank paper, canvas, crafting materials, markers, pens, paint, camera. You’ll need all of these at some point.

8. Learn how to grieve. You are allowed to grieve your child. It’s that simple. This will mean relearning colors of emotions like red-hot anger, deep blue sadness, warm affection, sickly fear, overcast doubt, bright and shiny eagerness, painful hurt, giddy happiness, grey boredom, multicolored confusion, black disappointment, and heart-wrenching sorrow, and you will need healthy channels to express them. Your safe place will be a helpful resource during this time.

If you consider yourself pro-choice on abortion but open-minded, please take a look at three resources:

1. The Endowment for Human Development, a site that gives facts on human biology (www.ehd.org)
2. World-class author and debater Scott Klusendorf’s amazing website which provides a powerful secular case for the pro-life view (www.caseforlife.com). For a Canadian resource, check out unmaskingchoice.ca and
3. Abortion survivor Gianna Jessen’s address to Australian Parliament (www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPF1FhCMPuQ).

If you are facing an unplanned or complicated pregnancy, please know that there are people who love and care for you, who can give you and your baby everything you both need to get through this season. The Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre http://www.pregcare.com is an outstanding resource. If you’re outside our city and reading this, http://www.optionline.org offers contacts for support in your area.

Finally, for anyone who knows someone who’s had an abortion, the above information might be some help to you. Generally speaking though, those of us who’ve faced abortion simply need your presence – to just sit and listen, to offer the above resources when necessary, to allow us to process things and not get frustrated when we feel things we don’t have words for just yet. Oftentimes it will feel like we are a black box you cannot see into, and that’s ok. The light will shine again, and with it will finally come color.

The Orwellian World of the Secular Left

The Loss of Liberty and the Twisting of Language
By: J. Luis Dizon - http://dmpatrium.org/

George Orwell’s landmark novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, depicts a totalitarian state named Oceania that arises out of the ashes of the post-war-free world. The state has become a god unto itself, as personified by the omnipresent face of “Big Brother” and the all-seeing eye of the state’s telescreens (giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “the walls have ears”).

As though he were a prophet of God, Orwell’s novel describes with frightening accuracy the agenda of the Secularist proponents of Modern Liberalism,[1] in terms of its worldview, goals and methods. Ideas such as “doublethink,” “thought-crime,” and “newspeak” characterize the propaganda and argumentation of Secular Left, and we see this in the many ways the Left has influenced Canadian society, resulting in the erosion of its historic Christian foundations.

Freedom is Slavery

In Nineteen Eight-Four, the state of Oceania runs according to an ideology called “Ingsoc” (short for “English Socialism”). Under this ideology, the state controls every aspect of its citizens’ lives, right down to what time you wake up in the morning and what your morning exercises are. Right to privacy does not exist, as the state has telescreens and other monitoring devices in every room and street corner, giving them virtual omniscience and zero freedom to the individual. Furthermore, the state completely controls the children, imparting its values onto them through its schools and children’s programs. A child’s loyalty to the state overrides their loyalty to their own parents, such that children are encouraged to denounce their parents and report them to the authorities if they are caught saying or doing anything contrary to the state’s ideology.

This is exactly how the Secular Left operates. Because their worldview does not operate with the God of the Bible in view, they end up deifying the state (the Communist regimes of the twentieth century being the most blatant examples of this, although it happens in more subtle ways as well). Therefore, the state has the right to remake its citizens according to its own image. By and large, Secular Humanists often advocate a form of left-wing politics that is based on increasing the size and scope of government, giving it control over aspects of its citizens’ lives that do not otherwise belong under its jurisdiction. In Orwellian terms: “Freedom is Slavery.” Writing for the American Thinker, Marvin Folkertsma notes:

Orwellian liberalism assumes that citizens’ own decisions to live their lives pretty much as they please constitute slavery to someone or another in a so-called “free country,” which is why Big Brother in the form of the nanny state is becoming so enormous, so oppressive.[2]

As an example of this, we see how the state enforces its own brand of ethics via the sex-education and LGBT awareness programs in schools. If parents object to what is taught, they have no right to opt their children out of these programs or even be notified when objectionable material is taught. The recent case of Steve Tourloukis of Hamilton is a good example of this. He requested advance notice of when the school his children go to would teach material that contradicts his moral views. This request was denied, even though he had the right to such information under the Education Act, the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[3] Yet because the state-run school board sees itself as being responsible for moulding the values of the youth, it will override the rights of parents over their own children.

This control over citizens’ lives extends even in the area of thought. When a certain belief is branded “hate,” to express that belief in speech or writing becomes a punishable offense. This is what Orwell refers to as “thoughtcrime,”i.e. ideas that are contrary to the ideology of the secular status quo. This is epitomized in Canada by the Human Rights Commissions, which routinely punish individuals for perceived “hate crimes,” according to its own definition of what that means.[4]

The Manipulation of Facts

Even though Secular Leftists seek to take away freedom and impose its will upon everyone, it is frightening how many people go along willingly with their agenda. This is because the Left manipulates the truth via the media and the public education system in order to win the impressionable over to their cause.

This is another tactic that comes straight out of Nineteen Eight-Four. In the novel, the party controls all the information. If they want to make up statistics and historical facts out of thin air, they can do so, and nobody can contradict them. They also run “Two Minutes’ Hate” sessions where citizens are encouraged to hurl all of their derision upon the state’s designated enemies.

Similarly, our educational institutions (which are largely controlled by these Liberal Secularists) suppress ideas that run counter to their agenda, punishing academics who attempt to express contrary viewpoints. Also, the Secular Left is able to spin things so that they are the total opposite of what they really are. For example, they claim that Christianity has historically denied people their human rights, and that even today, Conservative Christians want to punish people for what they do in their bedrooms. This is false, of course; Christians are out to do no such things. On the contrary, the Liberals want to make everyone pay for others’ illicit sexual acts via the forced subsidising of birth control, abortions and sex-change surgeries—never mind the violations of conscience that results from this.

Also, the claim that Christianity has historically oppressed people is also false. Historically, the Christian Church has been the greatest advocate of human rights. The early church saved those infants that would have been killed through infanticide. The abolition of slavery in the 19th century was made possible by Evangelical Christians such as William Wilberforce, John Newton and John Brown. The great missionary William Carey helped to bring about the abolition of the practice of widow-burning in India. These are just a few examples of how Christianity has brought about the advancement of human rights throughout the world.[5] Furthermore, Christianity, through its teaching that all human beings are made in God’s image (cf. Genesis 1:26-28) provides a stable foundation for human worth and dignity. As Francis Schaeffer once noted, man “is … wonderful as God made him in His image. Man has value because of who he was originally before the Fall.”[6] Because Secular Humanism can provide no such basis, a system built upon a secular worldview is doomed to result in an erosion of human rights.

They have also mastered the “Two Minutes’ Hate” by inciting Leftist activists and protestors to mindlessly chant slogans and rage against those who express support for protecting the unborn or preserving the family the way God has designed it. Just label someone a “bigot,” “racist,” “sexist,” or any number of pejorative terms, and the mobs will react in a pre-programmed manner against their targets. One is strongly reminded of Ivan Pavlov’s dogs, which were conditioned to salivate whenever they hear a bell ring. In the same way, the way that many in the current generation react when such words are thrown about in the public square is not at all rational, but is totally Pavlovian, resulting from the conditioning that has resulted from a thoroughly secularised media and educational system.

Newspeak and Doublethink

The most pernicious form of thought control that the Left engages in is the manipulation of words. Historian Conyers Read has said, “Words are weapons, often the most dangerous type of weapons.”[7] In winning hearts and minds, nothing is more important than framing the terms of the debate. Do that, and you’ve won half the battle. This is done by defining words in such a way that they convey whatever one wants them to mean.

This is just like what Orwell described as “Newspeak.” This is the artificial language that the state produced by changing the meanings of words, removing words from the vocabulary and destroying the ability of people to express contrary thoughts in the proper words. This results in what Orwell called “doublethink” i.e. the holding of two contradictory ideas, or saying one thing and meaning another. This is exemplified by the party slogan: “War is peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”

We see the Secular Left creating its own brand of Newspeak by how it has twisted words such as “equity,” “diversity,” “anti-racism,” and “unity”—the Left’s favourite glittering generalities. Often, these words are taken to mean the opposite of what they really mean. Even the very word “Liberalism” has been subjected to Newspeak. Classical Liberalism denoted respect for individuals’ right to order their own lives and conduct their own businesses free from extortionate taxation and regulation—the very ideals Modern Liberals are seeking to destroy. In a very ironic way, there is nothing more illiberal than Modern Liberalism.

As another example, they will define “tolerance” in such a way that they will be shown no tolerance for those whose opinions differ from theirs, all the while accusing the other side of being intolerant. They will define “diversity” and in such a way that those who hold to traditional moral values are excluded. Pro-life, pro-family, pro-capitalist and other such views are neither tolerated nor accepted in this society of “tolerance” and “diversity.” Such twisting of words is not a new phenomenon. The prophet Isaiah once spoke those who even in his day twist words in such a manner:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! (Isaiah 5:20-21, ESV)

If the Orwellian twisting of words was taking place even in the days of the Old Testament prophets, then we truly see a confirmation of the fact that there is nothing new under the sun, as Solomon once stated (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:9). The Bible states in so many places and in so many ways that the human heart is desperately wicked, and will corrupt the truth by any means necessary.

A Time for Action

Conyers Read posed this question before the American Historical Association:“In the end, we assure ourselves, the truth will prevail. But what about in the meantime?”[8] The answer is that those of us who are Christians must resist the Orwellian onslaught of the Secular Left and fight and bring back clarity and sanity to public discourse. We must reclaim those words that the Secular Left has re-defined. Tolerance, equity, diversity—these are perfectly good words, and we must not allow Leftists to take them from us. Furthermore, we must not allow them to label us. We are none of the things they often accuse us of being. The Christian worldview is the worldview of love, tolerance, and justice—when these terms are understood properly. Christians are to change the world, in accordance with Christ’s command for us to be salt and light to the world (Matthew 5:13-16). We are light in the sense that we bring clarity to discussion, and act as salt in the sense that we help to preserve the moral fabric of society, thus protecting it from the erosion of freedom and morals that Liberalism is bringing to bear upon us all.
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[1] This term used is in opposition to Classical Liberalism, which ironically is the exact opposite of Modern Liberalism. For convenience purposes, the word “Liberalism” will hereafter be used to refer to the latter, unless stated otherwise.

[2] Folkertsma, Marvin. “America’s Orwellian Liberalism.” American Thinker. Accessed September 15, 2012.http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/americas_orwellian_liberalism.html.

[3] “Hamilton dad takes school board to court over gay equity policy” Metro News. September 11, 2012.

[4] The HRCs’ abuses of freedom are well documented. The most thorough treatment of this issue can be found in Ezra Levant’s groundbreaking book,Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights (McClelland and Stewart, 2009).

[5] A more thorough treatment of this topic is provided by Rodney Stark in his book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2006).

[6] Shcaeffer, Francis A. Escape from Reason (London: InterVarsity, 1968), 21.

[7] Read, Conyers. The Social Responsibilities of the Historian. The American Historical Association, 1949.

[8] Read, The Social Responsibilities of the Historian.