1.26.2009

Won't you be their neighbor too?

I feel like we as Christians are going about the issue of abortion in a very destructive manner. We agree on many levels abortion is wrong, but we also know that it just isn’t that black and white. Grey areas have to be addressed such as, incest and rape and mental/physical disabilities. I don’t think it’s just as easy as we are making it out to be. These women who are faced with raising a disabled child alone or raising the child who was conceived by their rape are scared, and they have every right to be scared. They need our community, not our condemnation.

Anti-abortion groups who only picket and complain seek for our funding and we give it to them. They picket and complain in the name of God. We fund their group in the name of God. What is so Godly about picketing complaining?

In the book of Luke Jesus tells a Lawyer to love his neighbor as himself. But what does that look like? Who is your neighbor? Jesus proceeds to tell a story about a man who is robbed and beaten while traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. The men who rob him leave the man half dead on the side of the road. A few people notice him as they are walking this road, but they pass by him on the other side (a priest, and Levite.) But a Samaritan man took compassion on the man and bandaged his wounds and took him to a motel and paid the manager to take care of the man. Jesus then asks the lawyer who of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers? The Lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus then tells the Lawyer to go and do likewise.

Jesus didn’t call us to pass by the oppressed. He called us to get involved in the lives of the broken. This requires giving of our resources, which can include both time and money. Jesus didn’t call us to picket and complain.

What would it look like if we took all of the money being given to anti-abortion rights activists and started using the money to help us open our homes to these women who are in desperate need of love and community? It’s time to start acting like a community. It’s time to get a little dirt on our white collars.