If you wanted to build a good house in 2016, you might hire a building contractor to help you. After finding one, your first question might be, “How much will it cost to build a good house?” If your contractor has any experience at all he will respond with a wise, “That depends… if by ‘good house’ you mean one that is still standing in 2116, it will cost more.”
If accomplishing CompassCare’s mission in 2016 and beyond is the social equivalent to building a good house, it is important to understand what it will take; to count the cost. Jesus recommends this kind of self-reflection to his disciples in Luke 14:28-30: “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’”
CompassCare is counting the cost. While many women seriously considering abortion are having their babies and the abortion rate in Monroe County has plummeted 40%, we find ourselves asking what it will take to completely demolish the tower of abortion. To treat abortion as an isolated issue is equivalent to giving an antacid to a heart attack victim. The symptom of abortion will only dissipate if the disease is cured. So what is the disease and how can we cure it?
When a woman is considering an abortion her primary concerns are informed by the values her cultural home instilled. Culture tells her, “Get a degree, build your career, become financially secure, etc.” And if a baby doesn’t fit into the plan… abort. She is told if you have the baby you will have to abandon all your hopes and dreams. This cancerous cultural disease driving her abortion goes by several names and is best described as ‘godless individualism.’ (See this story on the back for an example of how this manifests itself with the women CompassCare serves).
To be serious about erasing abortion from our culture, we must guard against godless individualism infiltrating our daily decisions. If we are not careful, the same culture that causes women to consider abortion will influence our thinking about life and children too. This means that we must ensure our values and the way we live them out thoroughly align with the God-reflecting purpose of man, rather than materialistic pleasure-seeking. Abortion thrives in a culture adrift without vision, driven by the fickle winds of consumerism. The world says children are a burden. God says children are an eternal investment because each carries His image. Our lives and marriages ought to radiantly reflect God’s view. The cure for America’s social ills is for you and me to remember our purpose and thereby revive a Christian marriage culture.
Modern man’s god is their appetites, celebrating sterile sex as creation castaways sailing the wine dark sea on a ship called Slavery. Childbearing is now a consumer choice for consenting individual adults rather than the natural outcome of a comprehensive union between one man and one woman. Children are viewed as either a financial liability or an accessory to a chosen identity. This debilitating social disease has a cure…a healthy infusion of the sanctity of each human life. This recasting of society’s foundation can only be poured in the Christian home. Living our lives as dedicated husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers transfers and inspires the vision needed to destroy the cultural castle of godless individualism, surrounded by the dismal moat of abortion. And what is transferred? The belief that man is made just ‘a little lower than God’ (Psalm 8:5) and to love each other accordingly.
We all see our culture attacking the natural family like an auto-immune disease. Yet we cannot expect society to reject the delusional fictions of godless individualism unless we do so first in our families. For mankind to be loosed from the chains of inhumanity like abortion, Christians must sacrificially act out the Biblical beauty of marriage and child rearing. And as society returns to those happy Biblical norms, the death grip of the sexually confused will slip and abortion will dissolve as shadows run from the dawn.
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