God really has said

Today marks the 40^th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. I often have to remind myself that abortion in America is not some bad dream, that people really do this horrible deed, right here, in the freest nation on earth. The abortion total since 1973 is approaching 55 million by abortion industry estimates.

There was a time a goodly number of Southern Baptists (and others) didn’t know much about the issue. That’s apparent from the essentially pro-choice resolutions SBC messengers passed, beginning in 1971 and continuing through the end of that decade (See the cover story in TEXAN Digital). Thankfully, the truth prevailed—as it always does—and most Baptists saw this wasn’t just a “Catholic issue.”

Over Christmas I asked my mother, a Great Depression-era baby, when it was that she first heard the term “abortion.” Must have been in the 1970s, she said. It didn’t come up in polite conversation and she’d never given it much thought until a film explaining what abortion was and why it mattered was shown at our church. By then, a conservative rally in the SBC, driven by a belief in the verbal (every jot and tittle) and plenary (from Genesis to Revelation) inspiration of scriptural autographs, was gaining steam, helped along no doubt by the abortion issue.

Weighed against passages such as Psalm 139, Genesis 1:27, and Luke 1:15 and 1:41, the killing of pre-born babies became anathema to those with a high view of Scripture.

Forty years after Roe and almost 30 years after the SBC turned the ideological rudder, what we make of God’s Word remains key in navigating not just the abortion issue but life itself. The truth that people are made in the image of a benevolent, transcendent God from the moment of conception affects every relational decision we make. It’s a worldview changer.

The great temptation has always been rooted in the question, “Has God really said?” The droves of marginally religious folk seem to wander in a foggy state as it pertains to truth, helped along by a mist in too many pulpits. No wonder a critical mass of Americans sheepishly look away as the showdown plays out over the federal government’s heavy-handed contraceptive and abortifacient mandate. No wonder they don’t have an answer when a fellow traveler remarks with zeal that “people should be able to marry who they want” without interference from government or religion. Has God really said?

Well, yes he has. And today’s abortion battle—and other contentions in the wider culture—require an apologetical element that begins in the Garden of Eden and the beauty of what should have been, springs forward to a gospel promise of what can be here and now, and then on to what will be when King Jesus makes all things new. I saw one writer refer to it as aspirational apologetics. I like that.

We owe our fellow citizens a wide-angle view of why we are pro-life: Namely, that each person is crafted and chiseled fearfully and wonderfully in the image of God. Such a view has deep, deep implications. All that to say: We still have a prophetic role to play and a sure Word to proclaim. God really has said.

This column first appeared in TEXAN Digital, electronic newsmagazine of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.