Addressing US election angst about abortion

By the way, if anyone thinks that your vote is confidential, you are naive. People have tracked how I vote for years (when I vote, since I do not always do so, especially since I've had to move so frequently after losing my house. Plus I once reconciled with a boyfriend during an election and didn't vote then either! Bad civic citizen huh? LOL).

The reason people are so fascinated with how I vote is because they look for the stumbling block, the "gotcha" in the contradiction between my religious creed and for whom I cast a ballot.

First let me remind you that Jesus Christ had to deal with the same issues. In his case it dealt with taxation, which represents civil authority. Everyone is moderately well read and educated know that Jesus said to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. In other words, if you must pay taxes and participate in government, then do so. Jesus said to likewise give to God what is God's, which is to lead a godly and god fearing life. Now, if people were as crackpot then as they are today they would have pressed the matter to say, "Hey Jesus, but some of the taxes going to Caesar goes toward purchasing wood for crucifixion crosses and torture devices! You are then a hypocrite for obeying a taxation that results in deeds that are contrary to God's law!" Simple and political minds that are tempted by the devil always insist on driving a wedge between being pious and being forced to living a real and pragmatic life among real people on a real earth.

Now, in a way Jesus anticipated what crackpots could say about how one cannot be pious and yet participate in, by definition, flawed, political and unjust government. The part that everyone misses in this event is that Jesus obtains the coin for the tax by having a disciple catch a fish who has the coin in its mouth. This is the coin he gives in tax. Now obviously, Jesus did not have to resort to a fish providing the coin, since his disciples and supporters had jobs and income to support Jesus and the fledgling Christian community who followed him. But Jesus in being challenged by the questioners made the point of using a coin that is divinely provided (his knowledge of the coin in the fish and the fish being at hand to be caught being the work of the Holy Spirit). He is doing what people nowadays ought to recognize as "thinking outside of the box." He neither defied civic authority regarding taxes, nor did he roll over and say "Sure, here's my money, spend it on any unjust activity that you can think of." In this case he chose a third way, which is to use a coin provided to him by the Holy Spirit in order to pay his obligatory tax.

Jesus is trying to teach people that there is the reality of being on earth and having to do the BEST that you can with the civic authority you are given. For example, he drove the money changers from the temple because that was a direct part of his mission and agenda. But having the mission of being the Messiah (and thus also role modeling for subsequent pious Christians) does not negate the reality of life, the part of life that is not his mission to challenge. He did not come to earth to challenge the tax code, or Rome's policy. He came to bring the New Covenant between God and humankind. So with this important story of a key event in his life (which has almost become trite because of the very quotable punch line about rendering to Caesar and to God) if you look at the entire event, you can see that Christ is demonstrating how to think outside of the box where it matters. So you can pay the coin of tax, but you can also resist the system and work to change it. This is what the divinely provided coin in the fish represents. Christ did not dip into the pockets of his followers to pay the tax. He paid it, but he did not pay it by sacrificing money from the religious community's pocket. He was showing that there is more than one way to meet the demands.

You need to use this lesson to sort your way through the coming elections and the dark weight of the injustice of abortion. People are cornered by pundits and advocates into feeling there are only two choices: to be against abortion and therefore vote only for those who oppose abortion, or to vote for someone who is in favor of abortion and thus be forced to "endorse" their belief. This is not true! It's ridiculous that every time I voted for someone who is pro choice that it in any way indicated my endorsement of their pro choice view! How childish! Does anyone think that abortion will be outlawed based on who is voted for President? Especially when the Supreme Court was firmly liberal? No... in past elections (I'm talking about the past 30 years collectively) one had to find the third way. One had to vote for a President based on what one wished to respond to in their platform that reflected the reality of the current politic.

My advice is to vote for the person who you believe can do the overall job of President the best (these are dangerous times, lest anyone need reminding, and I do not mean simply terrorism, I mean the disintegration of the cohesion of values, faith and productivity of the United States) AND who will appoint Supreme Court justices who are conservative. A person who would be a good sound President who will build cohesion in our country again AND who understands the Supreme Court needs to back away from its liberal activism can still serve the anti-abortion movement even if the candidate is soft on that particular issue. (I don't suggest being soft on abortion to anyone since it's not going to have a good outcome in one's personal final reckoning in judgment with God, but that's the "what is God's to God" part). In my voting history I have put other agenda items regarding the qualifications of a President ahead of only the abortion issue.

This does not mean that I do not think that abortion is the scourge and the destroyer of humanity as we know it and thus the most dark crisis that humans face today. It means I don't think the President is going to solve the crisis. The hearts of people must change if society and humanity is going to be saved. Abortion ought to be stopped because one by one babies stop being aborted, even if eventually the aborting bastards resort to "two for one coupons" to stimulate their "legal" business. Abortion will be stopped when family by family and individual by individual a pregnancy is brought to term and the child adopted into a family or into a high quality loving foster-orphanage situation, which there is great need for anew in this country (and worldwide for that matter). I cannot describe my outrage that young people in a survey feel that "abortion" is "better" than "adoption." Are you kidding me? It is better to snuff out a life than to inconvenience oneself for nine months and give the new life to someone else who could love him or her? It is morally better to kill than to adopt out? This is the violent society that our children have been raised in, that now they think this way.

So while I am against Roe v. Wade and think it would be great if it went to a state by state legality, I'm not fooled into thinking that this is how abortion will be solved and eliminated until it is "rare and repugnant" (my preferred phrase for describing what I hope will one day happen regarding the status of abortion). My biggest quarrel with the pro life movement is how they totally dropped the ball 30 years ago when they could have organized financial intervention to sponsor unplanned pregnancy birth and adoption rather than abortion. They screwed up colossally when they focused on confrontation instead of reaching out and being a substitute mother, father, aunt, uncle, brother, sister to those who are pregnant. Women who don't have an alternative abort. Let's face it, women have become weak and selfish. But when this first happened, before the tidal wave of weakness and being selfish, women who were in an unplanned pregnancy were in real jams. They did face being thrown out of home, out of school, and with no income (since they were probably sleeping with drugged up lazy hippies, and I'm not kidding, that was when it all started, you know, "free love!") The women I knew who had abortions feared their families' reaction, and had no alternatives. Really religious people should have banded together and provided an intervention for these women so that they could pay for their prenatal care, provide a home if necessary, keep them in school or their jobs so long as practical, arrange for adoptions, and help them back into their life track after the birth with good counseling and support. I KNOW that many, not all, but many of the women would not have had abortions in those circumstances. Not only would millions of babies had been saved, but so would millions of consciences. Further both sides would not have developed the violent calluses that they have in this battle. Women (girls) have become weak and selfish and think nothing of snuffing out not only one but serial pregnancies as a means of birth control! And pro life people have developed calluses by looking down on the women and rubbing their hands saying "What can I do about it?" And we have an entire generation of pseudo men/boys who don't even know what it is like to have a father, or to be a father. The calluses are everywhere and no one is really doing the person by person work to change this monstrosity.

So grow up! Yes a candidate's position on abortion is very important and merits very sober consideration. But how stupid has this society become to think that abortion will be re-mediated, reduced, and hopefully one day "rare and repugnant" by pulling a lever once every four years? Come on, that is a cop out and you know it. So shut up and stop accusing each other of supporting an "abort" candidate if you are not at the same time doing the grunt work of changing hearts and saving souls and minds one pregnancy at a time. Sheesh.