Last Resistance | Rob Knowles

(WARNING: because this is a post about murder, it contains a couple of disturbing images.)

Sitting in church yesterday, I found myself listening to a sermon I’ve heard too many times. With the turn of a single phrase, a nerve was touched that bent my mood from pleasant to disturbed in a matter of seconds. I don’t remember the words exactly, but the sentiment was this: Politics isn’t where Christians should be.

I fully understand the intent of the lesson. Christians are to focus on shining Christ’s light into the darkness, and certain political arguments can be an unnecessary distraction. The line of reasoning isn’t lost on me. What irks me, however, is that in instances in which faith and politics intertwine, the church is nowhere to be seen. It’s politics! This world is not my home! Focus on converting people!

Like it or not, there are numerous points of connection between faith and politics, and more than ever before, the faithful are being confronted with great secular challenges. No political issue has a greater connection to faith than abortion. We are drenched in the blood of murdered children, and we act as though it’s none of our business.

I can’t speak for other churches, but in the Church of Christ, the silence regarding the wanton slaughter of children is deafening. I honestly cannot count the number of times I’ve heard preachers or Church of Christ members proudly proclaiming their apolitical status. I can, however, count the number of sermons I’ve heard about abortion. One. And that one sermon was so padded, it’s message was rendered virtually ineffective.

The Church of Christ is so terrified to “talk politics,” and possibly ruffle feathers, that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the wholesale murder of infants.

If this were 1942, and the Jews were being carted off to concentration camps, starved until they looked like living cadavers, then executed in gas chambers, do you think your preacher or minister would have spoken up? I hope they would have. It was an act of evil.

Oh, but that was murder. It wasn’t politics. No. It was murder by way of politics.

We live in a country in which it’s legal to abort developing infants. If the word “abort” is a bit vague, or perhaps too clinical, allow me to explain. A doctor takes a pair of bierer tenaculum serrated clamps and tears off the limbs of an infant in the womb; wrenching flesh and ligament until arms and legs detach from the sockets. He then decapitates the infant using the same tool. Following that, he removes the dismembered pieces from the uterus. That’s just one of several legal procedures.

This is murder by way of politics, and the silence coming from the church should be roundly condemned. It’s appalling that the church—my church—simply shuts their eyes and covers their ears. This behavior is far beyond troubling; it’s bone-chilling.

What’s the difference between these pictures?

Nothing.

Those who remained silent in the face of the Holocaust were accomplices to murder, and in our silence, we too are accomplices to the murder of millions of children. It’s time for the church to open their eyes, and open their mouths in protest.