So Abolish Human Abortion took precious time away from pleading with the women at abortion mills to favor the Ninevite hirelings attending the 2017 Shepherd’s Conference with a pamphleteering campaign.
In addition to the Thursday and Friday of the conference, they also skipped Sunday morning worship at their churches to run the members of Grace through their sidewalk gauntlet.
I was able to secure one of the pamphlets they were passing out and thought I would offer up a review.
To begin, I have to say that I am mightily impressed with the physical pamphlet. If I had to guess, I would say it is 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 booklet. It is printed on sturdy paper stock with a nice, glossy sheen, so we’re not dealing with flimsy, Chick tracts paper quality that is typical of sidewalk activist types. Some good money has been put into the production.
Additionally, the pictures have an artsy look with lots of swirly designs set off with bold colors. Similar to the kind of artwork you find in those popular adult coloring books. And each picture captures a talking point of AHA. Take for example the cover posted above. Here we see a ship being tossed about in a red sea. I’m taking it that the sea represents abortion blood, and the wayward ship is the guilty Christians who love theology more than God and neighbor and do not participate in non-stop abortion activism. A whale’s tail is seen crashing through the waves of gore, which is the faithful abolitionists standing outside the local church handing out pamphlets.
However, in spite of the colorful graphics and professionally done booklet, that probably cost a lot of money to print, when we open it up and review the actual content of what the pamphlet writer is conveying, Scriptural misappropriations and logical fallacies explode off the page. Just a surface level scrutiny reveals how embarrassingly bad the argument for AHA tactics truly is.
Let me begin with the Scriptural misappropriation; what we can call, “taking verses out of context.”
Look again at the cover picture. In the lower left and right hand corners are two OT passages. One is from Ezekiel 6:1-6 and the other from Jeremiah 7:2-7. Obviously, AHA is attempting to build a biblical case for their methods of abortion activism and the need for Churches to repent for their apathy and blood guilt. Alas, neither passage addresses such issues.
I’ll cite the passages in full.
First Ezekiel 6:1-6 states,
1 And the word of the LORD came to me saying,
2 “Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them
3 and say, ‘Mountains of Israel, listen to the word of the Lord GOD! Thus says the Lord GOD to the mountains, the hills, the ravines and the valleys: “Behold, I Myself am going to bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places.
4 “So your altars will become desolate and your incense altars will be smashed; and I will make your slain fall in front of your idols.
5 “I will also lay the dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of their idols; and I will scatter your bones around your altars.
6 “In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be blotted out.
Now lets turn to Jeremiah 7:2-7
2 “Stand in the gate of the LORD’S house and proclaim there this word and say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judah, who enter by these gates to worship the LORD!’”
3 Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place.
4 “Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’
5 “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a man and his neighbor,
6 if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after other gods to your own ruin,
7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.
Both passages speak of the promised threat of God’s judgment. But is God promising judgment against the modern church that AHA believes is apathetic with regards to abortion and the Christians who do not engage the culture with the tactics of AHA’s abortion activism? Nope.
Ezekiel and Jeremiah describe God’s judgment against the covenant unfaithfulness of Israel. Both prophets are exilic prophets, meaning their message was heard immediately before and during the Babylonian exile. Their words have meaning exclusively to national Israel during that time, and unless you adhere to CT or NCT views of the church now being the “New Testament Israel,” they are no more relevant to Christians in today’s world as Jeremiah 29:11 is a promise to a college guy that he will marry the pretty girl from his math class that he has a crush on.
One more example. Consider 1 John 3:18, Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. John’s words are quoted as if loving in deed and truth is equivalent to AHA abortion activism. Any Christian who isn’t as urgent with abortion activism as AHA is not loving and are “Christians” in word and tongue only.
The problem, however, is that John clearly explains in the preceding verses what it means to love in deed and truth: it is meeting the tangible needs of fellow Christians when you have the ability to meet those needs. If you see your fellow Christians in need, defined as material and financial according to John, and you ignore those needs when you have the ability to meet them, you are NOT loving your brothers faithfully. Again, this passage has absolutely no application to a cultural engagement with abortion activism in the manner that AHA insists Churches must do.
Those are just three examples. Every verse cited and utilized in the pamphlet to make a biblical case for Christians to repent of their so-called apathy regarding abortion and embrace the AHA model of abortion activism, has been ripped out of context. None of them have anything whatsoever to with Christians repenting, or being guilty of not loving their pre-born neighbors, attacking child sacrifice, or any of the other Orwellian AHA newspeak terms they employ against abortion in the modern United States.
What about logical fallacies? I’ll focus on two illustrations.
First, read this page from the pamphlet:
Three examples are provided of when the religious (you know, Christians who have loved theology over God and neighbor like the Ninevite hirelings attending the Shepherd’s Conference) were called to repent. First is when Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy regarding God’s law that exploited the Jews and enriched themselves. Next, when the Reformers called out the Rome Catholic Church and it’s unbiblical use of indulgences to build St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. And then, when Abolitionists, servants of Jesus, called churches in the pre-Civil War south to repentance for slavery. The first two examples are related, the third is a non sequitur.
The first two examples pertain directly to biblical theology and truth that distorts the means of salvation. In other words, what the scribes, Pharisees, and Rome Catholics did prevented men from experiencing salvation. Men’s eternal souls were at stake.
While slavery is a terrible sin against humanity, it is not distorting the message of salvation. In fact, a number of slave owners educated their slaves as to the true Gospel and they were subsequently saved as a result. Certainly that doesn’t justify slavery; but to equate those three particular examples as being one and the same regarding the need to call men to repent is illogical.
Ironically, the slave illustration unintentionally contradicts AHA’s big talking regarding immediatism and incrementalism. AHA advocates for immediatism, or the immediate abolishment of human abortion. The idea of incrementalism, or the gradual chipping away at abortion in our culture, is odious to them and represents gross compromise against God.
However, historically, human slavery was stopped by Christians incrementally passing laws to stop the slave trade and eventually slavery throughout the Western world including the United States. William Wilberforce’s efforts in Britain is a prime example of the effectiveness of incremental laws changing a society and the entire world.
One more example of illogical argumentation. Read this section from the pamphlet,
The section presents a couple of absurd illustrations AHA believes demonstrates the need for Christians to engage in AHA abortion activism. The first ridiculous illustration presents a scenario where there is a society that allows, by law, people to rape wives and children. Sort of a twisted version of the fake prima nocta rituals that never really existed.
The second illustration is even more ludicrous, a park where any predator can kidnap any child at will. Even more, they are allowed not only by law to do the kidnapping, but they are also protected by law enforcement from anyone who would attempt to prevent the kidnapping.
What is truly facepalming about those two farcical situations is that AHA genuinely believes they are powerfully establishing their argument for churches to repent and be as stirred up for abortion activism as they are. Of course, the one thing they are missing with both those illustrations is the fact that women willing go to abortion clinics to murder their children. They are not innocently sitting at a park when a total stranger runs up and rips their baby from their tummy. If the illustrations were to be true to life, it would be a society where women willing allow themselves to be raped and parents intentionally take their children to that park for predators to kidnap them.
On the back of the pamphlet is a picture of a fish, representing the fish that swallowed Jonah and took him back to Nineveh. See the picture below,
Etched on to the fish are various excuses people supposedly give as to why they don’t want to engage in abortion activism like AHA. On the right fluke of the fish’s tail are the words, “The church’s mission is to make disciples, not change the culture.” That is allegedly a terrible excuse, because the church is to change culture, not just make disciples.
But where exactly in the NT is the church told it is to change the culture? Where exactly did Christ convey such a command? While it is true Christians change cultures and societies (think the Western world), the cultural change is a result of making disciples, not just changing the culture.
Regrettably, AHA seems to miss that vital point. Instead, they have made an idol out of their brand of abortion activism. Any Christian who isn’t engaged frequently, or at all, in abortion activism like AHA is condemned as apathetic and needing to repent. Any church that merely gives financially to a crisis pregnancy center or chooses a legislative strategy of incrementalism are labelled compromisers.
The danger for AHA is the more they use such rhetoric against faithful Christians who don’t do activism like them, the more they marginalize themselves as kooks, along with diminishing the important work of ending abortion in our nation.
[The preceding article is re-published in full with the permission of the author, Fred Butler. Fred is a graduate of The Masters’ Seminary and works for John MacArthur’s Grace To You radio ministry. He regularly writes at Hip & Thigh, The Bible Thumping Wingnut Blog, and can be followed on Twitter @Fred_Butler.]
