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Dr. Del Tackett is the author, architect and teacher for Focus on the Family's The Truth Project, a nationwide initiative designed to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Christ.
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Making An Appeal to Caesar
Posted on November 13, 2009
Filed Under The State | 11 Comments
I have greatly appreciated the input that many of you have provided on this very serious and difficult topic.
One wrote, somewhat sarcastically, that we should not tip the waitress because she might use the money for an abortion. However, I would respond by saying that if she declared to me her intention to get an abortion if she could raise enough tip money to do so, I would most certainly withhold it. Now, hopefully, I would engage her in a winsome conversation as well!
Another wrote that the Hyde Amendment negated this whole discussion. However, that is not true, for the Hyde Amendment only prevented funding for abortion through the annual Health and Human Services budget. Congress understood this and therefore both the House and Senate included abortion funding provisions in their original health care legislation proposals.
However, things are happening!
Because many citizens have communicated their concerns about this issue, the House has just passed the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, stripping abortion funding from their plan.
This is becoming an increasingly key element of the health care debate.
This is a good thing! And it is why it is important for God’s people to stand and make their appeal to the authorities. I hope further appeals will cause the abortion provision to be removed from the Senate bill as well and therefore not find its way into the final legislation.
However, our discussion remains valid, for we wanted to wrestle with the issue of how we should respond if the civil magistrate were to use our tax money in this way. For those who believe that abortion is ethically wrong, one could decide that the blood is on the civil magistrates hands and take no further action, except to possibly continue to declare their disapproval and work to change it. Or, one could decide that paying the “abortion tax” required an act of civil disobedience and a refusal to pay. How to do that could be very complicated since it wouldn’t be as simple as withholding the tip from the waitress. The “abortion tax” would be buried somewhere in a small fraction of the overall tax bill we pay and it would be nearly impossible to isolate and identify in such a way that one could “refuse” to “render”. This option might also come at a great personal cost. Certainly more than just getting a dirty look from the lady serving your table. But if we are convicted to say “no”, we must say “no”.
However, while the issue is still being debated in Congress, I believe our proper role is to make the appeal now—laying before the authorities our request to not walk this path. Many have already done so and it appears to be having an effect.
So, I would like to draft an appeal to the President and Congress. The appeal will carry my own convictions on this issue, so it will be a personal appeal. I hope it will be of some value to you as you ponder this and as you wrestle with where the Lord might lead you.
My next post will be that appeal.
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11 Responses to “Making An Appeal to Caesar”
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My daughter and I are watching the Truth Project together. She is 15, and I can hear the wheels turning as we watch. She often has me stop the program to clarify or discuss a point, it is a real blessing to her and of course to me as well.
Last night we were watching Who Is Man and the program got to the two minutes of evil. Then there was your comment about those murdered by abortion each year. I began to weep and so did my daughter. We held hands and waited for the sobs to stop. The killing of the innocent is a sordid abuse by our enemy, it is like a pay back for the Passover. It is sickening and heart breaking.
I work as a therapist, and every now and then, I can feel God’s love enter into the little room where I meet my patients. It is a glorious experience, and it is like just a tiny bit of the tiny bit of God’s love that enters into the office gets stuck on me. Maybe it rubs off, maybe it is my knowledge of the presence of God’s love that affects me, I am too limited to know exactly how it happens, but I know that I know it happens. I am a better person for two weeks after the experience.
That moment last night was similar, but it was experiencing just a touch of a touch of a small portion of God’s hearbreak at our inhumanity to each other. While I am not depressed, I will not be the same for a week. Perhaps more sober, perhaps more aware, but not the same.
Thanks Del. God bless us and give us direction. Thanks for your part in that brother.
Trey
Thank you Dr. Tackett for raising this issue and for helping me analyze it. I look forward to your next posting as I expect it may be a model for me to make my own appeal.
Hi Del: We should focus on prevention of unwanted pregnancy as one means of reducing abortions. While “just say no” and “abstinence only” may have appeal for some, it isn’t very practical in the real world. The disagreement I have with most abortion opponents is their unwillingness to provide a meaningful means of supporting the child when he/she is born and is growing up. Once again, I charge your readers to do something more than merely mouth their “I am pro-life” sentiments. Are they volunteering to assist young unwed mothers with their education after the baby is born? Are they volunteering to babysit so that the young mother can get a parttime job to support her child? Are they volunteering to coach teenage boys about their responsibilities to the child they fathered? Are they volunteering in programs that keep kids off the street after school? Are they giving money to organizations that support young unwed mothers? This issue is more complex and more nuanced than the mouthing of mere slogans. Living a godly life means that one must live in this world, and daily face the challenges in this world, as it is, with all its societal faults, frailties and goodness too. Simply legislating abortion away does not solve the problem and never will. It simply buries the problem in the back alleys, unseen, where we can ignore the root cause, and smugly wash our hands of the unseemly and seedier side of life. Is that what Jesus would do?
Janet, while I agree with your latter sentiments, I disagree with your statement about abstinence not being a real world soloution. It is in fact the only real world soloution. It is from God’s word and His plan for us. It is the only thing that works.
Currently an out of control state subsidizes single parent homes. These homes produce children that are almost feral. The boys end up in jail and the girls follow in mom’s footsteps. I do not say this to shame or attack anyone, I share the truth of this to show the cultural lie of abstinence not being a real world solution. It is the only real world solution, the evidence completely supports this conclusion. It should not surprise us as it comes from our Creator.
Having said that, we are comanded to support the less fortunate and we as God’s children are needing to wake up to that responsibility and do better. I have often thought that abortion was made legal because the legalists in the Church used the sin of premarital sex as a way to shame and separate themselves from people who sinned in that manner. That was a lie as well. We are all sinners, and given what Jesus said about lust, we are all sexual sinners.
Now some in the church do that same shaming behavior with homosexuality, treating homosexual behavior as if it were a worse sin than those that they struggle with. That is not Godly but a sign of hubris. Sin is sin. And we are all guilty.
But abstinence is the only soloution because God made us, He knows us, and He tells us that. We are wise to follow His lead.
Trey
Janet,
Everything you mentioned is a stock-phrase objection from pro-abortion activists, but every one is also either misleading (not your fault — theirs) or beside the point.
Many (most?) pro-lifers willingly offer to take care of or adopt the children born from would-be-abortions. Crisis pregnancy centers also offer this kind of help on a regular basis. The pro-life community is well organized to help poor single moms take care of their kids. This is a pro-abort myth. The Christian church, in many ways, mobilizes better than any government does to take care of the poor and downtrodden.
But even if not, is that a proper excuse for killing children? They aren’t puppies, or overpopulating kittens. They’re human beings!
Are you aware of what the suicide rate is among the desperately poor? Or how many poor people just sit down and die? Do you remember seeing how many homeless people’s signs ask, “Please kill me, I’m poor and miserable.”?
The materialist left’s “quality of life” measure as an equivalent for “value of life” doesn’t work. It’s not that society doesn’t want these people around out of compassion — like they, themselves, want to die. Society wants to get rid of them because society feels bad and doesn’t want to be reminded. Almost universally, the poor and downtrodden desperately want to live, even in their wretched state. That’s not our choice to make for them.
My wife (once a teen-mom), my brother in law, and countless other examples of people I know personally have lived in desperate poverty, but they wanted to live. They survived.
Look at the inspiring accounts of people surviving awful conditions in other countries, or during wartime. These people all want to live, and the story of human perseverence against looming death is awesome! People want to live — almost every single one of them. Poverty is no reason to kill someone. Especially an innocent baby whose opinion can’t be asked.
Del and others,
I haven’t read the legislation to see for sure, but some respected pro-lifers have charged that even the Stupak amendment contains taxpayer funding for some abortions — for rape and incest, for instance.
MSNBC Report
OneNewsNow Story
MSNBC says the Stupak Amendment, “Bars a new government-run insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases or rape, incest or the life of the mother being in danger…”
If that’s true, because I believe there exists an actual Right to Life (often referred to as Personhood) then I would still be conscience-bound to oppose the abortion tax, even if the “pro-life” Stupak Amendment carried through to the final version.
I’m disheartened. So often recently it seems the battle rages so violently it is beyond our grasp to see any hope for victory.
I’m concerned that by stripping the abortion provision we have been “played” by the far left as a trump card to give cover for the simply “marxist” left. The stripping of this provision allowed the overall bill to move forward. Pro-life is not only about abortion it is also about “end of life” – and I’m afraid the pro-life organizations have been snookered in this regard.
Am I wrong in seeing that nationalized health care in general is a threat to my overall pro-life position?
The fight needs to be carried on despite this small, (though meaningful) victory.
Del, While the portion of the bill you have mentioned is certainly corrupt and totally repugnant, the entire bill is riddled with equal or worse corruption for us all. Let us not forget, the second anti-bill, must be signed by a man that has always fully supported abortion. I feel the only position we should be taking is to throw the entire health care bill out. Short of this, very soon our only avenue to get treatment is where we should first appeal in all times; to our God. Otherwise, I suppose there is still the alternative; be elected for congress, or president, or be rich enough to hire a doctor on your own. Nonetheless, remember this bill will cost all of us something, my guess we will throw out the old 30% to taxes and start paying the 60% to 70% tax burden the bill will bring. Other countries that have socialized medicine come to the USA to get treatments their governments withhold. Where will they, where will we, then go?
Kathleen Sebelius appointed a Facilities Realignment & Closure Commission in the state of Kansas prior to her leaving the governor’s office that has recommened that Kansas Neurological Institue (KNI), a home for 163 profoundly mentally & physically disabled people be closed to save the state of Kansas money. (There was no physician appointed to this commission.) The recommendation is that KNI be closed and these people go to community based homes that are minimally regulated. I have a 50 year old brother who at 2 months of age contracted bacterial spinal menninitis & as a result is profoundly mentally and physically retarded. He breathes through a tracheostomy, is fed through a J-tube and takes medications through a Peg-tube. He has been in institutionalized care for 48 years. He was at the Winfield Stated home until 1994 when this same commission closed Winfield. Since 1994 he has been at KNI. During all this time, he has never had a ‘bed sore’ which is a testament to the exemplary care he has had and continues to receive. There is no other facility in 3 states that has the capability to care for individuals like him. People like my brother are always going to be with us in society through either disease, accident or birth defects. To take someone like my brother out of this kind of care would be a death sentence for him. A facility in Nebraska recently closed and transferred out 48 profoundly mentally and physically disabled people and 8 of these individuals died in the 1st 6 months. This is the national health care plan at its ‘best’ or ‘worst’. They could quit spending $172.5 million dollars on remodeling the State Capitol building. Incidentally, Adolf Hitler proposed this sam plan in Germany in the 1930′s to eliminate ‘useless eaters’. Let’s not forget how that ended.
This is just a comment on the issue of not tipping a waitress because she might get an abortion with it. I’m just wondering how far one would take this. If you know that the waitress is saving up for an abortion, do you not eat at that restaurant because your meal is helping to pay her salary? How about if you just suspect that she might get an abortion? How about the possibility that someone employed at the restaurant might do anything immoral with their salary? We can spin this out to the point of our economic choices making ourselves responsible for everyone’s decisions. Is this what Jesus wants – we being the parents of everybody else?
In regard to the universals and the particulars what would be an example I was thinking along the lines of if there is a loving god how can he allow a little baby suffer ,therefore there must not be a god in heaven. As opposed to we live in a sinfull world and we have a loving god who helps us through our difficulties that we might grow. Am I on the right tract?