On Abortion and Grace

There has been a lot in the media lately about the Planned Parenthood videos.  I have jumbled thoughts and feelings, and part of me wants to share and talk, and part of me wants to keep it to myself.  I've stuck with that part because I don't quite know what to say.  I don't have my own thoughts completely figured out yet.

At the core of things, I fully believe that abortion is wrong.  I believe life starts at conception, and therefore abortion is murdering an innocent life.  I don't think body parts should be for sale, especially when the person for sale (or the person responsible for that baby) has no say in things.  These are pretty black and white issues for me.

But after that, things get muddy.

A few weeks ago, I also read this article about the likely cause of addiction being a lack of belonging and human connection.  I've also fairly recently read abortion testimonies from a few bloggers (here and here), who talked about their experiences with having an abortion before later realizing that was a sin and coming to Jesus.

And these things got me thinking.  What if?  What if my simple foolishnesses of high school drinking had led to other things?  It didn't.  It could have.  What if I had gotten pregnant at a time when all I had ever been taught was that pre-marital sex was wrong, and the consequences would be disappointing those I loved, which was at the time the worst thing I could do?

I don't know what I would have done.  Would I have been brave, carried a child, and given that child up for adoption?  I like to think so.  But I also know my selfish heart, and my fears of failure, and I wonder what I would have done.

And this brings me back to the article about addiction.  What if what we need to do to heal society of this descent into sin upon sin is to focus less on the sin, and more on the Savior?  I'm not saying we give everyone the "hey, it's okay" and ignore the sins that have been committed.  But instead of focusing on being pious and better than everyone else, instead of sometimes focusing so much on making sure everyone knows that what we believe is the right thing to the point of exclusivity, what if we meet people where they're at?

It's hard to describe.  How do you create an inviting atmosphere, one where people feel safe and allowed to be vulnerable and like they belong and that it's okay to not be perfect because Jesus was, but still show people their sins and their need for a Savior?  I think if any of us ever figures that out, we might just end up with a mega church, because it would be a place people would run to.

So these are my thoughts.  They're incomplete, but they've been floating around in my head for the past month, and I needed to write them out to work through some of it.  Someone tell me I'm not the only one who's not in the black and white here...