The Moral Chaos of Abortion
After settling into my tech-savvy dining booth at JFK international airport, I heard “breaking news” in stereo.
News blaring–flat screens scattered throughout the terminal announced CNN had obtained a tape of a conversation between Donald Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen discussing how they planned to buy the rights to a Playboy model’s story of an alleged affair.
I looked around the terminal, scanning gates and bars filled with TVs. No one paid attention. Not a single person seemed to be concerned that evidence had surfaced indicting an American president of an extramarital affair, with a Playmate, which he tried to cover up by paying her off. Irrespective of political affiliations, this news should grab our attention.
Not a head turned.
CONSTANT CRISIS
Why? Perhaps it’s because we’ve become so accustomed to public crises. Just this week I came across the vicious ethnic cleansing of Myanmar’s Rohingya, the massacre of six American women and three children in Mexico, an impudent religious leader hurling racial insults, impeachment hearings in DC, and a college admission scandal.
If I’m honest, I’m kind of overloaded, even numb to these atrocities.
Every time we pick up our phones, we’re hit with another calamity or scandal. And just when we think we can’t process any more, a personal crisis hits.
WHEN CRISIS HITS HOME
I picked up the phone and said hello.
“Jonathan, this is Amy.”[i] I hadn’t spoken to my old girlfriend since she’d moved to Alaska a decade ago.
“Oh, hey, it’s great to hear from you. How are you doing?” “Well, okay. I’ve been meaning to call you for a long time. I need to tell you something. When we were dating, I got pregnant and had an abortion. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it. I just felt like it would send you on a different path, away from ministry, so I kept it to myself.”
Dead silence.
How do you absorb something like that on the phone? It took me a while to process what her words meant: my sin had led to the end of a precious human life. It had also placed my girlfriend in an awful situation. Clearly it had taken a lot of courage on her part to make this call.
Eventually I replied, “I’m so sorry. I wish I had known so we could have made the decision together.”
THE MORAL CHAOS OF ABORTION
How would moral fortitude have changed that situation?
More self-control on my part would have made her life radically different. I regret my youthful lust, lack of self-control, and that I wasn’t part of the decision she made. I contributed to a situation that led to an abortion. I hate that she had to suffer such a painful decision, alone. She was torn between two acts of compassion—compassion for someone she knew and someone she did not yet know. In what must have been a heart-wrenching decision, she chose me.
If I had been more responsible, Amy wouldn’t have had to endure such a tormenting decision and undergo what some women describe as a humiliating procedure. If I had been morally upright, she also wouldn’t have dealt with the guilt and shame that followed. I have wept at the thought of this, more than once.
I have prayed, and pray even now, she experiences the comfort and forgiveness that only “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” can provide, who comforts us in all our afflictions (2 Cor. 1:3–4)
Although it is understandable she didn’t consult me, more honesty on her part would have radically changed my life too. If I had been part of the decision on whether or not to keep the baby, I would have advocated we keep and raise that eternal soul to the best of our ability. We probably would have gotten married. We would have raised that child. It’s very likely I wouldn’t have my wonderful wife of twenty years and our three precious children. I might not even be writing this.
my only hope
Moral decisions create fork-in-the-road moments in our lives every single day. Depending on the decision we make, our actions have a positive or negative effect on ourselves and others: whether or not we tell our boss the truth that we blew it, whether or not we envy someone else’s success, whether we choose to be generous with those in need, whether we sleep with our girlfriend or boyfriend, or choose to have an abortion.
I write this not as a paragon of morality or the fountain of ethical wisdom, but as a redeemed sinner who is learning to so cherish the Lord that moral change happens.
Looking back on my sin and its consequences is humbling. I have sought and felt God’s forgiveness for my sin. I have contemplated that fork in the road decision many times. Although I would have made a different decision had I known then what I know now, I have come to trust in the wise providence of God over these actions, “The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord” (Prov. 16:33).
While we are responsible for our moral actions, as Scripture repeatedly shows, God is simultaneously sovereign over them, guiding them into a complex, inscrutable story of redemption and grace.
I am responsible; he is sovereign. I have sinned; he has forgiven me. I am a mess; he is nuts about me in Jesus. This is my hope, and it is yours too.
[i] I have used a pseudonym and changed some of the facts to protect her identity.
Taken from Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes (Available March 2019) by Jonathan K. Dodson, Copyright © 2020 by Jonathan K. Dodson. Published by InterVarsity Press.
Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv, ThM) is the founding pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas, and the founder of Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He is the author of Here in Spirit; Gospel-Centered Discipleship, and The Unbelievable Gospel. He enjoys listening to M. Ward, smoking his pipe, watching sci-fi, and going for walks. You can find more at jonathandodson.org.