Had the most hilarious moment this morning with two friends and the toddler son of one of them. My friend and I had traveled to our third friend's house to pick her up at about 7:30 am today. Our purpose was to participate in the 40 Days for Life by praying outside an abortion clinic in north Austin. Some might think this sort of thing is aggressive but it is not. Gone are the days, at least in the circles that true pro-lifers are in, of yelling and badgering people. We sign Peace Agreements and actually, 40 Days for life participants are solely to pray only. However, while one of my friends would be actively offering sidewalk counsel, we were going to watch her and follow her lead if given the opportunity. I could blog about the entire experience but I will save that for another time. I mainly want to share a hilarious moment of truth.
We had pulled up to my other friend's home and as she came to the car, her toddler was following and hovering at the door of the house. I have a feeling Daddy wasn't out of bed yet but toddler was. We've all been there. I went back up to the door and asked him to go back in the house and shut the door and lock in. He asked me where we were going. I could have said we were going to a house (which was true because the clinic is in a house structure). I could have said we were going to an office. I could have said we were going to a business in Austin. I didn't intend to say we were going to a doctor's office or a hospital because well, that's simply not true. What I said next was also not really true, at least in the typical sense. So I grabbed on to what I knew he would understand and I said, "we're going to church." That totally satisfied him. He shut the door, locked it, and I went to the car, proud I had him safely back inside while Daddy still was sleeping. As I sat down in the front seat, I turned to his Mom and said, "Just so you know, I told him we're going to church...which actually isn't totally untrue. I mean, the Church isn't a building, it's where the people are, it's where the people of Jesus go to meet others who need hope and love. And that's true, so...."
She started to laugh and said, "Well, he is going to be really confused now because I told him we were going to a dangerous place where people get hurt." My other friend and I started shaking with laughter at the hilarity of the two things we had told this child. We're going to some place dangerous and it happens to be a church, according to Mommy's friend.
As we started laughing so hard that tears were rolling, she then further went on to sputter, "I told him it's a place where they take your money from you." This sent me over the edge in hysterics. As I write this, my shoulders are starting to huff up and down, you know the kind of laughter that you try to hold in, but it comes out of your inner being and your chest starts to shake and the laughter takes over your back and shoulders before the cackling spills out of your mouth. All the while I'm realizing that what she told him applies to the church too. Oh dear goodness.
What a crazy commentary on what the church can be. It CAN be a dangerous place. It does take your money (except we give it as an offering to the Lord's work). It can be a place that hurts others. And it's a place that brings out the hurt in you.
As the laughter settled I realized we both spoke truth to this little boy. The place we were going IS dangerous. Women's wombs are being hurt. Her risk for placenta previa increases dramatically and her risk for breast cancer is a well established fact. This clinic is hardly a safe place. People ARE hurt here. Abortion clinics are NOT places of healing. At. All. They are places of heaping more hurt onto an already-hurting woman.
On the flipside, while the Church is run amok with saved sinners trying to fill the mission of Jesus, we fail miserably. But we keep trying. And we know we cause hurt. Because we are hurting people who are also broken. But the Church as a Body and the 'church' bodies held inside buildings are places of HEALING. Church institutions are supposed to be places of healing. So while we sometimes really suck at it, our intention in the Body of Christ is to bring about healing. Our intention is never to harm.
And money....well, much can be said about churches taking money from people. It's true. There is corruption. Wherever money can be handled, corruption can follow. Having said that, it requires no money from anyone to go into a church building or into a community of believers to find healing. I make no profit from offering my friendship and voice of encouragement to another human being. People can come into a healing environment of Believers and receive love and acceptance at no cost. The clinics charge a nice cash fee of roughly $425. And it isn't healing they are given. No, they are not remotely concerned about her and her pain and where she is at, that has brought her to this desperate place. They care not about her future, her education, if she's being forced by her pimp, or if she feels she can't finish college with a baby in tow. But the church does. And it should.
So with a good laugh of the blunder with the little boy, we spoke all sorts of heavy truth. How is the church dangerous? Well, it's dangerous to Satan. He's not so keen on the idea of people finding healing and hope and aligning themselves under a different master. He really likes having humans under his thumb. So I suppose like any metaphor, there are limitations. Dangerous to the person coming to church or into a faith group? Perhaps. It might rock their world a bit, challenge them, in fact, push them into a better path. That can feel dangerous because it's unknown, it's new, it's change. That feels dangerous. Like the bear C.S. Lewis describes that has fallen into a trap and the man is trying to release him and has to push him further into the trap in order to free him, from the perspective of the bear, this man's interactions feel dangerous when in fact, they are anything but. They are to bring about freedom.
So those are my ponderings. Had a fabulous laugh at the fun blunder with a child. And it brought all sorts of God-truths that I can't hide from. Beautiful, rich God-truths about His desire to heal and mend and bring hope. As I like to say, If my faith is some silly opiate, it's my drug of choice and I like it. I will stay addicted to it. Where is the harm in my addiction? Where is the harm in a faith that brings peace and purpose to my life?
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Modern Pillaging of Women
By no means do I mean for the following ponderings to diminish the real experiences of women and men who have experienced rape by sexual force. The parallels I am about to draw are not perfect, and I do not mean to devalue a victim of rape. I have not personally experienced rape, so I can not fully speak into it. However, I can't help but find my mind wandering to this subject when recently I realized that the number of abortionists who are men far outweigh the number of abortionists who are women.
The recent news story as reported by Life Site News from just four days ago is what brought me face-to-face with this question. As they reported: "Millionaire Oklahoma abortionist Nareshkumar Gandalal “Naresh” Patel, who once faced charges of raping and sodomizing his abortion patients, is once again under investigation after Operation Rescue filed a five-count complaint against him with the State Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma Health Department, and the Oklahoma Medical Board. The complaints were based on documents and medical waste that had been discarded in a publicly-accessible trash receptacle near Patel’s Outpatient Services for Women abortion clinic in Oklahoma City."
Clearly this abortionist got his 'jollies' off of assaulting patients and then aborting their baby. It then occurred to me I only ever hear about male abortionists, not female abortionists. This startling fact gripped me because while not all abortionists are assaulting their patients, they must be receiving some form of gratification for the 'service' they perform. In fact, the truth is that abortionists ARE male. Abortion itself, while not a sexual act, is a form of rape. Rape by definition includes more than just sexual acts. It is an act of plundering, of violent seizure, an act of abuse. What we do know about abortion is that it is the highest form of human abuse on the preborn human. It is a violent seizure of a child, whether through evacuation or dismemberment. It is violent. Period.
It could be argued this isn't rape. The woman is there voluntarily. This is true in some regards. But we do know that women are under duress and are often pressured by family members and the father of the baby to abort. I personally have numerous friends who have had at least one abortion. They all tell me they regret it and felt they had nowhere else to go. While they may have voluntarily walked into the clinic, I hear stories from my friends who cried during and after their abortion. Regardless, for the abortionist, what better way to violate a woman legally than through abortion? What power the abortionist wields as his weapons, aka his surgical tools, suction a baby out a woman's most inner place, her womb, thereby violently seizing a valuable treasure, her child. This is plundering and pillaging. What is being plundered and pillaged? A woman's womb. What is her womb but an organ designed to provide a HOME for a preborn child. A child is exactly where he is supposed to be, in her uterus, an organ specifically designed to provide a house for a child before birth. The pillaging is on her womb. The plundering is on a small little town that houses one citizen, her baby.
Doesn't this just make the women's rights thing seem ludicrous? How is this empowering of a woman when she willfully is allowing a MAN to plunder and pillage a human being out of her body? Women, we can do better than this! Pillaging means to wrongfully seize something. How is this a wrongful seizure? Sure it's legal. But it's a wrongful seizure because the baby is living exactly where nature designed it to live. In the womb. The baby is occupying the only place it is supposed to occupy. The womb. Legal does not mean the seizure is not a wrongful seizure. Plunder is something taken by fraud. You might wonder how this is fraud? Fraud is deceit for profit and gain.
The woman finding herself in a desperate place finds herself in the perfect position to be deceived for the gain of the abortionist and the entire industry. Here are the lies she hears, whether from the abortionist, the counselors, or simply in society:
*You are in control of your body. You have a right to do what you want with it.
*That isn't a baby. It's just tissue.
*Your life is over.
*You will never be able to have a career if you have this baby.
*Your boyfriend will leave you.
*Your family will disown you.
*Your reputation is ruined
*You can go back to how it was before this little mishap
*No one will ever know
*Every baby is a wanted baby
I could go on and on. And when she believes these words, she is a victim of fraud and who gains financially? The abortionist. I serve at a local crisis pregnancy center. I gain nothing financially for my work there. If anything, I give financially. I give, not take. The abortion industry...it takes and takes and takes. It is the ultimate Plundering. It is barbaric pillaging.
I am a New Feminist. No man will ever have a right to plunder and pillage my womb. I would never let a man do that to me. HE is the sicko. He is getting off on some weird trip by stealing these babies out of their mother's wombs. I don't know what sick pay-off he gets inside, but he gets something out of it. It's quite brilliant isn't it. An abortionist gets to plunder and pillage woman after woman after woman. The ultimate power. The ultimate control over a woman.
Remember that phrase "I am woman; hear me roar!?" WHY did we stop ROARING??????? Now women have regressed centuries and lay their bodies in front of the abortionists and let him pillage her.
Women, we have GOT to wake up. MEN--protect women from this act of violence on babies and this act of violence inside a woman's uterus. How dare something unnatural enter a woman's uterus when it's clearly been closed off to protect the new human inside it? The abortionist breaches those walls and it is the ultimate violation because it is legal and presented as woman empowerment. Don't you know those abortionists cackle as they count their dollars earned for every woman they violate?
Wake up women. Wake up. Roar.
The recent news story as reported by Life Site News from just four days ago is what brought me face-to-face with this question. As they reported: "Millionaire Oklahoma abortionist Nareshkumar Gandalal “Naresh” Patel, who once faced charges of raping and sodomizing his abortion patients, is once again under investigation after Operation Rescue filed a five-count complaint against him with the State Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma Health Department, and the Oklahoma Medical Board. The complaints were based on documents and medical waste that had been discarded in a publicly-accessible trash receptacle near Patel’s Outpatient Services for Women abortion clinic in Oklahoma City."
Clearly this abortionist got his 'jollies' off of assaulting patients and then aborting their baby. It then occurred to me I only ever hear about male abortionists, not female abortionists. This startling fact gripped me because while not all abortionists are assaulting their patients, they must be receiving some form of gratification for the 'service' they perform. In fact, the truth is that abortionists ARE male. Abortion itself, while not a sexual act, is a form of rape. Rape by definition includes more than just sexual acts. It is an act of plundering, of violent seizure, an act of abuse. What we do know about abortion is that it is the highest form of human abuse on the preborn human. It is a violent seizure of a child, whether through evacuation or dismemberment. It is violent. Period.
It could be argued this isn't rape. The woman is there voluntarily. This is true in some regards. But we do know that women are under duress and are often pressured by family members and the father of the baby to abort. I personally have numerous friends who have had at least one abortion. They all tell me they regret it and felt they had nowhere else to go. While they may have voluntarily walked into the clinic, I hear stories from my friends who cried during and after their abortion. Regardless, for the abortionist, what better way to violate a woman legally than through abortion? What power the abortionist wields as his weapons, aka his surgical tools, suction a baby out a woman's most inner place, her womb, thereby violently seizing a valuable treasure, her child. This is plundering and pillaging. What is being plundered and pillaged? A woman's womb. What is her womb but an organ designed to provide a HOME for a preborn child. A child is exactly where he is supposed to be, in her uterus, an organ specifically designed to provide a house for a child before birth. The pillaging is on her womb. The plundering is on a small little town that houses one citizen, her baby.
Doesn't this just make the women's rights thing seem ludicrous? How is this empowering of a woman when she willfully is allowing a MAN to plunder and pillage a human being out of her body? Women, we can do better than this! Pillaging means to wrongfully seize something. How is this a wrongful seizure? Sure it's legal. But it's a wrongful seizure because the baby is living exactly where nature designed it to live. In the womb. The baby is occupying the only place it is supposed to occupy. The womb. Legal does not mean the seizure is not a wrongful seizure. Plunder is something taken by fraud. You might wonder how this is fraud? Fraud is deceit for profit and gain.
The woman finding herself in a desperate place finds herself in the perfect position to be deceived for the gain of the abortionist and the entire industry. Here are the lies she hears, whether from the abortionist, the counselors, or simply in society:
*You are in control of your body. You have a right to do what you want with it.
*That isn't a baby. It's just tissue.
*Your life is over.
*You will never be able to have a career if you have this baby.
*Your boyfriend will leave you.
*Your family will disown you.
*Your reputation is ruined
*You can go back to how it was before this little mishap
*No one will ever know
*Every baby is a wanted baby
I could go on and on. And when she believes these words, she is a victim of fraud and who gains financially? The abortionist. I serve at a local crisis pregnancy center. I gain nothing financially for my work there. If anything, I give financially. I give, not take. The abortion industry...it takes and takes and takes. It is the ultimate Plundering. It is barbaric pillaging.
I am a New Feminist. No man will ever have a right to plunder and pillage my womb. I would never let a man do that to me. HE is the sicko. He is getting off on some weird trip by stealing these babies out of their mother's wombs. I don't know what sick pay-off he gets inside, but he gets something out of it. It's quite brilliant isn't it. An abortionist gets to plunder and pillage woman after woman after woman. The ultimate power. The ultimate control over a woman.
Remember that phrase "I am woman; hear me roar!?" WHY did we stop ROARING??????? Now women have regressed centuries and lay their bodies in front of the abortionists and let him pillage her.
Women, we have GOT to wake up. MEN--protect women from this act of violence on babies and this act of violence inside a woman's uterus. How dare something unnatural enter a woman's uterus when it's clearly been closed off to protect the new human inside it? The abortionist breaches those walls and it is the ultimate violation because it is legal and presented as woman empowerment. Don't you know those abortionists cackle as they count their dollars earned for every woman they violate?
Wake up women. Wake up. Roar.
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