“What is abortion and how should the church respond?” was the question addressed by Dr. David Swanson, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, Fla., at the Presbyterians Pro-Life (PPL) event during the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly meeting in Minneapolis.
David Swanson was the keynote speaker at the Presbyterians Pro-Life event Sunday.
A desire to live
Swanson opened with harrowing tale of a car accident many years ago, remembering that there was “no question, I wanted to live.” He went on to affirm that “today, I want to live. And what I find is that it’s not just me. Everywhere I turn I find evidence that, with few exceptions, people want to live.”
He then acknowledged that in our culture we are disconnected from the origin of that desire.
Swanson said, “That desire comes from the very God who made us in His image.”
Reading in quick succession, Deuteronomy 30:19, “Choose life, that you and your descendents may live;” Ezekiel 18:32, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone;” and John 6:48, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life;” Dr. Swanson demonstrated that “everything about the nature of God is about creating, giving and sustaining life.” Observing that “if we are made in God’s image, then part of the core of our being is to want to live, to embrace life, to value and protect life. It’s instinctive in us.”
Contending for life in a culture of death
Swanson then observed that as the people of God contend for life, we live in a culture that increasingly devalues life and places instead a high value on the self. “Our view has life has become utilitarianism. Life is valued based on what you can do for me.”
Swanson then quoted from medical ethicist Peter Singer, “the (Judeo-Christian) ethic (of the sanctity of life) keeps us from making reasonable decisions about who shall live and who shall die. If we can put aside the obsolete and erroneous notion the sanctity of all human life, we may start to look at human life as it really is: the quality of life that each human being has or can achieve.”
A series of rhetorical questions followed: in the absence of a God-centered view of life as precious and sacred, who would determine the utilitarian value of a given life? Who would determine when that value began and when it ended in an environment where there was no sense of intrinsic value or standard of determination outside of the self?
The value God places on life
Swanson then read Jeremiah 1, verses 4-5, “The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’"
“We find here the somewhat startling call of God on a human life,” Swanson said. Admitting that the text does not specifically address the issues of abortion, Swanson mined the text for four “critical truths” on the subject of life.
“First, every human life is valuable and sacred in the eyes of God. God says to Jeremiah, ‘I knew you and had a plan for your life even before I made you in your mother’s womb.’ If God has a plan and a purpose for our lives, then our lives have value.” Swanson then noted that this truth echoes across Scripture, quoting from Psalm 139 to make the point that “your life, my life, every life has value not because of something we do but because our lives flow from the Hand of a perfect, loving, and sovereign God who knows us and has planned for our existence.”
Turning to the second principle found in the Jeremiah 1 passage, Swanson said, “every human life has value from the start. God says, ‘Before I even made you, I knew you and had planned for you.’ Even before Jeremiah became a bundle of dividing cells, God valued him.” This is not true in our culture where personhood or viability or utility is valued more than life itself.
Provoking the audience, Swanson asked, “Do you think a mother grieves a miscarriage more at seven months than seven weeks?” Then answering his own question, “of course not. Children are precious regardless of how long they live. Life is sacred. All life. And because no one but God knows the exact moment we become alive, we must value life from the moment it is conceived. Scripture tells us that God has know that life even before that.”
Third, “if we value life from the moment it begins, then we have a responsibility to protect that life and defend it.” But how we go about carrying out that responsibility is a part of our public witness to Christ. Swanson shunned abusive practices like yelling at pregnant women as they enter clinics, sticking picket signs in their faces while verbally condemning them. He pressed his point further, “shock films which depict bloody, dead fetuses in an attempt to change opinions are a contradiction to the very truth they seek to uphold. The chosen means dishonor the lives of the children depicted. Those children, precious in God’s sight, are not to be used for sensationalism. It dishonors them and the God who made them.”
Swanson praised PPL’s approach to education, encouragement, prayer and partnership as he reiterated the calling to protect the unborn. “But make no mistake, we are going to be held responsible. Genesis 9:5-6 says, “From each person, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow human beings. ‘Whoever shed the blood of another person, by another person shall his blood be shed.’ For in the image of God has God made man.” There will be an accounting for the lives taken through abortion because human life is sacred and precious to God.
The question of choice
Turning to his final point, Swanson said, “I realize that there may be some of you here today who hold to a pro-choice position that believe that a woman has the right to do with her body what she chooses. All I would ask is that you think about that right, its parameters, and how it squares with Scripture. If you follow that idea to the end, where does it lead?”
Without questioning that people have many rights with respect to their bodies, Swanson continued probing with a series of questions: “Are those rights absolute? Does a woman have the moral right to do anything she wants with her body? Does she have the right to injure someone else with it or mutilate it or destroy it through suicide? The truth is that our right to do with our bodies falls under the authority of the Lord our God. It is not absolute.
Turning again to Scripture, Swanson lifted up First Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” Concluding that “our bodies belong to God. We are not our own.”
Using the confessions to support his argument, Swanson offered the first question of the Heidelberg catechism, which asks: “What is your only comfort in life and in death? Answer: That I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to myself but to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ who at the cost of His own blood has fully paid for all my sins.”
Life is not our choice and life is not our right.
Abortion has become the great hidden secret of the church’s life.
Taking then a very pastoral tone, Swanson acknowledged that as a church we must get our act together in terms of ministry to women who are suffering silently with shame and guilt and remorse over past abortions. Swanson said that “women don’t feel the freedom in our churches to share their hurt and pain because what they saw was zeal and what they heard was that there is not a safe place in the church because I am condemned.”
Swanson challenged everyone present to return home and figure out how to provide a confidential means for an abortion support group in every church. He then shared the story of how that is happening at his church.
“After preaching this sermon in June of last year, we had eight women in our congregation who came up to me and shared the silent shame they had never told anyone.” Women must be reminded of what God says in Romans 8, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Swanson then shared that his wife had taken the message and shared it with 60 inmates at the county jail. The response was overwhelming. Of the 60 women, 34 responded to the invitation to receive forgiveness and grace with the promise that one day they are going to met their child in the heavenly realms.
How will our churches become safe places for women who have made those choices and now suffer?
Presbyterians Pro Life President John Sheldon speaks during Sunday's event.
Life redeemed
Swanson closed by sharing an e-mail received by Adam Hamilton, pastor of one of the largest Methodist churches in the country, shared in his book Confronting the Controversies.
The e-mail was from a woman who had conceived a child at 17 in the days before Roe v. Wade. Reflecting on her experience of choosing to have her child against the will of her parents and raising that child as a single mom, she wrote, “Yes, my life changed dramatically, but God has blessed me more with this son than I can ever imagine being blessed. Somehow I knew that even from the moment he was conceived, he was a gift of God. My life is different than it could have been, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. Thank you, Adam, for being my gift from God. I never dreamed as I carried you that you would have the impact on God’s people, and on me, that you have. I love you. Mom.”
Of that e-mail, Hamilton writes, “This is my story. God takes what we think are mistakes, accidents, blunders or evils and redeems them. This is God’s specialty.” And it is.
Swanson concluded by encouraging attendees to make choices that honor that and share that great good news with others. Indeed, life is holy and sacred because it flows from the hand of a holy and sacred God who redeems life.
PPL President, the Rev. John Sheldon, encouraged all those present to consider Swanson’s message as a model for preaching a pro-life sermon.
Executive Director Marie Bowen shared the two areas of focus for PPL in 2010. The first focus is PPL’s presence at the GA to give witness for the unborn who have no other voice and the publication of Pregnant with Promise, a study of the character of God as revealed through the pregnancies stories of the Bible.