Is this the best approach to end abortion? I am thinking about this issue as Rick Santorum, poster boy for social conservatives, leads in a statistical tie for first place in Iowa and next week is the New Hampshire primary. “But, Dennis,” I can just hear you saying, “How can this not be important?” Yes, it is important in many ways. Late term abortion is a blight on the nation. There have even been cases that I would describe as infanticide. But abortion and other social issues are not issues that can be solved by politics.
Do you really think that a state like California is going to vote to ban abortions? Is a state like New York going to pay any attention to any Federal law banning it? Are there enough anti-abortion voters to elect 2/3 of the Congress and the state legislatures to pass a constitutional amendment? And even if it did pass, why do we think anyone in the liberal states will pay attention to it? We happily ignore the constitution as it is. Will the Supreme Court ever overturn Roe v. Wade? I think the answer to all these questions is no. (An historical note: the original Roe decision still banned late term abortions.)
In the historical section of the Bible the various kings are listed. Often the king’s reign is summed up like this: he was a good king but allowed the high places to continue. Why did the king do this? The high places were a direct threat to the authority and control he had over the central sanctuary. I am sure the reason was the king felt he could not do anything about it.
The high places were a combination of brothels and centers of cultic worship. The idea was to signal the gods by sympathetic magic to have sex by having cultic sex with prostitutes—both male and female, both heterosexual and homosexual. The idea was that unless the gods had sex there would be no rain. Usually the initiates were slaves raised to that life with the male babies often being castrated in infancy.
While there were attempts to abolish this practice—King Josiah was the most successful—these attempts ultimately failed. At the end of Judah’s political independence the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 8 describes the temple:
5 Then he said to me, “Son of man, look toward the north.” So I looked, and in the entrance north of the gate of the altar I saw this idol of lust.
Typical Household Asherahs6 And he said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing—the utterly detestable things the Israelites are doing here, things that will drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see things that are even more detestable.”
(Note that in verse 5 I replaced the NIV’s jealousy with lust. The Hebrew can go either way. It is not certain what the image of lust is, but it is probably an erect phallus or a asherah used as an idol in temple prostitution—done right in the temple of God.)
Only after the destruction of Judah did the people’s hearts change as they returned from exile. The prophet Jeremiah predicted this in chapter 31:
31 ”The days are coming,” declares the LORD,
”when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the LORD.
33 ”This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
This was fulfilled on the return from exile in Babylon. (This passage is also a prediction of the reformation that the early church brought to a corrupt political religious establishment of the first century.)
It took a thousand years for the people of God to eliminate cultic prostitution. Hopefully it will not take that long for our current cultural malaise to be healed. Note that it took the destruction of their nation, and exile to Babylon. Only when they left Babylon were their hearts changed.
Will our nation need to be “destroyed” before we, as a group, leave “Babylon”? I hope so, if that is what it takes—but I am guardedly pessimistic that America can avoid this by repenting before our destruction.
If America can repent, it will not be through politics. It will be through the preaching of the Gospel.
Remember the proverb:
A man convinced against his will,
Is of the same opinion still.
Politics can, by force, change the outer appearance. Only repentance, and only God, can change hearts.