Tag: politics

No Man’s Land

kevingdrendel1 Comment

I try to stay out of the political fray. I have my views, but I also know well that reasonable people can differ on many things. Most of the political pundits are polarizing. I do not want to be polarizing. I think most people are earnest in their choices and do not take lightly the positions they take. I would rather add to the dialogue than entrench and through stones.

I am more interested in bridging gaps than creating them. Abortion is one of those things as to which people have tried to carve out a middle ground without success. I agree with freedom of choice. I agree that women should be able to control their bodies and not be intruded upon by other people or government. We have a history, a human history, of abuse toward women by men and government.

I think we have emerged out the other side of that dark reality for the most part, though men still prey on women sometimes. More accurately, people still prey on people. It is the sad human condition since the time of Cain and Abel. The powerful prey on and take advantage of the weak. Parents abuse children, men abuse women, sometimes women abuse men, the criminal among us take advantage of the weak in body or mind. Government and the people should stand up against these injustices and seek to prevent violence and crime and bring to justice those who perpetuate it.

The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been playing out in recent weeks in Pennsylvania. Dr. Gosnell is a doctor who for many, many years performed abortions in an abortion clinic in Philadelphia that catered to the poor women in that area. He is accused of negligently performing procedures on at least one woman who died at his hands. There were other women who died at his clinic, but charges are only pending in regard to one. He is also accused of killing in astoundingly brutal and cold blooded ways babies who were born alive. These babies were “allowed” to live for twenty minutes or more, moving their hands and feet and crying, before he or someone at his direction took scissors and “snipped” their heads off. (They referred to the “procedure” as “snipping”.)

This is where the intellectual debate on abortion begins to come unglued. Roe v. Wade carved out the first trimester of pregnancy as a no man’s land between human life and something else. Since that time, the line has been advanced to the point of birth. Now, we have playing out in a court room in Pennsylvania a murder trial, and the only reason it is a murder trial is that the babies were “allowed” to live beyond birth, even if for only 20 minutes.

The dialogue is fascinating if not brutal, cold and frightful. Because the Doctor was negligent in performing the medical procedure of abortion, the fetuses were born alive; he is now being tried for the murder of babies. Four of them to be exact.

What turns an aborted fetus into a baby? The transition from fetus to child is minutes. Twenty minutes before birth, it is a surgical procedure; twenty minutes after birth it is cold blooded murder.

The Gosnell case is messy and makes a real mess of the abortion debate. It is hard to keep it at the intellectual level when babies’ heads are being snipped off as they lie on the table moving their limbs, breathing, trying to see the faces of the people who would otherwise be there to comfort and hold them. This case is hard to stomach and hard to fit into the intellectual boxes when the facts stare you in the face. The middle ground in the abortion debate is a no man’s land that is extremely uncomfortable to abide after reading the details of this case.

At least one reporter has completely changed positions on abortion as a result of covering the case. For an account, read and watch the interview of JD Mullane.

Sometimes We Get What We Want, But Not What We Expect

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I am not drawn to politics. I find it more disillusioning than invigorating. Politics, however, is a mainstay, a byproduct, and, in some ways, the life blood of civilization. We can not escape it though we try.

I think we can safely say that God is neither Republican nor Democrat. I say this at the risk of stating the obvious (and of offending friends on both sides of the aisle). I do not believe, however, that God is uninterested in politics. He is intimately interested in all that we do. The Bible even says that God puts rulers in place.

The Bible also says that God’s ways are not our ways. When Jesus rode through Jerusalem on a donkey, he was celebrated for harkening the ouster of foreign rule and returning self-rule back to Israel. In reality, He came to Jerusalem not to take a throne, but to die at the hands of the ruling authority at the time.

Jesus’ triumphant ride through Jerusalem did not lead to the victory that people expected. God had a different plan, a bigger plan: victory over sin and death by which all of humankind, both the living and the dead, would be offered entrance into the Kingdom of God.

After Jesus’ death, some Jews at the time, particularly the zealots (political idealists?), were embittered by the apparent and utter collapse of all of their hopes and dreams of living free from outside control. Even those closest to Jesus, who walked, ate and slept alongside him, denied they knew him when their expectations seemed dashed.

Whether celebrating the fulfillment of expectations or despairing of dashed expectations, God is in control. He has a plan. If our hope is not in God, Himself, we may find ourselves missing the mark in what we expect and being crushed when our (unwarranted) expectations are not met.

After the last election, many people were celebrating and many were embittered. As I write this in December of 2012, we are purportedly nearing the edge of a “fiscal cliff”. Our hopes and fears are on the line, regardless of which reaction we had to the election.

In Illinois, the Democrats have taken back sizeable majorities in the House and Senate. The public has spoken by giving the Democratic Party a veto proof majority with a Democratic governor.

On the national level, we have a Democratic president without the constraint of future political campaigns, locking horns with entrenched Republicans trying to forestall the fulfillment of his plans. In both cases, we have gotten what we wanted. The people’s’ will has prevailed. It remains to be seen whether we will get what we expect.