The Audacity of it all

Yesterday (20 October 2015) a 4-year-old was shot in the head and killed in Albuquerque NM by someone who drove by the car in which the child was riding and opened fire.  The police are looking for the killer and asking for the public’s help.  “This is a complete disregard for human life”, states the police.

A few years ago in Libya, the consulate in Benghazi had asked the State Department for more security personnel, fearing an uprising that did not bode well for the American presence.  The request for additional security was denied.  As in Iran over 30 years ago when our Embassy was under siege, the US Government did not want to “offend” anyone.

Police officers across the country are being gunned down in cold blood only for wearing a badge, and there is even a group boasting the mantra, “Kill a cop; save a child.”

Planned Parenthood has been seriously challenged for its operational practices pertaining to the disposal of unborn children taken from the mother’s womb; and in too many other instances, abortion has been exposed for the horrific, violent, reprehensible practice it is – even as some components of our culture insist such practices are “rights” protected by law.

And we have the audacity to ask why there is so little regard for human life.

I will dispense with the religious argument that speaks to the reality of human sacrifice in an ancient culture when live children were sacrificed to a Canaanite deity called “Moloch” for the sake of a more prosperous society.  Religious beliefs don’t seem to go very far these days anyway – especially when the beliefs of religious people don’t always coincide with the practices of those same religious people.  Besides, why be religious when being popular is so much more personally rewarding?

So what can we finally admit to in this “culture of death” we have embraced for ourselves?  Can we not finally admit that a genuine and earnest respect for human life cannot be culturally conditional or socially subjective?  Can we not finally admit that the sacred value of all human life is beyond human measure?

We have citizens and elected representatives who see nothing at all wrong with Planned Parenthood’s unspeakable practices.  Rather than to let the recently released undercover videos slap us in the face with the harsh truth of what we have learned to embrace – and even celebrate! - as a “right”, many are stepping up to defend PP and condemn the video’s producers.  We are allowing excuses to be made, and we are actually giving more attention to these excuses than to the horror that has actually been revealed in the videos!

And we have the audacity to ask why there is so little regard for human life.

Our children and grandchildren are being raised in a culture in which these proponents of death are given so much press time and attention while our churches are more concerned with what is politically correct, desperately trying to find a position we can all agree on politically (and keep seats in the pews!) and vainly trying to please everyone while ignoring the reality that our society would judge the value of an entertainment celebrity’s life as much higher than that of a child born to a “welfare mom”.

We have created new political terms and phrases such as “reproductive justice” and have learned to push birth control rather than to encourage and practice self-control.  We have lost all respect for the very act of procreation itself and have turned even that sacred act into recreation.  We are more inclined to hedge our bets with birth control that, at best, may be only 95% effective but then assuage our anxiety about bringing “unwanted” children into the world with abortion – the “final solution” to our fears and uncertainties about the future while willfully ignoring the horror of the present.

And we have the audacity to ask why there is so little regard for human life.

The “complete disregard for human life” should come as no surprise to a people who have boldly and even proudly proclaimed themselves as “personally opposed” to abortion but politically “pro-choice” as if the sacred and social value of human life is subjective to cultural norms and terms of utility.  We teach in schools across the country of a young person’s “duty” and “responsibility” to practice birth control so as to avoid bringing an “unwanted” child into the world, a child who would “ruin your life” with an unexpected (??) or unwanted pregnancy.

We are teaching our children that children are themselves a curse! 

And we have the audacity to ask why there is so little regard for human life.