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Wasn't Voting Republican Pro-life Enough? For three years I had parked next to one of the busiest abortion clinics in the Midwest. Oblivious to the thousands of babies being ripped from their mothers, month after month I strolled into the hospital across the street to take care of business. As a pharmaceutical sales manager I was in dozens of hospitals each month. All the clinics and adjacent buildings look alike after awhile, so how was I to know that babies were being aborted in Granite City? My route to the hospital never took me to the east side of the building so I had an excuse, right? After all I was pro-life. I had even supported a local Crisis Pregnancy Agency and I certainly voted Republican. Wasn't that enough? It was July 2000 and Operation Save America held their annual week-long rally in St. Louis. More specifically, Flip Benham preached at my church on the first night of the meetings. Challenged by what I heard, I decided to attend the protest the next morning at the Hope Clinic for Woman in Granite City, IL. On Monday morning I left my house before dawn to meet up with OSA. To my surprise and amazement their protest was across the street from one of my biggest accounts. I stood there in the quite of the sunrise before OSA arrived and watched women, some visibly with child and some not, file into the clinic. On that muggy July morning my heart sank as I watched each one sign in at the security desk and then quickly disappear into the building. I wanted to cry out, but didn't know what to say. The "issue" of abortion was now taking place in front of my eyes. On 9-11 America woke up to the threat of terrorism in our land, but that July morning was my wake up call to the national sin of abortion. Standing there alone in front of the clinic, I was painfully aware of the cultural and spiritual battle for the unborn in our country and world. It was no longer an abstraction like terrorism to American's before 9-11. Abortion was now a hideous evil lurking in my community. My ignorance to the location of the clinic was symbolic of my ignorance to God's word on matters of life, death and the church's responsibility to protect the innocent and shed light on sin. Having spent the better part of my adult life in safe, "seeker-friendly" churches, I had grown cold to the Spirit's prophetic voice. After all, I wanted to be relevant as a Christian, which meant talking about things people wanted to hear. Like so many Evangelicals today I thought being against abortion in my mind was enough. There has been a harder reality I have had to face these last few years. It is this. My years of silence over abortion were not a passive protest, but rather quiet support. By watching thousands of little ones being killed daily and not speaking out, I was an accomplice to the carnage. By not educating myself on the facts and equipping myself to defend the life in the womb, my abdication was telling the world that Jesus does not care about the killing of innocent, defenseless human babies. God, forgive me. Oh, that the pews, pulpits and seminaries in our land would rise up against this evil in the land so that the world would know that God loves all the children. Our silence is deafening. I am thankful for OSA's boldness to speak out for God's little image bearers. The Spirit of God, through their voice, awakened this slumbering Christian from his sleep. Thomas
McKnight
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