During the Texas Panhandle Festival 2000, Franklin Graham stunned the huge audiences when he bluntly proclaimed, “I believe that abortion is murder.”
I was glad that he always added, “I believe that God will forgive anyone who has committed this sin.”
Some of my preacher friends were not comfortable with this message. They believe the part about forgiveness wholeheartedly. But they are not sure that abortion should be called a sin.
Soon after Sen. Joseph Lieber-man was nominated as Al Gore’s running mate—during that tenuous period when he appeared to be frantically redefining his convictions to fit Gore’s platform—he was confronted by reporters about his stance on abortion rights.
“That’s like everything else in Judaism,” he replied. “Ultimately it’s up to each of us to decide what we think is right.” Then he explained, “Different rabbis interpret the rules differently.”
Change “Judaism” to “Christianity” and “rabbis” to “ministers” and the good senator has just defined the state of modern Christianity. We no longer know what’s right and what’s wrong. Even our preachers don’t agree.
Several police chiefs ago, I was with a group of local ministers who met with our city’s chief. A few of my clergy friends got in the chief’s face. “Why aren’t you doing more to shut down the open prostitution on the Boulevard?” they wanted to know. I shared their concern.
But the police chief was a wise man who had been around that block more often than I had. “The courts will allow my officers and the D.A. to enforce standards for decency that are solidly endorsed by the community,” he explained. “If you preachers will give me a clearly stated consensus of the leaders of our city’s churches on this issue, I’ll do my best to enforce it.”
That meeting added a new chapter to my education as a naive young minister. I was shocked when at least half the preachers present refused to sign a public statement that called prostitution a sin.
G. K. Chesterton was right when he said we have produced a generation too mentally modest to believe the multiplication tables. Where can Americans turn to learn right from wrong if even the spokesmen for our churches can’t tell the difference?