I was around sixteen years old when my grandmother gave me one of my most prized possessions, the red, ornate, hardback version of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, complete with foldout maps of Middle Earth. I set into it immediately and, within a few days, had it read from cover to cover.
For the record, I am glad Peter Jackson left out Tom Bombadil when he produced the movie trilogy; he was an oddity that really never did seem to fit with everything else.
That said, an even odder part, for me, was how very anti-climactic the last few chapters were. The ring gets tossed into the fire, Sauron goes poof – and then there are several chapters where it seems to be very “ho-hum, let’s mosey slowly back to the Shire and then sail away a few years later.”
Which brings me to the fall of Roe V. Wade.
It really should not come as a shock to anyone that I view Roe V. Wade as a very “Sauronesque” thing, a dark evil that needed to fall. I have been very open about that in print and in preaching for many long years now. But honestly, I never held out much hope that it would be overturned in my lifetime. It really was a quest that, to quote Jackson’s Galadriel, “stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all.”
And yet, hope did remain, and it did fall. But there are still so very many chapters of this saga left to be written. So, just like Frodo and company, we are sort of left to ask ourselves, “What now?”
To begin with, “what now” should proceed into a period of thanks to God for a wonderful victory and also repentance before him for the dark soul of a culture that so casually snuffed out 63 million lives. This is a stain that will never go away and for which we need to seek the mercy of the holy God of heaven.
“What now” should also turn our focus to the multiple smaller-arena battles that will now need to be fought in place of the one central battle of the past half-century. The fall of Roe has not eliminated abortion; it has merely kicked the matter back to state legislatures where it more properly belongs. From state to state, then, God’s people and even just people who care about the most vulnerable among us need to rise up, join hands, and do the work necessary to make sure that no legislative Roe substitutes take hold in the individual states.
“What now” should obviously also look ahead to the upcoming mid-term election and every election that ever follows. That which was erroneously brought into being by the Supreme Court and has now been struck down as such by the Supreme Court will almost certainly become law through the Congress if pro-abortion advocates are allowed into power. Elections do matter, every single one at every single level. Any Christian who does not vote may as well be recasting the ring that brings Roe-Sauron back into being.
“What now” should also be making adoption free and quick. No one who is willing to pay to raise a child for eighteen years should also be forced to spend thousands of dollars and/or months or even years to get that child to begin with.
“What now” must also include a redoubling of efforts and support for Crisis Pregnancy Centers/Pregnancy Resource Centers. These amazing places (which, very tellingly, are being vandalized and even burned to the ground by abortion advocates) have for many years been at the forefront of helping scared and needy pregnant ladies see ultrasounds of the baby they are carrying and provide for that baby both before and after birth.
“What now” also needs to be a reassertion of preaching and parenting that deals with the subject. Children need to learn both from the pulpit and while sitting around the dinner table that abortion is wrong and why. When those influential places fall silent on the subject, a generation will be raised that has heard mostly wrong views from wrong places and wrong people and acts accordingly.
“What now” certainly needs to continue the focus on winning hearts to the truth as well. I am beyond thrilled that Roe has fallen. But if hearts are never changed, if people are never presented with the scientific and Biblical truth that abortion takes an innocent life, we will always be just a bad election cycle away from seeing that darkness rise again, even stronger than before. If enough hearts are changed, though, there will be no more abortions simply because there will not be enough customers interested in the grisly transaction to begin with.
Finally, “what now” needs to be a concerted effort from those who are truly saved to evangelize the world as Christ instructed us. Honestly, the church as a whole seems to have dropped the ball on that, which makes its bewilderment over abortion ridiculous. If people are never confronted with their sin and won to Christ, why would we ever be surprised at anything unChristlike about them? We have ladies in our church who, before they were saved, had multiple abortions. But as soon as they truly came to know Christ, their views on the subject changed completely. That kind of thing tends to happen when the Holy Spirit takes up residence inside a person’s heart.
What now? All of this. And may the dark shadow never be given place to rise again.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, NC, a widely traveled evangelist, and the author of several books. His books are available on Amazon and at www.wordofhismouth.com