Ashley Madison, Planned Parenthood, & the Culture of ‘Victimization.’

Ashley Madison, the adultery website recently hacked by “The Impact Group” leaving 25 gigabytes of user information released to the public is offering a reward to anyone who can track down these hackers. They clearly are hoping to head off, “further victimization,” of their clients.

Planned Parenthood continues to paint themselves as the victims of radical extremist's videos likes of whom are responsible for shooting abortion providers in their churches, clinic bombings and more. Stating, “The group behind these videos has close ties with organizations and individuals who have firebombed abortion clinics and threatened the physical safety of doctors who provide abortion.”

Interestingly both these groups maintain that they, or their clients, are the victims of these undercover exposés.

This reveals something about our cultural understanding of victimization. Victimization is now understood by the feeling of shame and guilt, not innocence and injustice.

In one instance we see babies either being torn apart so that their organs can be harvested and sold, or moving in a metal bowl awaiting this fate. In the another we have 33 million user accounts, presumably all of whom are looking to have an affair with someone.

The true victims in these exposés are the spouses of the 33 million and the babies crushed.

While the ethics of undercover videos and hacked websites can be debated, what has been discovered is uncovering the true meaning of who is actually a victim and who is actually a perpetrator.

To use another recent example, Vester Lee Flanagan (AKA Bryce Williams) shot and killed reporter Alison Parker and videographer Adam Ward during an on-air interview. A few hours after killing the pair Williams committed suicide.

Now, if the reasoning of Planned Parenthood and Ashley Madison were applied to this case, Williams would be the victim driven by guilt and shame to suicide because of the deaths of Ward and Parker.

Of course, thinking this way about Williams seems ludicrous. But this is the danger: many in the public will believe the rhetoric of Planned Parenthood and Ashley Madison.

The Church stands up for the innocent and seeks to see repentance, reconciliation, and redemption in the life of the perpetrator.

Shame and guilt do not equal a victim, innocence and injustice do.

Open By the Permission of the Church?

“We’ll stand before God one day and be held accountable for allowing abortion to continue,” a small group member said to me.

He’s right we will be.

Yesterday another video was released. This one was of a lunch with Cate Dyer, CEO of StemExpress an organization which recently filed a restraining order against the Center for Medical Progress to keep any videos of its employees from coming to light. That restraining order was lifted last week and this week we see not just an employee, but the CEO.

In this latest video we hear of the researchers who, upon receiving the aborted children’s parts, are horrified and the table jokes about making sure the severed head of a baby has its eyes closed (minute 7 of the embed video), before shipping it.

“Every abortion clinic should have a sign in front of it saying, ‘Open by the permission of the church.’” Francis Schaeffer said.*

That's a spine chilling statment. And we must ask ourselves, is it true? Are we, the church, allowing this holocaust to continue? If we are, then the current American Church has little difference than that of the German Christians of 1930's Germany who, as Barth said, existed in the abysmal gap that was between, "The inherent godlessness of National Socialism (Nazi)," and Christianity.

I pray that when we stand before God at the final judgement of all things many of us will be innocent of the blood of the innocent because we stood up for the murdered masses.

Roughly 58 million abortions have been carried out since Roe V. Wade, nearly the population of Italy.

________

* This quote has been attributed to Schaeffer on various places on the internet, I am researching this to make sure it was indeed Schaeffer that said it, and if so in this form. 

UPDATE: As I have been looking through Schaeffer's works I have not yet found this quote, however he does say, "That even the church is being used by the proponents of infanticide is particularly alarming. Those who have propagated these ideas or simply not bothered to think them through have had ample warning in history - if they would care to look. Doctors and nurses should be aware of how fallible these decisions are and how disastrous have been simplistic pop-science theories about human worth in the past. Lawyers should be frightened to let down the bars on the killing of any human being, when the decisions is made on the arbitrary basis of the equality of life. And finally, these theologians have obviously forgotten God's view of the work of every human being as made in the image of God. If these same theologians no longer believe in such a God, they should not use the church as a platform form which to propagate their discriminatory ideas." p. 327, Volume 5 The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview

The Crushing Vengeance of God

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'” Romans 12:19

“We forget that man stands alone before an ultimate authority and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternal law and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will eventually crush him.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

History is not on the side of Planned Parenthood, just as history was not on the side of the Third Reich, and the Gulag, and the Armenian genocide. Tyrants will fall. History has proven this. Justice will prevail. 

It is not our place to bomb abortion clinics, to burn them, or, as happened in my hometown of Wichita, KS., murder abortion providers in their churches. 

Vengeance is God’s.

Bonhoeffer speaks truth when he says the, “Superhuman authority… will eventually crush him.” Under the weight of convincing a population they have the right to choose who can live and who can die, Planned Parenthood will fall under the crushing weight of true justice. 

By no means is this a post to persuade anyone from speaking out against Planned Parenthood. Rather this is a post to both have pity and speak warning while speaking out.

Vengeance is God’s and either real people fall under his eternal just wrath, or real people receive God’s forgiving mercy in Jesus. 

Yes, fight for the abolishment of abortion with all your being. But do not wish God’s vengeance on those murdering and then selling a baby and his/her parts. Never wish damnation on anyone.

Language that speaks of Planned Parenthood workers being below human is precisely the same logic being used to determine what lives matter and what lives don’t. People are people and are made in the image of God whether they’re in the womb or work at Planned Parenthood. 

Our goal is to abolish abortion Christianly.   

The goal to see the institution abolished, and the people within the institution redeemed.