Abortion Essay

I originally hoped to write a short letter concerning the issue of abortion and the need for the Christian community to take action against abortion. As I thought more about it, and discussed abortion with another Seminary student, an essay involving the writing of Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt more fitting. I am sorry for the length, and I pray that you will take the time to read it and consider it. I wrote this essay to inform, and to apply my theological education. Due to its length and character it could be a difficult read for some. I hope all will patiently read it, and prayerfully consider it. I welcome feedback, and I welcome all sharing it responsibly with others. God bless you.

Matthew Peery


The Church and the Abortion Question:
An Essay in Remembrance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This essay is written to my brothers and sisters in Christ. It is in memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I will share more about later. It is dedicated to the millions upon millions of unborn humans that I will only get to meet on the other side of glory. It is meant to ask difficult questions about the nature of Christianity, the Church, and the reality of abortion in America. I love you all, and I pray that Christ is your delight.
I would like to briefly introduce the person Dietrich Bonhoeffer to those who do not know of him. Bonhoeffer was a pastor-theologian in Germany who authored most of his work in the 1930’s. He was an extraordinarily talented young man. He received his doctorate from The University of Berlin at age 21. His dissertation was on the sociology of the church. He is widely regarded as one of, if not the most brilliant and influential theologians of the twentieth century. What truly made Bonhoeffer stand out was his ability to recognize the depraved nature of Nazism from the very beginning. He also possessed the courage to speak out against it. Bonhoeffer would become one of the leading members of the Confessing Church in Germany which stood against the German church as it compromised with Nazism. Eventually the Confessing Church would compromise according to Bonhoeffer, and he would become a part of the German resistance. This resistance involved many of Bonhoeffer’s friends and family members who knew about Nazi atrocities before many others. Bonhoeffer would play a role in a plot to kill Hitler and reestablish Germany. Because of his involvement in the resistance, Bonhoeffer would spend 1943-1945 in jail and in a concentration camp. Naked, he was hung on April 9, 1945 at the Flossenburg concentration camp. His last words were: “This is the end, for me the beginning.” Bonhoeffer was a tremendous man of Christian piety, scholarship, courage, and faithfulness.
We have lived in dark days, deceived by false light. We are deceived by the false light of liberty, autonomy, freedom, progress, and human rights. As Madame Roland was carted to the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution during the French Revolution she pointed to the statue of Liberty and poignantly said, “Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name.” Or, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated:
The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.

In this essay I will compare the atrocities which took place under Nazi Germany with the current and ongoing atrocity that is taking place in America against the unborn. It is important to assert from the beginning that America is not Nazi Germany, and in many cases the two are not comparable. I am personally glad that I can worship however my conscience leads. I am glad that I can receive medical care and an education without reference to my ancestry. The situations are clearly different, yet there is much still to be learned from that past situation. In my opinion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer represents a powerful and clear voice about the nature of evil within a civilized society; I believe this is a voice we need to heed.
In 1933, at the dawn of that wicked age, Bonhoeffer wrote a letter entitled “The Church and the Jewish Question.” In this letter he courageously called for Christians to act against the horror that was taking place all around them. He was basically alone in this call, and time would prove to show that most Christians in Germany did very little to protect or aid their Jewish neighbors. I fear that the same will be said of American Christians today in light of the unborn. Please understand what I am saying. We are no better, and perhaps worse, than those complacent German Christians who did nothing while millions were baked or gassed to death. Oh how easy it is to say that in hindsight you would have acted differently. Would you really have acted any different? I think our current situation displays that you would not have.
Bonhoeffer had an amazing ability to concentrate his thoughts and surroundings in words. After ten years of being under Hitler’s reign, Bonhoeffer wrote to his friends and family who were a part of the resistance. Bonhoeffer’s voice is a prophetic one, and I believe these words speak to our day as well. He stated:
We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward people. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

Bonhoeffer, along with many Christians of his day, truly understood what it meant to be “silent witnesses of evil deeds”. It is my conviction that we as American Christians are also such witnesses. We have collectively and individually decided to sit on our hands, to turn our gaze, and silence our voices. Are these not sins of omission–sins which require our repentance and chastisement? In some ways it is much easier and convenient for us to make such sins of omission. We do not see peculiar flags flying throughout our cities. We do not hear radical propaganda against the unborn on our radios, or in our newspapers. We do not have to pledge allegiance to a culture of death and destruction. Or do we? The more I consider it, and the more I talk to others; the Nazi atrocities are strikingly parallel to the American atrocity of abortion. It seems clear that the persecution that the unborn are facing is of a more subtle and deceptive nature than that of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. I believe it is healthy to hear from an outside voice concerning such matters. A person that had no American politics, and yet understood the place of the church in a time of horror; we live in such a time.
I do not believe these sorts of questions are to be contemplated only individually. God has ordained that his people should live in community–the community of Christ. This is the community which becomes salt and light to the world (Matt 5:13–16). Bonhoeffer correctly understood the church-community to be Christ on earth. The church is God’s representation of himself to a fallen world. The church is the very body of Christ on earth. Bonhoeffer stated:
Where the body of Christ is, there Christ truly is. Christ is in the church-community, as the church-community is in Christ. ‘To be in Christ’ is synonymous with ‘to be in the church community’…The church is the presence of Christ in the same way that Christ is the presence of God. The New Testament knows a form of revelation, ‘Christ existing as church-community.

If the church-community does not care for the unborn, does Christ himself care? If I had been a Jew in a concentration camp in Eastern Germany or Poland, what would I have thought of the church of Christ, and of Christ himself based upon the inaction, the silence, the complacency, and the status quo of the Christian community?
Two points need to be made clear. First, neither Bonhoeffer nor I are calling for allegiance to some new or existing political party that claims Christ for itself. This historically has proven to be disastrous. Bonhoeffer stated: “In other words, a life together under the Word will stay healthy only when it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but instead understands itself as being a part of one, holy, universal, Christian church, sharing through its deeds and suffering in the hardships and struggles and promise of the whole church.” The church of Christ simply needs to be the church of Christ. It needs to preach the gospel of salvation which is only found in Christ. It needs to reach out in compassion to those hurting and wounded by our fallen world. And it needs to stand up for justice, goodness, and human life in a country which is seriously lacking all of these. In The Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer writes, “The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties…it has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression. Otherwise evil will be heaped upon evil.” The world does not need another political movement; be it conservative or liberal. What the world needs is the love of Christ from the body of Christ.
Second, this is a biblical, and a gospel issue. To say otherwise is to hide behind a false piety and a misunderstanding of the New Testament. The book of James states: “If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give what is necessary for their body, what use is that?” (James 2:15–16). James goes on to say: “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26) Consider the words of Christ in the gospel of Matthew:
Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed on My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you, or thirsty, and give you something to drink? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?’ The king will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it me. (Matt. 25:34–40)

If we consider the unborn humans, then surely they are in great need. Consider also the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30–37. This is a parable which Jesus tells to stress the fact that all people are our neighbors, and therefore should be treated with love. Christ continually stressed that a tree is known by its fruit, and that people are known by their deeds. Ephesians 2:10 states: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Bonhoeffer viewed Christians as being responsible for those around them. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson write the following concerning Bonhoeffer’s view:
Yet in this morally inverted world of the Third Reich, the “treason” of the conspirators became true patriotism for Bonhoeffer and what was normally viewed as Nazism’s “patriotic” actions were viewed by him as, in fact, a treacherous undermining of Germany’s spiritual heritage. The “survival tactics” of the churches, which, for the most part, gave loyal acquiescence in political decisions and prayerful support of the troops, he rejected as a hypocritical evasion of responsibility for the violence and bloodshed of both war and death camps. In contrast to church leaders who avowed that meddling in matters of state, especially in the fate of Jews, was not a part of any explicit gospel mandate, Bonhoeffer argued before his fellow conspirators that the ultimate question was not how to extricate themselves with “clean hands” from moral dilemmas, such as those presented by military oaths and the separation of one’s “sacred” life from the profane, but the responsibility of individual Christians and of Christian churches to “shape history” for the sake of the coming generations.

I greatly fear how future Christians ought to judge us. What sort of heritage are we passing on to them? What message are we sending them?
Scripture not only stresses the need to do good to others, but it also directly confronts the murder of children. When the Hebrews were under Egyptian authority, the Pharaoh commanded that the Hebrew midwives murder any males born to the Hebrew women. Exodus 2:17 states: “But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them, but let the boys live.” Exodus 2 goes on to say: “So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied, and became very mighty. Because the midwives feared God, he established households for them.” The book of Exodus contains another fascinating passage relating to abortion. Exodus 21:22–23 states: “If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life.” The situation here is clear. If two men are fighting and a pregnant woman is hit in the midst of them and loses her child; the one responsible should be put to death. Why? He took a life. The unborn child is considered a life. Listen to David’s eloquent words in Psalm 139:13, “For you formed my inward parts, you wove me in my mother’s womb.” David in Psalm 51:5 also considered himself to be of sin even at conception. David understood that he was a living human at the time of conception.
I personally will never forget when Dr. Russell Moore, Vice President of Southern Seminary, preached on abortion. In that chapel service Dr. Moore commented on how southern pastors of the past would preach Jesus Christ, while a black man hung from a tree within sight of the church. They passionately preached against the theater, or against drinking, as a black man hung in the tree and the pastors said nothing of that fact. Dr. Moore opened the eyes of his audience to the kind of wicked deception that is going on among us. He was provoking current ministers, and future ministers to action. He was challenging Americans to see that while we talk about Hollywood, or gambling, 22 percent of pregnancies in America are ending in legal abortion. Over 45 million children have been legally killed since 1973 in the good old U. S. of A., while most of us sip our coffee, go to work, go to school, go to church, and think nothing of it.
Inaction cannot be the answer, while it has sadly been our passive answer for far too long. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to this point. He wrote from the Birmingham jail:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Bonhoeffer’s echoes a similar sentiment when he outlines how the church is to respond to a corrupt civil government. He states:
All this means that there are three possible ways in which the church can act toward the state: in the first place, as has been said, it can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibilities. Second, it can aid the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong the Christian community. “Do good to all people.” In both these courses of action, the church serves the free state in its free way, and at times when laws are changed the church may in no way withdraw itself from these two tasks. The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.

My purpose here is not to debate whether or not Bonhoeffer should have been a part of a plot to kill Hitler. My point is that Bonhoeffer understood that the Christian is called to action. Bonhoeffer wrote: “Christians are called to compassion and action, not in the first place by their own sufferings, but by the sufferings of their brothers and sisters, for whose sake Christ suffered” Christians are to be people of peace, not violence. But the Christian’s peace must be an active, not a passive peace.
I see a commonality between the civil rights movement, Nazi persecution of the Jews, and the horror of abortion in America. Each denied humans the status of being fully human. It is a denial of humanity. Negroes were considered less than human and therefore made slaves. Jews were considered to be an inferior race–a less than fully human group. They could therefore be hauled in trains like cargo, and gassed to death without the blinking of the Nazi eye. Children within womens’ wombs are also considered less than human. They are embryos, not babies, and therefore they can be disposed of and thrown into the trash. It is important that Christians speak to what it means to be human. For no other worldview can speak about humanity in the way the Christian worldview can. Christians maintain that all humans were created in the image of God, and therefore deserve to be treated justly, and with dignity.
Hopefully we all agree that more Germans should have done something. That more people should have spoken out the way Bonheoffer did. I can still vividly recall in my mind the image of a German woman wearing a red dress helping bury the thousands of mangled bodies in a concentration camp. The image is from the HBO series “Band of Brothers”. The woman was from a town in close proximity of a concentration camp. So close that the stench of dead bodies could be smelled in her town. When the American soldiers discovered the concentration camp they returned to the small town. They were tired of the war, and clearly overwhelmed with what they had just discovered. No one in the town admitted to knowledge of the camp. The Americans knew this was a lie, and so they forced the entire town’s people to aid in burying the bodies. The horrific image still makes me sick to my stomach.
If you disagree with what I am saying, that is fine. Most Christians disagreed with Bonhoeffer about the Jews. We are all members of the same body, and therefore we have no right to condemn or attack each other. We each shall live by faith and in the end God will judge our actions.
What exactly is it that I am promoting? Faithful action in your daily life and faithful action in the way the Lord leads you. We all live different lives and have different spheres of influence. If you desire to call a Senator, I encourage that. If you desire to protest at an abortion clinic, I encourage that. If you are a musician and desire to write a song, I encourage that. If you are in the medical field and desire to uphold the sanctity of life in practice and research, I encourage that. If you are a doctoral student and desire to write a dissertation concerning abortion, I encourage that. I believe this is how slavery ended and how abortion will end as well. Slavery, particularly in England, ended in large part because Christians prayerfully acted. Men like William Wilberforce continued to shove the horror of the slave trade right before the English people. Above all else I believe that church needs to simply be what God has called the church to be. The church needs to be there for all hurting parties. The church needs to be interceding in prayer. The church needs to be a sanctuary of life amidst a culture of death.
I will leave you with this question. If Nazi German only slaughtered the Jews and outcasts of German society, and did nothing else criminal, should they still be considered tyrannical and diabolical? If you answered yes, then my second question is: what is the difference between this and abortion in America?
God please end this mass murder, this mass genocide. Do this for your name’s sake. God I thank you that you kept my young mother from committing this act, and ask you to please change this culture of death into a culture of life. In your holy name I pray. Amen