Life

So, abortion is in the news again.
This really isn't the issue to manically soap-box at people over. Do I believe that the vast majority of women who choose termination do so on a whim?
No.
Do I believe that most women who find themselves having to walk this route, get up and dust themselves off afterwards and never look back?
No.

The real shock value in this headline is the large numbers of women who are having repeat abortions, sometimes as many as seven. This, when taken as a simple cold hard fact sounds horrible and shocking. How quick so many are to hurl abuse at these women. I too was quite shocked and I found myself wondering why someone would subject themselves to this procedure so many times when even once feels abhorrent to me.
I'm a great believer in putting people and their actions into context. People often make assumptions about me and what I do and they are frequently wrong, I find this annoying.
So, we get back to the question at hand - why so many abortions?
All I have is more questions. How many of these women are actually using abortion simply as a form of contraceptive? Why, we may ask, don't they simply use condoms or the pill? After all both these can be obtained very easily and and for free. We must delve deeper still.
How many of these women are in abusive relationships? By abusive, I don't just mean physical. It's certainly the most obvious form of abuse, but not necessarily the most damaging. Mental and emotional abuse are just as horrific things to live with, but much harder to seek and obtain help for. The women in question in these situations may find themselves trapped in an abusive relationship with a partner who simply will not use any form of contraception. The women in these relationships are under the control of the men and perhaps their only way of finding control in the relationship is to sneak out and abort the results of the physical relationship. If the woman in question feels that she is simply not able to cope with one or more children due to the nature of the life she is trapped in, then she aborts.
Let's look at more general social pressures. In the media we are constantly assaulted with the message that having lots of sexual partners is not simply all right, but the norm. If you don't then there's probably something wrong with you. If you disagree with this then you are usually branded some sort of prude.
So, girls grow up with this idea that to have a fulfilling life you need to sleep around a bit. Alcohol is often involved and this leads to an inevitable loss of self control. Women, when drunk, behave in a very different manner to when sober, just like men. They will agree to things like sexual encounters much more readily and after all, why worry? It's perfectly normal - so modern society tells us. Women may have gathered more power and be heading towards more equal rights in the world but at the same time they are being cheapened by the constant physical and sexual nature of media images and ideas.
This lifestyle has its inevitable dark side. There are now rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases, many of which can be quite nasty if not treated quickly and some are still incurable. Also, there is the risk of unwanted pregnancy and so - abortions.
I am not advocating that we return to a medieval idea of women where they are little more than objects to be traded about by men. Womens equality might have caused upset among more traditional men, and it is the old fashioned mindset that is causing the problem and not the new.

So, what does this all mean?
Women need to take more control of their bodies, not less. Women need to be fully equal and be strong.
In my opinion this means - not agreeing or submitting to sexual encounters just because society, still male dominated, says that it is normal. Respect your body and don't cheapen it by wasting with men who only want sex.
Insist on contraceptive use, even within a marriage relationship. You don't have to have "lots" of children if you don't want to and anyone who says it's not "Christian" or "spiritual" to carry out family planning is, to be quite frank, talking out of their rear end. In Genesis 1, 28 Adam is told to be fruitful and multiply. Well, he was the first man in all creation so it's a very sensible thing to do. Noah is told told in Genesis 8, 17 that the animals are to be released after the flood had receded so that they might breed abundantly, be fruitful and multiply. Again, given the context this is a good commandment.
But now?
I think it's safe to say that the human race has been fruitful and multiplied. Now, the world is a different place and an instruction given in the Old Testament is not perhaps the best thing to live your life by. Men, Christian men, respect your wives. If your wife does not feel that she can cope with a child at a particular point in her life then respect her wishes. Use contraceptives - they're not actually mentioned anywhere in the Bible at all! Children are a wonderful blessing, but they will test any relationship to their breaking points. In this day and age with good healthcare you don't need to have as many children as possible as we no longer have the scourge of infant mortality rates that we used to.
My conclusion is this: -
Respect.
Respect your body, respect what sex is for (after all) and respect life. Don't mess around, if you create a life then you have to live with the consequences of it.
Respect other women. Some might be in terrible circumstances so don't judge them so harshly. If women have more respect for themselves, take more power and more control over their own bodies then shock stories like this can be a thing of the past.

We're not meant to be shallow

I was reading a very good book on thursday - A. W. Tozer's The Christ Centred Church. One passage really leaped out at me - the carnal Christian.
The example is from 1 Corinthians chapter 3 - "And I brethren could not speak to you as spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able." (NKJ)
A. W. Tozer used the example of a baby to illustrate the idea of a carnal Christian and I looked at my own three month old son and saw the same picture. A baby lives in the now, is a slave to his feelings and emotions and doesn't have any concept of anything but himself. For a baby, this is perfectly normal and I love him to bits, I certainly don't resent him for being what he is - a small child.
Picture it as a Christian life, when we make that first step toward God, when we are first filled with his spirit, we are the same, everything is new and we are like babies in our faith. We are cosseted, fed on easily digestible milk and have very little depth to our understanding.
My son will grow up, he will be weaned onto solid food, he will get bigger and stronger and grow into a man. It would be very wrong of me to fight this, to try and keep him as a tiny baby. As Christians, we must not stay as babies either, we must not live our lives in the shallow emotional way, we must crave more of God, we must go deeper. It is easy, and believe me I am as guilty of it as anyone, just to sit there on a Sunday, listen and thing "How nice!" and then  go home and do nothing. This is not the way to a strong Christian life, it is the way to banality.
Later in the same chapter of Corinthians, the example of a building is used. A foundation has been laid and it is up to us to build. We can follow Christ wholeheartedly and build in gold, silver and precious stones or we can build with wood, hay and straw. It will be tested by fire, and some will suffer loss. They will be saved, but saved through fire. How many of us sit back and thing we're all right, we've given our heart to God, we've been baptised and we turn up on most Sunday mornings. We've got our "ticket to heaven" and that's as far as we ever go. We've been given the foundation and aren't bothering to build anything on it at all! We are babies, incapable of anything more than crying loudly when things get a little difficult.
This has been a strong wake up call to me; I have been severely neglecting my spiritual life. As hard as I know I will find it, I must put some effort in. I must read my Bible more, remember to pray with  regularity and trust in Him more. It's not being saved by works, it's getting to know him better. If I want to get to know my neighbour I must make the effort to talk to him more and I think the same applies here.