It’s always easier to carp about things you don’t like than to stand up, become involved, and work to correct the problem.
Sunday’s sermon at the Cohocton, New York, Assembly of God Church was preached by Rev. Jason McGuire, who serves as the legislative director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms. His text was Proverbs 24:10-12.
10 If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength! 11 Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. 12 If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?
The point for us is that too many of us pay little attention to the ill advised, often downright evil, that is being proposed as legislation in our state assemblies and in Congress. We are on notice that our legislative representatives are frequently up to no good. And even when we are fully aware of it, we do nothing. Most of us would protest that if our legislators were passing laws to implement the Holocaust - the slaughter of six million Jews - we wouldn’t ignore it.
Yet, we don’t always protest to our legislators when they vote for the slaughter of many more millions of innocent babies via the judicial act of murder known as abortion. Nor do we protest the authorization at state and Federal levels of embryonic stem cell research, a process in which human babies are grown in laboratory dishes up to various ages, so that their tissues may be used for medical research. Those embryonic stem cell farms will, if unchecked, eventually lead to snuffing out the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings.
Ironically, no disease cures ever have come from embryonic stem cell research. Yet many positive medical results have come from adult stem cell tissue research, without the loss of any life.
It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that liberal-progressive legislators and officials simply wish to arrogate to themselves the role of God in creating life.
Abortion and embryonic stem cell research are just the two most egregious examples of legislating moral evil. There are, unfortunately, many more, less well known examples.
The message for us is twofold: we must inform ourselves about liberal-progressive evil that slides in unnoticed; and we must raise our voices in protest to our representatives, via telephone to their headquarters, email messages, or old-fashioned letters.
For help in that regard, if you live in New York State, contact Rev. Jason McGuire at New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms (relax, ACLU members, it’s not a tax-exempt organization). Telephone 585-225-2340; email jason@nyfrf.org; or go to the website at http://www.nycf.info.
Liberal-progressives will raise the old shibboleth that you can’t legislate morality, citing the failure of Prohibition. Doing the right thing, in this case, is not legislating to compel all citizens to act in conformity with the doctrines of any church or synagogue. Rather, it’s voicing our opposition to clearly evil legislation.
Christianity is not based upon despotic enforcement of a human code of conduct. It’s all about softening the heart of each individual to hear and to follow the great commandments: have no God other than God the creator, and love each other as you would have others love you.
But, as in the Proverbs verses cited above, if you know about evil and just shrug your shoulders, you become an accomplice to evil.
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