Is Christ's answer regarding allegiances timeless? 'Pertinent to contemporary democratic government? Is it possible to 'render unto Caesar' while actually BEING a self-governing 'Caesar'...and still withhold the more proper portion of our  faith for that which is God's? The resolution of these questions continues to be a challenging interpretive task, particularly when those distinctions between civil law and the rights of all citizens and the religious persuasions and the rights to maintain them seem to be working at cross purposes.

Since the builders of the American constitution forbade the creation of a 'state' religion while guaranteeing the freedom of worship, the resultant 'balance' produced by this simultaneous restriction and privilege draws us as American citizens into a situation not unlike what courts might refer to as 'personal recognizance'; that is the encouragement of individual faith by the inhibiting of state religion...

And this delicate balance between the competing concerns of faith and control is also found in us as individuals. given the complexity of the multi-leveled concerns that make up the abortion 'issue', it is understandable then that one of the common assumptions within the christian community is that to allow the Roe vs Wade decision to stand is tantamount to giving 'permission for murder'. But we need to be reminded that the Roe vs Wade decision is not a ruling about the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of abortion. It is more particularly a high court's considered opinion as to whether, and to what degree, a person's moral accountability is to God or to the state.

(Actually and ironically, the reversal of Roe vs Wade could provide the legal precedent for the state to 'monitor' the fetal development of its future citizens and, though such control is certainly not the vision of pro-life forces, neither is it beyond the scope of a government grown repressive and whose exercise of control and 'concern' becomes more important than the freedom of its people.)

In a country as diverse in its ethnic base as America, some concerns of the individual cultures will blend some will not. "Life has no quality without Freedom" say some. "You have to give up your life to find Life" say others. "Come to Me..." whispers our Creator. "Within Me there is the resolution of all conflict. Within my Love there is True Freedom. Within my Love there is Life Everlasting."



I do believe that even the most oppositional of perspectives are healed within God. Many would call this 'faith', though after over twenty years as a Christian I find it many times to be just as much a 'trust based on past experience'. Still, call it what you will, by virtue of this trust/faith, I have come to accept some significant concepts as Truth.

For instance, I hold as true that the uniqueness of personhood is present at conception though it is a fact that a child in the womb is NOT physically separate from the mother. However, while I may feel spiritually certain that a mother and child ARE each known uniquely in the Mind of God, it is after all MY certainty and possibly not that of the woman actually bearing the child.

Therefore it seems that what is understood as True for one of us may not be necessarily understood as True for another until such time as another's faith allows. And, while pregnancy may represent a joy and a promise to one, it very well may be an overwhelming responsibility and danger to another.

Then, of course, there is the matter of the 'mandated baby'. If the mother does not want the child but is nonetheless forced to bring the pregnancy to full term, who then bears the responsibility for the infant should the mother still not want the child after birthing? Do opponents of the roe-wade decision assume that private adoption agencies will have enough parents standing in line to adopt the three or four million children 'saved' annually? Or will the child become a ward of the state? There's something very orwellian about the concept of several million babies per year becoming orphans of the state.

Though many of us have learned that hardships bring growth, maturity and wisdom, there is no temporal law that commands us to face hardships with nobility and trust and faith; that is rather for us to discover...

If we 'render unto Caesar' our moral accountability, we will find that we have sacrificed the future of even those we are trying to save. For, it is in the commitment of error, and yes, occasionally sometimes irreversible, devastatingly permanent error, that we come to learn certain eternal truths; our own limitations, and the resultant 'pain' of freedom.

It is lamentable that the 'unborns' die daily; victims of a battle that began before their conception. But coercion, violence, selfishness, manipulation and ignorance will not cease simply because we pass a law forbidding them. One cannot engender within another heart, by the passage of a law, the understanding of the preciousness of life or a vision of pregnancy in its miraculous nature anymore than the granting of a marriage license can produce a 'desire' to make a marriage work.

some things we must learn for ourselves...

in Love,