By the time you are reading this the news cycle will have moved on. Indeed it already has. Yesterday, as I type, gunmen opened fire at a cemetery and kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey. The gunmen are dead as are a policeman and three civilians. Typically this horror would have brought out the usual suspects stumping for more gun control. This time we had to move along quickly to allow our attention to be drawn to another ring in our three-wing circus, the canonization of Saint Greta of the Carbon Footprint by Time magazine. Global warming trumps Trump. We don’t have news anymore, just variants of wag the dog.
Meanwhile, across the nation yesterday and today there is a news story no one is reporting on. Nearly 3000 babies were deliberately put to death by mothers and fathers and their hired assassins, all with the full protection of the federal government of these United States. The same will happen tomorrow and the day after that. It’s been happening daily for more than 45 years.
Mass killings have lost their capacity to shock us. We should not, however, be shocked at that. Why would we be shocked by killers taking down three civilians when we are not shocked by “doctors” taking down three thousand babies? I’m afraid we tend to judge the heinousness of a given crime not by how evil it is but by how unusual. Once the heinous is common it can no longer rise to the level of evil. It’s just boring. We are indifferent to abortion not because it is done behind closed doors, not because it is performed with surgical precision, in sterile rooms. We are indifferent because it is common.
This is one reason why I am an ardent advocate of true images of abortions. It is disturbing, as it should be. It is disgusting, as it should be. It is disheartening, as it should be. These pictures are not emotionally manipulative. They are emotionally awakening, reminding us of the diabolical, deranged, demented destruction inherent in the murder of an unborn child.
When we allow the mainstream media to determine our direction, to curate our concerns, to produce our perceptions we show ourselves not only to be lovers of the world, but its slaves. What is twitter trending today will likely be wrapping fish tomorrow. What is off our radar but on the mind of Christ, that is what will survive the cleansing fire at history’s end. When we seek to be men of the moment we find ourselves becoming merely momentary men.
Real horror is all around us. Perhaps the greatest horror, however, is inside us, for we have lost our capacity to be horrified. We are numb. While these babies are being burned alive, or torn limb from limb. Let the truth be known, and let our sin be exposed. There is nothing more gruesome than our own seared consciences.