NewsReal Sunday: The Abortion Battle Should Not Be Fought With Blood

by Paul Cooper
Posted on September 13 2009 5:52 am

Paul Cooper is a husband and father above all else. With a wife and 2 daughters he could use a dog, but sadly he only owns a cat – a female cat no less. Paul is also a pastor, blogger, and business owner. Find him on Twitter.

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The mainstream media don’t know what to do with the recent killing of a pro-life (anti-abortion) activist who was killed on Friday of this week in Owosso, Michigan.Â Rachel Maddow proves that in the video below, as she just doesn’t want to admit that someone would kill a Pro-Lifer over ideology. Such an acknowledgment would necessarily discredit her “Pro-Choicers-Are-Heroes-and-Anti-Abortionists-Are-Dangerous” paradigm. This killing, which comes only three months after late-term abortionist George Tiller was shot to death in his own church, hopefully will cause not just the media but all those involved in the culture war over abortion to stop and think about these battles of life and death.

Harlan Drake shot and killed pro-life activist James Pouillon outside of Owosso High School as kids and parents were entering the school. Pouillon was famous in the town for holding up his sign showing, on one side, a baby’s face accompanied by the caption “Life,” and on the other side, a picture of an aborted baby accompanied by the caption “Abortion”.Â Reportedly, Drake didn’t think Pouillon should be showing kids such gruesome images, so he killed him in cold blood in front of those very same kids.

So now the media have to make a big decision: Will they cover this story in the same way they covered Dr. Tiller’s death?

As a slain abortion doctor, Tiller’s demise fit the media’s preferred model for the abortion debate; i.e., he was a hero cut down by the mindless zeal of a pro-lifer. It will be most interesting to observe whether those same media will now portray Pouillon as a hero cut down by the mindless zeal of a pro-choicer. Somehow I doubt it.

Tiller was a corrupt doctor who bent the rules of law to kill thousands of babies in late-term pregnancies. We’re talking about fully-formed babies who would have been viable outside of the womb. You don’t get much worse than that. Nonetheless, what was done to Tiller was abominable.

The mistake of the man who killed Tiller, and of anyone else who wants blood in this war, is that the battle over the lives of the 4,000 unborn babies who are aborted every day in this country, is not meant to be fought in the realm of flesh and blood. It is a spiritual battle.

The Bible teaches Christians the opposite of what was seen Friday morning at Osowwa High School.Â It tells us:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)

As a follower of Christ, my only battles are in the spiritual realm.Â I don’t fight against any man or woman.Â I may disagree with them, but I am trying to win them over to my side, not to defeat them.Â I am certainly not trying to physically harm them.Â Even though I mourn the multitudinous abortion-related deaths of babies in this country, my response is not to advocate still more death.Â It’s to promote the real life that comes through knowing the giver of life.Â After all, Jesus said in John 10:10:

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

The culture war is meant to be a battle of ideas, and of truth being proclaimed over falsehoods.Â It isn’t meant to be a physical battle.Â Sadly, that reality is being lost on the generation of youngsters growing up now.Â One Owosso High School student (who didn’t appreciate Pouillon’s signs), when interviewed about Pouillon’s death, said this to aÂ reporter:

I can see someone spitting on him or punching him, but shooting him is pretty stupid.

As the temperatures of debate rise higher and higher in our country, violence seems to become more and more inevitable. We still see killing as wrong, but we somehow feel that spitting and punching might be appropriate ways of expressing our disapproval. What have we become?Â We are at war, but not against each other.Â Let’s take a deep breath and remember who the real enemy is.