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August 8, 2015

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Abortion, Pastoral, Sanctification

My Pro-Choice Story of Forgiveness

Guest Post by Julie Jones, my wife and mother to my nine children. 

I’m 39 years old, a homeschooling mother of 9 and a reformed Presbyterian pastor’s wife.  I was raised in the church (Baptist), went to a Christian college and have always been pro-life.  When I was in college, I volunteered as a counselor at a Crisis Pregnancy Center and convinced many young women to protect their unborn babies.  Being pregnant with my first child during part of that time, I was especially torn apart when I would fail to convince a woman to not destroy her child. 


I thought that being pro-choice was a political position.  To the extent that the position included the belief that a woman should be allowed to kill her unborn baby, I opposed it.  What I didn’t know was that being pro-choice is actually a foundational mindset from which a person operates and makes decisions.  I’m talking about a belief system that supports the notion that an individual has the right to pursue personal happiness at any expense to others.  Of course, we would never state it like that.  We use words like liberty and freedom of choice.  It sounds liberating, but all it actually means is that I’m free to imprison myself to becoming a meat-eating destroyer of those around me who interfere with my personal desires.   

There is a very real distinction between what we believe and the functional beliefs that actually inform our decision-making.  As humans, we have a great capacity for self-deception.  A couple of years ago I found myself in a place in my life where I was utterly self-deceived.  I thought that I was essentially correct in my choices and outlook.  I thought the misery I was living in and all of the problems with my children and all of my other relationships had to do with everyone else’s mistreatment of me and their problems.  I was dying from carrying around my guilty conscience that couldn’t accept responsibility for my own sins.  I was functioning from a pro-choice basis of belief, but I didn’t know it. 

So, no.  I never had an abortion.  But I was living a life that cut down, maimed and disabled others to satisfy my hunger for control and feed the lies that I needed to believe about myself.  As these sting videos about Planned Parenthood have been coming out of the Center for Medical Progress, it has been like a visual aid for me to see what I had been doing.  I hadn’t believed in right to life.  I believed only in my own right to be happy (by my own definition) and for anyone who stood in my way to be cut down or even exterminated (however regrettably).  Using remains as a means of profit would have been par for the course.  All of this I would have had very rational reasons for doing and I could not have believed I was truly hurting anyone.

The incredibly good news is that something happened that changed everything.  Just as these videos have allowed us to face the reality of what is going on under the surface at the abortion mills, God confronted me with the reality of what was going on under the surface in my heart.  He gave me the ability to face it, so that I could repent of it.  Then, just as Ezekiel prophesied that God would do for Israel, God did for me.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them.  Ezekiel 36:25-27

I still feel the pain of the damage I’ve done.  Knowing just how damaging my choices and behavior were and seeing the consequences is part of what helps to keep me from doing it anymore.  But I’m forgiven.  Jesus’ free grace has made me whole.   I have been given a new start.

As the videos have exposed, our nation has a load of blood guilt on our hands.  We are a broken people.  The videos show the hardness of heart and self-deception that allow “normal” people to casually rip apart babies and sell the parts and not realize the gruesome destruction that they are enacting.  They also bring to light that there are millions of souls with abortions on their conscience.   There are souls like mine, also, that are guilty, though never actually having had an abortion.  The exciting thing about this revelation is that I know it is an opportunity.  It is an open door to repent and receive the free forgiveness that Christ offers.  Real healing can happen.  Restoration can occur.