the church – Sheila Dougal

Thoughts on late term abortion from a labor and delivery nurse perspective

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It’s hard for me to remain calm while thinking about the insanity behind bills like the ones in Virginia and New York that seek to make normal and acceptable the act of ending the life of a late-term, pre-born human baby; and in the Virginia case, a newborn infant. But I’m going to try to remain calm and hopefully speak some reason into the insanity from my perspective as a nurse who has worked in labor and delivery.

When I became a nurse 18 years ago I worked in a labor and delivery unit in a large county and small town in Southwest Oregon. During my 4 years there I saw early and late gestation fetal demise (the death of an unborn child early and late in the pregnancy), full-term seemingly healthy infants die in resuscitation, deliveries of infants with serious health problems and still birth. I also witnessed many healthy, normal deliveries. In some of those situations when the mother’s health was at serious risk, we delivered them of their babies, often premature and then we took every measure possible to save their babies lives. Sometimes the babies lived. Sometimes they did not. In some cases the mother had to endure the pain of labor or the pain of surgery with the torture of grieving the unexpected death of their child. In other cases mothers experienced the pain of labor or surgery with the joy of a new life, which would soon be mixed with the pain of healing and long-sleepless nights followed by a life of self-sacrifice to raise the child.

I have read through some of the arguments of women I respect about why they think these late-term abortion laws are needed. The argument about women having the right to do with their body what they want without government interference I’m not going to address here except to say, I agree. It’s your body and you should have the right to care for it without interference from the government. But when you cross over from caring for your body to harming another body that’s a whole other argument. The human growing in a woman’s womb is not her body. She may not want that human growing in her body. But it’s not her body. But I digress. What I want to address here are the two arguments I keep hearing that pull at our heart strings and should be wisely considered.

It’s Not Fair to Make a Woman Suffer When Her Baby Will Die Anyway

What about the woman who’s infant is severely deformed and will die as soon as he/she is delivered? Why should the woman have to go through the suffering and dangers of pregnancy and delivery?

When you’re in the last trimester of pregnancy, there is no way around the pain and suffering your body is going to have to endure. For that matter, no matter the stage of pregnancy, even if you miscarry (spontaneously abort) at an early gestation, you’re body is going to go through some pain and healing. If you delivery your baby and he or she is dead or dies soon after birth or even days or weeks after birth, you’re going to suffer. Your body is going to hurt and have to heal. You’re going to go through the stages of grief and face the demons that want to destroy every postpartum woman. And if you elect to abort, you’re going to suffer. Your body is going to hurt and have to go through the healing process. You’re going to have to deal with the emotional trauma of the death of your baby and the decision you have made.

I believe delivering a pre-term infant that is putting the health of a mom at serious risk or the election to deliver a severly deformed infant pre-term who will not survive a normal labor and delivery at full term is physically and emotionally the healthiest way to walk through the pain and suffering of death and birth together. There’s no need for an abortion. When the oath, “do no harm” is taken, the life of the mother and the child are upheld. There will be pain and delivery and death. When harm is elected as the only option to uphold one life over another, there will still be pain and delivery and death, but with the added torture of being put in a position where people think you shouldn’t grieve because you chose to have an abortion.

My point is, when it comes to pregnancy and abortion, delivering the woman of a child, whether wanted or not will come with pain and suffering, and aborting a child will also inflict upon the woman pain and suffering. Choosing to abort your late-term baby does not delivery you of pain or suffering. I believe we honor the necessary grieving process and the image of God in both the woman and the baby human when we deliver a woman of her child, not abort her child.

The Pro-Life People Are Hypocrites

What about the hypocrisy of those who say they are fighting for the rights of the unborn but then neglect to provide for the needs of unwanted children and mothers and father’s struggling under the weight of raising children?

People who make this argument as a justification for abortion are rightly inditing pro-lifers, but they’re crossing wires. It’s hypocrisy and a shame that people will march and be filled with vitriol over abortion but do nothing to care for unwanted children.

I recently wrote a post about how even the unwillingness some of us have to lower ourselves to teach children the gospel exposes our hypocrisy in our pro-life stance. But the fact that so many among the religious right, or conservative Christians fail to do what they are commanded by God to do: care for orphans and welcome children…all children, does not mean women should be empowered to end the life of their unborn child.

The blood of many of these children may very well be on the hands of us who have done nothing to care for the children lost in the foster care system and the mothers and children living in poverty and without the gospel and love of the church. But that evil does not justify the evil of abortion.

My perspective as a labor and delivery nurse comes from a Christian ethic which says all people are created in the image of God. That means the unborn, the severely deformed, the grieving and guilty mother, the single-mom, the teenager who’s grown up in foster care, the disabled, the foreigner, the abortionists. This ethic means I must repent of and call out the evil we do that does not reflect the image of God. It means I must take up my cross and follow Jesus in laying down my life for women and children, whether they’ve had abortions, disabilities, been abandoned, or are just tired of the daily pains and sufferings of raising children. It means I must be willing to suffer along side those who are suffering. It means I don’t counter evil with evil, but overcome evil by doing good.

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit,[g] serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:9-21

The church as a body, not a grocery store

Ghislaine Howard- The Washing of Feet (1953)

I heard it recently on a podcast: We have set up church to be so convenient and easy for folks to get their dose of church on Sunday that we have robbed people of the life-changing joy that comes from taking up your cross and following Jesus as part of the body of Christ.

That’s what the church is, the body of Christ.

A Body Not a Grocery Store

We are a body. We need each other. But church in America feels more like a grocery store, than a body. We go there, get what we need, I mean, want, and go home. A body is dependent on all it’s members doing their part. At a grocery store, the manager, clerks and stockers depend on each other to do their part and all the customers depend on the manager, clerks and stockers to do their part so they can go home. In America, the pastor, worship leader, kids ministry leader and staff are the people we church goers depend on to do their part, so we can get what we want and go home.

Maybe that’s why we have celebrity pastors and famous churches. Because the customers like them. They like the products they have. They like their sales and discounts and service. Good message. Great band. Great kids ministry. Great youth ministry…. We consume what the American grocery-store church has to offer and we don’t depend on each other.

Three or four years ago, my church closed its doors. My pastor retired from pastoring and the elders decided to close the church. It was hard. I tried different churches and just felt discouraged. The churches I visited seemed to put out a lot of effort to make their products pallatable and convenient, but there was no blood flowing between us. We weren’t tied together by the sinews and ligaments of the word of Christ, confession of sin, repentance and faith. The costly gospel of Christ laying down his life for me and bidding me to take up my cross and follow him into resurrection life wasn’t held high. Convenient church was. But God was faithful, as he always is, and he led me to Valley Life Surprise, where I saw Jesus, high and lifted up in the preaching. And so there he bid me to die. Not to take what was convient and tasty and go home. But to take up my cross and follow Jesus in the joy of how he redeems people!

It Was Me, Not The Church’s Problem

I feel like I should say here that had I not just taken the convenient grocery store message of the churches I visited and gone home, but had intentionally started laying down my life, investing it in others at those churches, I’m sure I would have found the Body there too. I’m super thankful for Valley Life Surprise, but it’s not that they had the best deal for me that has caused me to love my church. It’s that I started following Jesus again in laying down my life for others at Valley Life Surprise and found myself connected to the Body of Christ.

Why I Stopped Listening to Celebrity Pastors

In those years that I didn’t have a church I listened to John Piper a lot. And I’m thankful for his messages, but shortly after I found my church, I stopped listening to Piper. Not because I don’t appreciate his messages, but because I was consuming them, instead of connecting with the body.

In one sermon my pastor said something like, “Tim Keller or Matt Chandler aren’t going to help you when you’re in need because they’re not here. But your community group will, this local church will.” And it struck me. I had fallen into consuming messages and had become a limp part of the body.

When I stopped listening to celebrity pastors, and started listening to my pastor’s sermons during the week, and started meeting with members of the church for lunch; going to community groups with them, sharing burdens, praying, dreaming, writing curriculum, playing with their kids and talking to them about Jesus, muscle and faith started to grow. When I started spending Saturday nights making communion bread, and 4 hours of my Sundays pouring into moms, dads, kids, grandparents, women, children, teens and even more hours throughout the week opening Bibles and my life up to people I would never have connected with apart from the love of the gospel of Christ, I started to thrive.

There is a real church, a real body of believers who are captivated by Jesus, who have put all their hope in him and are obeying him in taking up their cross and following him. We die a little everyday, but we also become more and more alive everyday. We become more like Jesus because we’re his body. We need each other. We bleed for each other. We feed each other. We comfort each other. We confront each other. We are inconvenienced for each other. We encourage each other. We weep with each other. We laugh with each other. We lay down our lives for each other.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. -Romans 12:1-13

Jesus calls us to lay down our lives not be philanthropic

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Jesus’ words about mercy and how we, as his disciples, should seek out, invite, give to, speak for, and help the marginalized in society are not subtle.

“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” -Luke 14:12-14

The poor, the elderly, the children, the weak, the disabled, the orphan, the widow, the foriegner, the ill… all these are specifically pointed out in scripture, and Jesus makes it clear- we are to give to the least of these as though we were giving to him. And at times, I think fantasy-thoughts about doing just that. I picture myself running a clinic to provide medical care for the poor and a home for the elderly where they would be cared for with dignity. But the missing day-to-day details of my imaginary Jesus lifestyle allow me to think dreamy thoughts and not face the reality of what Jesus calls me to do right where I am.

See, if I had a clinic for the poor, there would be those who would abuse it, those who wouldn’t be grateful, those who would be rude, those who would be irritating. And if I had a home for the elderly there would be complaints and grievances with family members. There would grey-headed ladies yelling at me to shut the music off because they’re playing bingo. There would be plates thrown across the room cause, “This isn’t food, this is crap!”

The truth is, when Paul in Ephesians 5 starts into what it looks like to, “…walk in love as Christ first loved us and gave himself for us,” he doesn’t say (vs. 22), “Nurses, open up free healthcare clinics for the poor, or dignified homes for the elderly.” Although those are good things, and we should do them. But Paul’s instruction is to the wives, husbands, children, servants… for them to submit themselves to each other. That’s where walking in Christlike love is really put to the test.

In any relationship- with the poor, with the elderly, with the disabled, with the orphan, with the widow, or with your husband, child or boss- sin is going to make it hard. Your sin and the sin of the person you’re in relationship with.

We should extend our lives to the poor, but it’s not going to be pretty. It’s going to be messy. As messy as it is with your spouse or child or boss. Jesus calls us to lay down our lives for each other, not just be philanthropic. We aren’t called to give donations to the poor, we are called to love them and that requires forgiveness, repentance, bearing with hard things and walking through hard things.

This is why we need the church. We need to be in relationships with people we would never normally be in relationships with. We need to face conflict, sin, pain, bitterness, poverty, rudeness… broken humanity and learn to deal with sin in humility, love, and truth.

What I’m trying to say is, it’s not so much whether I donate to the poor orphans in Africa, or visit the elderly in a nursing home, but whether I vulnerably love my husband, stretch myself to spend time with people I don’t know very well who want to follow Jesus too, and over time, when our sin makes things ugly, forgive and love them. The marginalized are not righteous because they’re marginalized. They can’t give back anything you might otherwise get from a richer, more mainstream sinner, like status, reputation, money, position, etc. But they aren’t going to be any easier to love and lead to Christ. It’s not going to be easy teaching them to follow all the things he has taught us just because they’re poor.

“The rich and the poor meet together, the LORD is the maker of them all.” – Proverbs 22:2

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” -Romans 3:23

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:34-35

3 lessons from a seminary podcast

I did a lot of driving yesterday and today. The German Shepherd we rescued late last year was scheduled for neutering today in east Mesa, about an hour and 15 minutes of heavy traffic metropolis driving away. Driving on a six lane highway through Phoenix in 112 degree weather is not in my top 100,000 favorite things to do. But since the dog’s procedure was paid for by the previous owner at this location it was the option I chose. The first half of today I was Uber-Mom. Transporting child B to beginner saxophone practice, then child A to the high school summer conditioning program for incoming athletes and then picking up child B and enjoying a 1 hour break before taking child B to summer advanced band practice with his clarinet. That brought us up to 11 am. A quick trip to the grocery store, then to pick up child A and B from their various locations rounded out the morning.

For me, lots of driving equals lots of thinking. I talk to God, to myself, solve problems in my head, sometimes create problems in my head, and chew on various ideas and thoughts. There are a few podcasts I enjoy listening to also. This morning I listened to the For The Church podcast out of Midwestern Seminary. It was about lessons learned from the collapse of Mars Hill Church.

I’m a mom of teenage boys, a wife, a nurse… I have no theological education. I only have an associates degree in nursing. So why listen to a podcast from a seminary? I find teachings geared toward pastors and teacher and missionaries have much application to me as a mom and wife. In those roles I feel the call on my life to be a disciple-maker. And as a woman in the Christ’s global and historic church, I feel the need to listen to the leaders in my time and culture in the church. I listen to know how to pray. I listen to get sober eyes. I listen to identify truth and truth-twisting. I love the church. I love the people who, like me, peculiarly love the Savior they’ve never seen. Listening to this podcast today about the fall of Mars Hill Church I took away a couple applications for myself personally.

1) Don’t get fixed on one preacher. I should take inventory of my habits in listening to preachers. Am I at church because that preacher is there or because God’s word is being preached? Does the church have other men besides the lead preacher/teacher who preaches on occasion? Am I using “celebrity” preachers/teachers as my main “diet” of God’s word, or am I in the word myself, studying what I have heard taught?

2) Read your Bible! Often! The way God works in my life when the preacher preaches is something special. Faith does come by hearing and often that hearing is through the preaching of the word of God. But it’s the word, not the preacher that I need. If I don’t know how to get to the word myself and how to digest it and apply it to my life I’ll be immature and dependent on a preacher… which is dangerous.

3) Even when things don’t go the way we want in church, it’s still God’s church. He is working all things for good for those who love him… to conform us to the image of his Son. Even the falling apart of a huge church like Mars Hill is under his sovereign design for the good of his people and for his glory. My own experience in loosing a church I loved (which was not due to the same issues as Mars Hill) was hard. But through it, God has refined my faith and has caused me to see the church world-wide and local in her many branches as a beautiful work of Christ in which I too am a part. No one preacher or teacher or even denomination should be how I identify with Christ’s church. Paul corrected people in the Corinthian church for saying they followed Apollos, or Cephas, or Paul. I take the warning. I don’t follow any pastor or teacher. I am Christ’s and he is mine. The pastor functions in his role in the body. I function in mine. And we both worship the same Lord.

I’m looking forward to getting to know the people at Valley Life Surprise. I love the preaching of the word that happens there and the gospel centrality of everything I hear. But I pray Jesus always captivates me… no man. No preacher. And I pray I can be even a tiny part in building up His church here in Surprise, AZ.