By Scott Tibbs, June 26, 2013
I have been very critical of the church, in general, for not standing more strongly against the wholesale slaughter of unborn children. I stand by this criticism, and I think it is a terrible failure for the Body of Christ to not be a witness against the murder of precious babies made in the image of God. If the church will not speak against the worst mass murder campaign in human history, who will? Certainly not pagans!
It is important, though, that we make a distinction between the body and the members of the body. As the Apostle Paul writes in I Corinthians chapter 12, there is one Body of Christ, but many members of that body. Not everyone in the church has the same spiritual gifts or the same calling. Some people may be called to stand in front of the abortion mill and witness against the murder that goes on inside, and some may be called to hold the civil magistrate accountable for empowering baby-murder, but not everyone has been called to do that.
If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him. -- I Corinthians 12:17-18
Some Christians are called to care for the sick or the elderly, some are called to care for the poor, and some are called to counsel and comfort brothers and sisters in Christ. Some are called to administration within the church, and the job of collecting receipts and keeping records may not be one that brings a lot of public praise but it is absolutely essential. It is also important to have people cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping the floor, making coffee, taking out the trash and working in the nursery.
It is easy for anti-abortion activists to get frustrated in our work when we do not feel support (and are sometimes openly opposed) by other Christians. But just as the entire body cannot be made up of noses, the Body of Christ has many different people doing many different important things. While the church as a whole should be shamed and rebuked for not standing against well over a million murders in our abortion mills every year, we should be careful not to judge individual Christians who are called to do something different.
