Last night when my 4 year old was “reading” from his picture Bible he retold the story of Genesis 2-3. He repeatedly emphasized, like a musician stuck in a loop, that Satan was a snake. I woke up thinking about it having been reminded of the subtle craftiness of the serpent. He does not come with horns and a pitchfork but in the acceptable and familiar, and often flying under the cover of tolerance.
I saw the smudge of his fingerprints today when a video of a Planned Parenthood top doctor talks about the industry of selling the body parts of aborted children. It is striking how she speaks of it so casually in between bites of her salad and sips of her wine. In the video below Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, explains how there is a market for the organs of these murdered children. There is even detail given to how to carefully extract the child in such a way so as to ensure marketability. Make no mistake: the Devil is in the details. He is a murderer and has been from the beginning. (Jn. 8:44)
Yesterday I wrote briefly about how we have forgotten how to blush. Like the contemporaries of Jeremiah (Jer. 8:12) we today seem to be incapable of becoming ashamed. Many today may, with chronological snobbery, look down our noses at those uncivilized generations before us who sacrificed children. If we do then we do so under the influence of the hypnotic hiss of the serpent. The fact is, Planned Parenthood receives over $540 million from the federal government and they are active in the industry not only of killing children but profiting from the sale of their body parts. How can this not shred your heart?
How can a nation that is so horrified by the barbaric killing by ISIS not be outraged by this? Is not the work of Planned Parenthood eerily similar to how the Islamic State profits through the murderous conquest of innocent people? How can we condemn it on one hand but fund it on the other? How can we be loudly outraged on the one hand but silent or indifferent on the other?
We cannot see the horrible inconsistencies because we are blinded by such an infallible self-interest.
However, just as in the days of Jeremiah when the people would not blush and were not ashamed, God sees. When they sip their wine, crunch their salads, and talk with such unfeeling casualness, God sees and hears. God will judge. He will vindicate his name and his people.
In the mean time the serpents still hisses and we as Christians, our stomaches still turn (daily) with groaning. We see the demonic slight of hand and we cry, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.”
