If we were to select an image to best represent the reaction of America to the live news murder of Alison Parker it would be the shocked look in the eyes of WDBJ morning anchor, Kimberly McBroom, as the cameras returned to her Roanoke, Virginia studio.
I lost that look a long time ago and I’ll explain why. Travel with me to another newsroom a few states away and a couple decades back. It was 1995. I remember it well because it affected me. Local reporters for a Fort Wayne, Indiana news station informed their viewers that then-Governor Evan Bayh had vetoed a bill requiring an 18-hour waiting period to ensure that women considering abortions understood exactly what they were about to do. Because Bayh belonged to the party of infanticide (it starts with a “D”) and was moving up the ranks, not even the most minuscule of restrictions could be permitted to jeopardize the blood profits of Indiana’s child killers. (They didn’t say it quite like that.) The reporters commented on the veto with all the emotion of a lane-closure-due-to-construction-on-Main-Street story.
The mood in the newsroom was about to change as the pair of reporters shifted their attention to the story of a newborn baby who had been discarded with the trash by her own mother. Shedding all pretense of objectivity, the bewildered newsman stated, “I just don’t understand.” His partner, equally oblivious to the connection, shook her head in dismay.
It hit me. On that day, I became immune to moral astonishment. You can’t be shocked at what you’ve come to expect.
We reap what we sow. It is true in the garden and it is true in the culture.
Only if we fail to understand what forty-two years of legalized abortion has done to our collective conscience can we be startled when a man proudly videotapes the heartless murder of his former colleagues. If we can burn little ones to death in the womb, with what moral logic do we attempt to restrain those who would attack someone bigger and stronger and who may have even wronged them in some way?
For the past four decades, while we’ve offered obligatory condemnations of violence, babies in the background by the millions have been sliced and diced (and sold to market as we’ve recently discovered). When it comes to instruction, the only thing stronger than moral consistency is moral inconsistency. The real lesson is that human life has no value. The lesson has been well learned.
So, how can anything surprise us anymore? Teens at a gas station head stomp a random victim into the pavement while the best of bystanders videotape and the worst of them cheer and laugh and drop in a few blows of their own. Expected. An elderly bus driver gets cold-cocked by a young punk who has probably pressured a girl or two into killing his own son or daughter at the local Planned Parenthood? It’s as shocking as a sunburn in July. An angry young man walks into a theater or church and shoots up a crowd of people who have legs to run. Earlier that afternoon, a dozen babies down the street were murdered in their mothers’ wombs — veritable execution chambers with no exit doors.
A culture that tolerates, legalizes, funds, and celebrates the destruction of innocent, defenseless human life must be prepared for anything. If you are pro-choice, behold your harvest. As you’ve sown, so shall you reap.
Image: Screen shot, courtesy of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj6yunQKr5k
