Let’s Pretend by RoseAnn Salanitri

Many recite 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Words are cheap. Reciting those words alone will not satisfy God’s requirement of humility and the turning from wicked ways that results in healing – and this country will not survive without God’s intervention. Comparable verses can be found throughout the Bible, notably in Jeremiah who expresses God’s promise to heal in terms of “if you repent, I will relent” – which required returning to righteous living so that God would abort the Babylonian’s plans to conquer Jerusalem (Jeremiah 18:10; 26:3; 26:13; 26:18). But the people did not repent and God did not relent.

Today we pray for healing of pandemics; for protection against terrorism; for revival; and for the purging of the Deep State. But we pray empty words – biblical sounding words, words that portend repentance, but there is no repentance, which requires fruit. As long as we tolerate immoralities too numerous to list and the killing of our unborn, we allow these abominations to continue. We have become like those in Haggai’s time who were content to live comfortably in their own homes while the house of God lie in ruins. Affluence was not a blessing for them nor for us, since affluence leads to complacency and complacency allows us to turn our heads away from evil. For what we can’t see, we can ignore. However, God does see and can’t ignore. In many ways we are no better than those living in Nazi Germany who turned a blind eye to the millions being killed in their midst. At that time Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

We may not see the brutal killing of our unborn, but a Hispanic NJ nurse did when her co-workers rushed her into an operating room to try to calm down a Spanish-speaking patient. Although she didn’t speak Spanish, she found herself in the operating room trying to comfort a woman she didn’t understand. Then she noticed the feet of an infant being born and her co-worker inserting a scissor into the patient’s womb. She was horrified. She just witnessed a child being killed right before her eyes. We may not have witnessed such an atrocity but since 1973 our Lord and Savior has witnessed over 60,000,000 of these in the United States alone.

Then there’s the reformed abortionist, who repented of her activities after having watched a sonogram during the course of an abortion. She witnessed the child’s fight for life and the silent screams that haunt her to this day. We were not there. We did not see the child fighting for its life – nor did we hear its screams – but God did. And we continue to pray that God will heal our land.

We haven’t witnessed these things but we can pretend to be with the NJ nurse witnessing the slaughter of an innocent child, or the reformed abortionist witnessing the baby’s fight for life. And if we can pretend – just a little – perhaps we would do more to end this atrocity. Should we do so, our prayer of 2 Chronicles 7:14 might be legitimate and maybe God will heal our land.

While we are wearing our masks to protect our own lives and those of others, let’s pretend that we are the mask for the unborn: we are their protection against the tools of the abortionist who would tear them apart and sell their parts for profit.

And let’s pretend that we can hear every silent scream that God hears; that we can see every fight for life that God sees. If we could, we would not sleep a wink at night until this atrocity ended for their screams would roar in our minds and the visions of them fighting to escape the tools of the abortionists would haunt our dreams.

Perhaps we believe that abolishing abortion is impossible and we are helpless. So, let’s pretend that we believe that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us and that with God all things are possible. If we pretend long enough, then maybe we will start believing and walking in faith – for a faith that can move mountains can certainly abolish abortion.

If we can pretend all these things, then perhaps we and our churches will be willing to offer those in a crisis pregnancy situation a real choice. A choice between the abortionist and the Christian who is able and willing to say “Don’t kill your baby. Give it to me. I will love it.” Bonhoeffer also said: “If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”

Let’s stop pretending, for we do have the power, we do have the choice between life and death. Choose life. We must understand that this evil doesn’t exist because it overpowers us; it exists because we allow it to exist. For if we pray and humble ourselves before God and turn from our wicked ways, maybe then God will hear from heaven and heal our land.