The weekend before last, my family and I attended the Arizona
Rally For Life March in downtown Phoenix.
The march is part of the Walk for Life movement that began following the
infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973. The rally and march was attended by
approximately 4,500 people meeting at 2nd Avenue and Washington
Street, and ending at the State Capitol.
The crowd gathered outside the Capitol consisted of men, women, and
children of all ages and was representative of a host of religious groups which
were heavily represented by Roman Catholic parishes and outreach organizations,
women’s and children’s advocacy groups, and crisis pregnancy centers.
My family and I gathered at the Washington Street start point
where we were able to congregate around the numerous information booths that
proclaimed the services they offered or advocacy positions they champion. Just prior to the march we were given a red rose,
each signifying one of the over 12,000 children lost to abortion in the State
of Arizona last year. After gathering
with other members from our Church, we participated in a prayer of invocation,
then marched just over a mile to the State Capitol. At the Capitol grounds we heard a number of
keynote speakers who exhorted the crowd and our community to embrace life. It was a wonderful opportunity to teach my
children that we value the life God has blessed each person with, and why we do
so.
The thing that really struck me about the March though is
that it had a very different tone about it than do other protest rallies that I
have seen throughout the years. Most
political rallies and protests are centered around petitioning the government
for additional rights or in some cases goods and services. This wasn’t like that though. We were in fact offering to give up what the Supreme
Court had declared to be constitutionally protected civil rights in 1973. Rather than being a march for our rights,
this was a march for our responsibilities.
This was not a protest to demand privileges from the government, but a
counter-cultural plea to collectively meet our duties and obligations to God
and our neighbor.
This was a march in which we laid down the right to kill the
child in the womb whether out of matters of personal convenience or fear of the
future, and we take up the responsibility of protecting, providing for, and
raising that child in the sight of God.
Rather than march for the right to engage in consensual sexual
relations, we march for our responsibility to view the sexual act in the
context with which God created it. We
recognize that sexual intimacy cannot be separated from its God-created role as
the means by which we procreate and bring forth the next generation.
We also recognize that when God created sex, he
simultaneously instituted marriage as the means by which the next generation
should be protected and provided for, nurtured and raised to the glory of
God. We recognize that sex cannot be
separated from the institution of marriage without grave damage to our children
and our communities. We also recognize
the complementary roles of both mother and father in the providing for and
raising of children. Consequently, we
march for our duty to one another to uphold the institution of marriage for the
sake of our children and our society.
We march for our responsibility to love our neighbor and to help
and support him or her in every physical need.
As examples of this we support volunteer food banks that provide for the
welfare of our neighbor in need. We
support crisis pregnancy centers that provide free or reduced cost medical
services, counseling, adoption services, as well as donations to provide for
the needs of expectant mothers.
We march for our responsibility to bring up our children in
the fear and instruction of the Lord, that we might pass these values on to the
next generation. This means being
present as fathers and mothers for our children, prioritizing their needs above
our own, and committing our time and resources to raising them in the sight of
God.
We march for our responsibility to care for the elderly and
the infirm, and those who cannot care for themselves. We submit our own will for the needs of the
generation who came before us, that we might imitate the love they demonstrated
in raising us by taking care of them in their twilight years.
We march for our responsibility not to look at death as a
solution to our problems, but as an alien evil, an invasion into God’s good
creation due to sin. We work to create a
community which values life over death, and we commit our resources and time to
affirming life even where it appears to be inconvenient to our personal wishes
and desires.
We do all these because we were created in the image of
God. And though through sin we all
became worthless, God so valued life that he sent his Son, who became flesh
himself, to pay the price of sin that we might have eternal life with Him. God gave what was most precious to him when
we were worthless in our transgression, that we might live in Christ.
We pray that God would grant repentance and forgiveness on
this nation, and turn our hearts to Him.
