Who Cares About Rosemary?

After another day in Kisumu of car repair and banking on Tuesday I planned to return home to Uyoma before dark. Have done far too much driving after dark and this day i wanted to get home to enjoy the evening from 5 to 7 is quiet and cool as the sun sets.

I arrived around 2pm at a place called Lieta, east Uyoma, to visit Hezron, one of my students who will graduate from Teachers Training college this Friday in Migori. As I drove to his hut near lake Victoria over the volcanic rock debris we call a farm road, I knew I had a tire plug (hot patch) coming apart so was cautious so as to not break another tire on the sharp rock and boulder strewn path.

Sitting under a shade bush, ocassionally playing catch (a round fruit serving as the ball) with one of Hezron’s 5 sisters named Joyce, we enjoyed a 4 hour converstion mostly about the Deity of Jesus from Colossians 1 and 2. Chapter 2 is especially helpful in leading the people to understand the admonishment from God to recognize danger in being taken captive by the empty deception of human tradtion. Of course, then God gives us the remedy to this deceptive slavery as He says we are “complete in Christ”. Why do we need “empty deception” when we can be complete in Jesus?

As 6 pm approached I begged to leave as it takes 45 minutes to cross the peninsula to my hut. I made plans to further discuss the possibility of attending Hezrons graduation, then said goodby to all the kids, 5 sisters and 2 brothers, 2 wives and baba Jakim.

I was pleased at myself for getting outa there before dark and knew for sure would be home and sitting comfortably on my veranda by dark with tea. The weaver birds make much noise in day time but by evening they quiet and i can enjoy a time of peace. Those were my plans.

As I passed the worst of the rocky path there is a stretch of soil, smooth, so began driving a bit faster toward the main road, coming around a bushy corner careful to watch for students, donkeys, etc.,,,, I saw a body lying on the path.

For sure this person appeared deceased as I squeezed by and came to a stop. This was a woman, partially naked, eyes sunken deeply in her face, thin to the point of starvation. She was alive. People had been walking by, school kids coming home, no one had helped, and now I needed someone to help communicate with the lady. A man on a bike soon came along and together we found out her name, that she had intended to go to a rural hospital about 60 minutes away by bicycle. Her brother was taking her by bike but decided to drop her here in the middle of the path to die. Apparently she was just too much for her brother to carry.

I really did not want to stop and change my plan to be home before dark. Well, that argument with God did not last but a few seconds as I got out to check this body on the ground. Once again as is common, my plan was not God’s plan. At least not tonight.

First I needed a translator and one who knew the area so I returned to Hezron’s home and picked him to help. Upon returning to the lady in the pathway we found some school girls and a couple ladies who helped place the woman in my car for a ride of approx 12 km to Madiany hospital.

There were two distinct concerns in mind at this point.

#1. Madiany is not my favorite place to take those in need (from past experience) and even as we traveled Hezron confirmed this is not a good place for the sick to be taken. Yes it is a hospital, but… one to be avoided. I knew a better one far from this womans community but determined Madiany was ok to start with. If she survived this night we would see what to do next.
#2. Clearly she was close to death. With death comes life eternal. Where was this suffering woman going to spend eternity if she died tonight. For sure I was not letting her out of my car until she could understand how necessary for her it was to turn to Jesus, ask him to save her and take her to be with Him when she died.

I tried to visit with her as Hezron translated into mother tongue. Arriving at the clinic again wanting to help her understand how close to death she really was and how she could simply turn to Jesus she agreed that she needed Him and simply prayed, “save me Jesus, take me to heaven when I die”.

We were able to admit her, get her into a bed, and before leaving she asked me to pray with her again.

Will you pray for her today and for my decisions concerning her care? I am very short of funds, the family will not help her, and yet I fully understand that once I placed her in my car she was mine to care for.

God is sovereign. He placed her on the pathway at that particular time. Age 21 to 24, her husband and one child deceased.

This is Rosemary Atieno.

Thanks for praying. In Christ.
Steve K. Arduser

Steve Arduser is serving with the rural communities in Kisumu in Western Kenya.

The Return of Calvinism

The original article by Josh Burek can be found on the Yahoo website.

Snow falls resolutely on a Saturday morning in Washington, but the festively lit basement of a church near the US Capitol is packed. Some 200 female members have invited an equal number of women for tea, cookies, conversation – and 16th-century evangelism.

What newcomers at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) hear is hardly “Christianity for Dummies.” Nor is it “Extreme Makeover: Born-Again Edition.” Instead, a young woman named Kasey Gurley describes her disobedience and suffering in Old Testament terms.

“I worship my own comfort, my own opinion of myself,” she confesses. “Like the idolatrous people of Judah, we deserve the full wrath of God.” She warns the women that “we’ll never be safe in good intentions,” but assures them that “Christ died for us so we wouldn’t have to.” Her closing prayer is both frank and transcendent: “Our comfort in suffering is this: that through Christ you provide eternal life.”

It is so quiet you can hear an oatmeal cookie crumble.

IN PICTURES: Calvinism at Capitol Hill Baptist Church

Welcome to the austere – and increasingly embraced – message of Calvinism. Five centuries ago, John Calvin’s teachings reconceived Christianity; midwifed Western ideas about capitalism, democracy, and religious liberty; and nursed the Puritan values that later cast the character of America.

Today, his theology is making a surprising comeback, challenging the me-centered prosperity gospel of much of modern evangelicalism with a God-first immersion in Scripture. In an age of materialism and made-to-order religion, Calvinism’s unmalleable doctrines and view of God as an all-powerful potentate who decides everything is winning over many Christians – especially the young.

Twenty-something followers in the Presbyterian, Anglican, and independent evangelical churches are rallying around Calvinist, or Reformed, teaching. In the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant body, at least 10 percent of its pastors identify as Calvinist, while more than one-third of recent seminary graduates do.

New Calvinism draws legions to the sermons of preachers like John Piper of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Here at CHBC, the pews and even rooms in the basement are filled each Sunday, mostly with young professionals. Since senior pastor Mark Dever brought Calvinist preaching here 16 years ago, the church has grown sevenfold. Today it is bursting at the stained-glass windows.

Yet the movement’s biggest impact may not be in the pews. It’s in publishing circles and on Christian blogs, in divinity schools and at conferences like “Together for the Gospel,” where the rock stars of Reformed theology explore such topics as “The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability.”

“There is a very clear resurgence of Calvinism,” says Steven Lemke, provost and a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

The renewed interest arrives at a crucial inflection point for American religion. After reviewing a landmark opinion survey last year that showed a precipitous decline in the number of people who identify themselves asChristian, Newsweek declared ominously that we may be witnessing “the end of Christian America.”

In some ways, Newsweek may have understated the shift. Five hundred years after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses challenging the Roman Catholic Church, some religion watchers see not just a post-Christian America but an unraveling of the Protestant Reformation itself. Their alarm is rooted in surveys that show a watering down of Christian beliefs.

Now come the New Calvinists with their return to inviolable doctrines and talk of damnation – in essence, thePuritans, minus the breeches and powdered wigs. Is this just a moment of nostalgia or the beginning of a deeper revolt against the popular Jesus-is-our-friend approach of modern evangelicalism? Where, in other words, is Christianity going?

• • •

When people today hear the name John Calvin, they think mainly of predestination – the controversial idea that God has foreordained everything that will happen, including who will and won’t be saved, no matter what they do in life.

What people often forget is that the 16th-century French theologian transformed Western thought both by what he taught and how he taught it. His 700-page “Institutes of the Christian Religion” became the reference manual for Protestant faith. And his detailed and explanatory style of preaching – he spent five years expounding on the book of Acts, verse by verse – became an example for generations of clergy.

Detractors, and there are many, see Calvin as a harsh theocrat who punished heretics (including one who was famously burned at the stake) while molding the city where he preached, Geneva, into a model of his fatalistic and hopeless ideology.

But supporters view him as a man who recovered God-centric Christianity, set the stage for religious freedom, and encouraged countless believers to read the Bible for themselves.

“Like it or not, he is one of the great minds that shaped our modern world,” says Gerald Bray, a professor atBeeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala. “Ideas of democracy, open-market capitalism, and equality of opportunity were aired in his Geneva and put into practice as far as they could be at that time.”

Calvin’s influence on America’s founding is unmistakable. The nation’s patriotism, work ethic, sense of equality, public morality, and even elements of democracy all sprang in part from the Calvinist taproot of Puritan New England. When Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards told worshipers in 1741 that they were loathsome spiders held over the pit of hell by the gracious hand of an offended God, he wasn’t speaking a heretical creed but the basic vocabulary of American faith. It wasn’t until the 19th century that Calvinist doctrines waned.

By most logic, the stern system of Calvinism shouldn’t be popular today. Much of modern Christianity preaches a comforting Home Depot theology: You can do it. We can help. Epitomized by popular titles likeJoel Osteen’s “Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential,” this message of self-fulfillment through Christian commitment attracts followers in huge numbers, turning big churches into megachurches.

At the same time, a strict following of the Bible, which Calvinists embrace, hardly resonates the way it once did in American society. The Barna Group, a California-based research firm, recently did a survey to find out how many US adults hold a “biblical worldview” – for instance, believe that the Bible is totally accurate, that a person cannot earn their way into heaven simply by doing good, that God is the all-powerful creator of the universe.

The result: a steeple-thin 9 percent. Among 18-to-23-year-olds, it was 0.5 percent, fewer people than might show up at a Lady Gaga concert. Even among “born again” Christians, it was only 19 percent.

In a separate report, Barna found that more than 6 in 10 born-again Christians say they are customizing their faith, not following any one church’s theology. “Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible,” the report notes.

The blunt implication: Scripture is no longer the sheet anchor of American spirituality.

This, of course, was the Roman Catholic warning to early reformers five centuries ago: If you break away from the church, orthodoxy will spiral into fancy. By emphasizing sound doctrine and the naked gospel, New Calvinists want to restore what they see as stability to Protestant faith.

Indeed, CHBC has a sister organization called “9Marks,” which strives to promote “biblically faithful” churches across denominational lines.

“A lot of people think religion is something you piece together [from] ideas you think are sweet and that you personally find beneficial,” says Mr. Dever. “No. It’s like a doctor’s report…. It’s an objective reality. It’s just what is.”

More broadly, the Calvinist revival reflects an effort to recast the foundation of faith itself. From conservative evangelical churches to liberal new-age groups, the message of much modern teaching is man’s need for betterment. Not New Calvinism; its star is God’s need for glory. And the gravity of His will is great: It can be denied, but not defied.

“God either knows everything, or He knows nothing at all,” says CHBC member Jeannie Hagopian, a young mother from South Carolina.

• • •

As morning light filters into a fourth-floor room on a Sunday, students huddle on tiered seats, listening to a lecture on substitutionary atonement. The teacher poses a tough question, but a hand shoots into the air, eager to answer with a recitation of the week’s memory verse from I Peter 3:18: “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”

Scholars and seminarians call this systematic theology. Kindergartners at CHBC just call it Sunday school.

Their parents are downstairs, absorbing seminars, prayers, and a Scripture-saturated sermon that add up to five hours of worship over the day. Just before noon, the adults jot notes as they listen to an hour-long sermon on II Samuel 5-9. These chapters cover King David’s glorious reign over Israel, but Dever doesn’t skip the tough verses, such as when God strikes Uzzah dead for trying to steady the ark of the covenant.

“Friends, have we sinned like Uzzah?” he asks.

Such statements are meant to prick the hearts of his listeners. Yet he often follows up the hard questions with reassuring comments like: “You and I should not draw a breath today, without living for the praise of God’s glory.”

This pattern – convict worshipers of their sin, then show them spiritual elation – has a gripping effect on the assembly. After the service, churchgoers linger for an hour, hugging and sharing heartfelt conversation. “I’ve come to believe and understand that God is not fundamentally about me; He’s much bigger than that,” says Dan Wenger, a government employee. “The teaching at this church has helped me to see that in context of the whole story of the Bible, not just the parts that make me feel good.”

Dever acknowledges that people might well ask, “Why would God make anybody who is going to go to hell?” His answer captures the essence of New Calvinism. “I don’t know,” he says. “I didn’t do this. I’m just trying to tell you what I think is true, not what I like.”

Membership at CHBC isn’t for the faint of holy. Classes on theology and Christian history are required before joining. At the “Lord’s Supper” once a month, members stand and recite an oath that ties them to one another. In addition to Sunday worship and Wednesday night Bible study, they spend hours each week in small-group study or one-on-one “discipling.” They say those sessions – a time for confessions, encouragement, and prayer – are the most challenging and rewarding feature of church life.

“Christian fellowship is so much more than hanging out with friends,” says Claudia Anderson, a magazine editor. “It involves spiritual intimacy, support, learning, counseling, and stunning acts of kindness.”

Christopher Brown, a lawyer, concurs. “I came for the theology but stayed for the community,” he says. “As Americans, we’re so individualistic. But the New Testament rebukes this ‘rugged individualism.’ We’re not saved to be lone rangers.”

The BlackBerry-wielding Millennials who worship here say they crave teaching that challenges them – “preaching for PhDs,” as one puts it. Ask them what books they’re reading, and they won’t mention “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” They’ll reel through names of 17th-century Puritan preachers like a pack of baseball cards.

“The resurgence of Calvinism indicates that America hasn’t changed so much as some might suppose,” says Collin Hansen, author of “Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists.” “American Christianity has splintered in myriad directions since the Puritans settled New England. But the God they worshiped – attested in the Bible, sovereign in all things, and merciful toward sinners through the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ – still captivates believers today.”

• • •

What captivates outsiders, however, is that New Calvinists are restoring the doctrine of predestination – God choosing from the outset whom He will and won’t save – to a land that long ago shifted toward a “No Child Left Behind” view of salvation. Taken to its logical end, predestination means God has always regulated everything, even evil.

This belief bothers many Christians. “The shooting at Fort Hood: Did God foreordain that? 9/11? The Holocaust?” asks Professor Lemke, who’s also a Baptist pastor and critic of some, though not all, points of Calvinism.

In 2008, the Southern Baptist Convention put on a John 3:16 conference to counterbalance tenets of Calvinism, including predestination.

What critics see as a grim and fatalistic doctrine, however, Calvin saw as good news: that God’s purposes can be fulfilled despite man’s sinful ways.

“To him, predestination was a liberating belief because it says that God can choose anyone, however humble, and use him to overturn the great men of this world,” says Professor Bray. “It makes real change possible and puts ordinary people like you and me in charge of seeing it happen. What could be better news than that?”

Many followers agree, adding that Calvinism is not fatalism: You are responsible for you behavior.

“Calvinism is ‘big picture’ Christianity,” says Allen Guelzo, the author of “Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate.” “It is less interested in asking why God lets bad things happen to good people, and asks instead whether there have ever been any genuinely ‘good’ people.”

For all its controversy, predestination is something New Calvinists accept as part of their take-it-all-or-leave-it approach to the Bible.

“Today we have more Bibles and more study guides to Scripture than ever before, but people know the text itself less and less,” says Bray. “This is disastrous. Calvin’s deep and expository approach to it is therefore more necessary than ever.”

At CHBC, several members say they became authentically Christian only after a friend studied the gospel with them verse by verse. “As I studied the Bible, I saw that God has every reason to send me to hell,” says Connie Brown, a kindergarten teacher. “God broke me down – and renewed my heart.”

New Calvinists talk about their sin a lot. Despite that – or rather because of it – they exude not guilt but great joy. Their explanation: If we play down our sinfulness, we’ll play down our gratitude for the magnitude of God’s love and forgiveness.

Many members were drawn to CHBC precisely because they had yearned to be “convicted of their sin” again and grown frustrated with “watered-down preaching.” School vice principal Jessica Sandle says she came after the pastor at her former church read a book on growth and became consumed with filling pews. “So he stopped talking about sin, and why we need God,” she says.

Another congregant, who declined to be named because he is running for office, was searching for something more substantial as well. “I went to other churches and I came away feeling good, but I came away hungry, too,” he says. “They [the sermons] were mercifully shorter, but they’d leave the gospel out, and I wouldn’t be convicted of my sin…. Here, your deficiencies are laid bare.”

Ultimately, Calvinism’s contrast with chummier, Jesus-is-my-friend forms of evangelicalism may highlight a more fundamental change in the world of faith. Bestselling religion writer Phyllis Tickle sees the interest in Calvinism as the first phase of a backlash against the dominant religious trend of today: the rise of “Emergence Christianity.”

Emergence Christianity, which she identifies as a once-every-500-years religious shift, is less a doctrine or a movement than a postmodern attitude toward religion itself. Loosely organized, it values experimentation over traditional rules and Christian practice.

“When things go through this upheaval,” Ms. Tickle says, “there’s always those who absolutely need the assurance of rules and a foundation.”

Or, as Ms. Hagopian puts it with uncompromising Calvinistic clarity: “The dominant philosophy of American Christianity is so far removed from biblical truth. Life is not hunky-dory.”

Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World

I recommend this book to every Christian living in the 21st Century. This great book edited by C. J. Mahaney breathes fresh contextual insights to the question of worldliness.

C. J. Mahaney et al simply but eloquently gives us practical application to John’s all time message to Christendom “Do not love the world or anything in the world” (1 John 2:15). In the strongest terms possible, he argues that the apostle “forbids worldliness in no uncertain terms.”

He asks the questions: what does the passage mean to a Christian – what does it mean to me – not to love the world? Probably one of the exciting things to me is the way he asks the questions I ave been hearing almost daily for the last fifteen years or so that I have been a believer.

He goes on? “Does it mean I can’t watch MTV or go on an R-rated movie? Do I have to give up my favourite TV shows? Is it okay to watch a movie as long as I fast-forward the sex scene? How much violence or language is too much?”

He continues… “are certain styles of music more worldly than others? Is the rap or indie music that I’m loading onto my ipod okay? How do I know if  I’m spending too much time playing games or watching youTube clips online? Can a Christian try to make lots of money, own a second home, drive a nice car, and enjoy the luxuries of modern life? Am I worldly if I read fashion magazines and wear trendy clothes? Do I have to be out of style in order to be godly? How short is too short? How low is too low?” In other words, how do I know if I’m guilty of the sins of worldliness?

C. J. Warns that the book does not aim at setting legalistic restrictions or enforce unrealistic rules. He also takes issues with those who argue that they have to be like the world in order to witness to it as well as those who argue that a person’s relationship with God is a private issue.

For whatever reasons we may give for our compromising flirting with the world, the author(s) argue(s) that this passage cannot just be ignored without consequences. It is God’s word, and not just “an outdated command or remains of an over-scrupulous tradition.”

Indeed, all are susceptible to the sin of worldliness. It is not a “threat confined to a specific group of people.” Believers are reminded that there is no immunity based on age or position, or ability to absorb the world without its affecting us. To concretise this point he cites the example of Demas, a companion of Paul who later, not only fell in love with the world but also led to his desertion of Paul, as recorded in Paul’s second letter to Timothy 4:10.

Worldliness is here defined as “the love of this fallen world – loving the values and pursuits of the world that stands opposed to God… and more specifically as “to gratify and exalt oneself to the exclusion of God.

The authors gives their admonishments on specific issues that elevate our propensity towards worldliness.  The media, music, stuff and clothes are carefully considered. Finally a last chapter explains to us how believers should love the world.

This book is a perfect read for all believers. It is a prompt reminder to consistent believers, a warning to the wavering and encouragement to those returning to the fold. I can’t emphasize much the need to read this wonderful commentary on worldliness.

Of Kenya, the Church, Abortion and the Law

This is hard to write about. Questions going through my mind as I begin this daunting task are “am I compromised? Is this how God sees it? Am I right? Is Pragmatism a desirable philosophical position? What is the Ideal?” etc.

A brief background to this would suffice. About two years ago I was poised to take my place as a fellow with a conservative think-tank in Washington DC. As I prepared to leave my beloved motherland I was more than elated. I was not merely flying out just to take another MBA or a Degree Course like “many others!” No! With undue pride – of which I am deeply in repentance – I was convinced, and still am, that I was out to acquire the necessary expertise and experience necessary to address the emerging trends in my beloved country. In other words, I was confidant that upon return home, I would be apt to offer professional guidance on significant issues affecting Kenya and beyond.

Before I left Kenya I made a case for my intended sojourn in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Notice my quotation marks. One day I will explain my dilemma on the quoted statement. I urged the Church to pray with/for me as I engage in this noble task and as I prepare to “save Kenya.” You must not help noticing this audacious Messiah complex – neither do I. Yes, I was optimistic about SAVING KENYA but not any more. No amount of Politics or structural adjustments and changes can save a nation. I was wrong and I say so with regret.

Some of the issues that I mentioned that needed address and still do include: the abortion industry, the emergence of same sex marriage, pornography, sperm donation and in-vitro-fertilization, illicit sex trade (which my Proposed MTheol – Applied Ethics was about) etc. Not so many questions were asked but so many applauses came my way which only went a long way in cementing my then growing pharisaic mentality. Feelings like, what are they doing about these issues, good-for-nothing Christians filled my heart.

But one medical student did not let my words in Church go unchallenged. Teresa Bonyo calmly asked me whether I was right in totally rejecting abortion. My answer was but of course! Or how else would you interpret the sixth commandment – Do not commit murder? At this point I must say that this position has not changed even an inch. I must add though that my position was not as well researched as I had previously assumed. This is the background upon which I left my beloved motherland as I prepared to engage in public policy “the Christian way!”

Studying and working at an influential think-tank at the centre of the World’s political capital is no mean achievement. I was housed just one block from the Senate offices and two blocks from the nation’s capital, and the library of Congress. I also had the rare opportunity to engage with some of the finest minds in both liberal and conservative ideologies. I witnessed the first hand debates on the issues then closer to my heart – abortion, war, homosexuality and stem cell research. So much about the glamour of DC – did I mention my two visits to the White House? As if that is important at all!

Well, among many other issues I studied and debated on the Capitol Hill was the issue of abortion. Soon the debate intensified, not just from mere abortion to abortion on demand. I noted that even though there were genuine citizens out there who are genuinely concerned about the sanctity of life – both of the mother and the unborn baby, the strongest and most influential forces on this debate are people with political, economic and shear ideological agenda. There is the social conservative wing that is irked by the liberal money making machine called the Planned Parenthood – the very one that is also said to be funding the activities of Marie Stopes Clinic in Kenya. Marie Stopes, it is rumoured, silently advocates for abortion under the guise of female reproductive health. I have no credible evidence – just stating what I have heard from the walls.

The other political force is the liberal group whose cause is to daunt people with “impressive” scholarship as well as sound messianic. They are of course heavily funded by the money minting Planned Parenthood. So don’t lose the sight on the economics of this debate. Then there are the general perverts of the society who want to have sex without responsibility. This group argues that people can do what they want with themselves and this includes termination of pregnancy. Closely supported by this group is the feminist movement that seeks to “empower” the womenfolk. Honestly, I think they are dis-empowered by such movements – but that is a debate for another day.

Finally, there are the religious zealots. This is the category in which I fall under. This group’s inspiration is an idealistic philosophy that claims that truth is absolute. Fundamentally, they draw their ideology from Scripture – the true word of God. Key to this position is the word imperative, which is indeed a command. Thus “thou shall not commit murder” is not a suggestion but a command which comes with consequences. To cement this position, we have also argued convincingly from history that nations on decline have always shown their imminent demise by the way they have treated their unborn. Citing the experiences of ancient Greece and Rome, I could not agree more.

But also amongst this group are the moralists who seek to legislate individual morality. This section of people I view as legalists who don’t understand the fallen as well as transient nature of mankind. They also miss the distinctive role of the cross and ultimate redemptive agenda of the Messiah. Unfortunately, from my reading of a greater section of the Kenyan Church, this is where they belong in the current debate. The other group of course understand that the Bible commands purity in all spheres of life and that our purity is a response to grace. That the regenerate soul responds to what the triune Godhead has declared as good. This view therefore sees man as inherently depraved and utterly in need of salvation.

Heavily influenced by both Platonic idealism and Kant’s categorical imperative, I have oscillated between the two groups before finally settling on the latter. When I erroneously held the former, I misled myself to believe that if people cannot individually seek their salvation then they can be saved from themselves. Thus legislating morality is their only solution. Since decisively moving from that complicated pharisaic attitude, I have found it noble to preach the grace of God and His righteousness – that through the sufficiency of the death of Christ, salvation comes to those who will believe. A concise understanding of this fundamental truth will easily blot the abortion debate out of our daily menu.

Ironically, some of the groups that decampaigns abortion ostensibly on the grounds of the sixth commandment also defend the just war theory citing the same Bible and seeing no contradiction. On the other hand, the liberal group that massages the abortionists’ ego are way up in opposing the just war theory arguing that the universal human right to life must be upheld. What they fail to answer is why then do they find it appealing to advocate for abortion on demand – the unnecessary taking away of the unborn. I find an audacious contradiction in this school of thought as well.

I must admit that there is merit in the argument that the helpless in the society needs to be defended. The unborn, like the widows, orphans and other marginalised persons deserve our support by all means. What I don’t buy is that this should be done through legislation. I believe that individual conscience and convictions on the sanctity of human life would go a long way in defending the rights of the unborn than the endless war and debates on its legislation. Debates that are heavily influenced by forces that be and they that use the common man as pawns and fodder for their hidden war carefully concealed as attractive well-meaning legislative agenda.

Christ declared that adultery did not only constitute of the act but also the premeditation of it thereof. Thus we have all largely agreed that we cannot help people or even ourselves from being adulterous if the conditions of their hearts do not want that help. I mean, I can be confined in a Monastery but will still be as lustful. Lessons from St Anthony and St Augustine come handy in this. St Augustine confessed his struggle with lust – he couldn’t let go of his mistress. Upon comprehending the gist of the Gospel message from Bishop Ambrose of Milan, this great theologian and scholar – to be struggled with embracing the Gospel because the practical implication was a change of attitude and behaviour – something he wasn’t quite yet ready for then.

By implication, I argue that if a woman, in her heart desires to take away the life of her unborn – even with a legislative barrier, as a Christian, I will not have helped the condition of her heart. We may detain her in some place until safe delivery of the baby but in her heart murder has been committed. Well, according to Jesus’ moral philosophy she who premeditates murder has murdered just like he who premeditates adultery. What Christian leaders need to address more strongly is the condition of the human heart in response to post modernism and its ideologies and not on legislative imperatives, whether hypothetical or categorical.

Then there is the case of the medical practitioner. I think they are put in the most awkward positions. What should they do when they are not in a position to save the life of both the unborn and the mother without risking the life of either? Should professional discretion be allowed in determining which of the two should be saved? Where is murder in this case? What about a legislation compelling a doctor to aid in abortion against his/her conscience?

Let us take a hypothetical scenario. Assuming that conditional abortion, as stipulated in the proposed Kenyan constitution is effected. Then a doctor, who by religious convictions or otherwise does not accept abortion of any kind as legitimate practice, is on duty. Assuming also that the mother’s life is in danger and this doctor is the only surgeon who is able to save the situation (saving here implying an administering abortion). Should the doctor maintain that his conscience would not allow him to perform the duty and in so doing let the woman die? If he does so, should he prosecuted for negligence and consequent murder? Or should he defy his conscience, save the mother and live to regret having killed the helpless child?

What if the draft is amended to forbid abortion for whatever reason and we are faced with the same scenario where a woman’s life is in danger. What should the doctor do? Should he save the woman and face prosecution for securing an abortion? Should he allow the woman to die because abortion is impermissible? If this happens and the woman dies, how will the doctor live with his conscience knowing that he could have saved her life? Should the doctor face prosecution for negligence?

I don’t have answers for these questions. I am however inclined to argue that some professional discretion should be upheld in the law. These hypothetical situations are real life issues that the advocating Kenyan clergy cannot ignore. As they say no to abortion – which I do too, they must say also give reasonable answers to these demanding questions.

I think it is easier for a Catholic priest like Arch-bishop Njue to insist on no abortion legislative policy and feel nothing since they don’t have spouses – at least legitimate ones, neither do they create life. Perhaps, God should put the wife of one of those people at the NCCK into a situation as hypothesised above so that we can see how the husband practically deals with the situation – whether to let the wife or the baby or both to die if only either or only the wife could be saved. God forbid but wouldn’t it be more practical than calling endless press conferences on No reforms if abortion is permitted.

I think the entire draft has significant flows but not significant enough to deny the people a “good” governing document. In any case, it is comparatively better than what we have today. It is therefore my proposal that it is passed and that necessary amendments are made later on. Maybe the abortion clause can be removed and provisions made for in an act of parliament. Otherwise, denying the citizens this vital document just for trivial dogmatic and ideological as well as political conveniences is chasing the wind.

Two years ago, I would have argued like John Njue et al but the only thing that does not change is change itself.

Thus, I conclude – abortion is a violation of the sixth commandment, it is sinful and will ultimately be punished by a just and righteous God who abhors evil. However, I will not compel anybody against their will not to sin. I will also not cheer them into sin but will also not embrace their sin. I will lovingly but categorically summon them to a life of righteousness and allow them to make their decisions. However, those who argue with me along this line must find a convincing reason why murderers should be apprehended while abortionists set free… Hard nut eh!