A black day

Our culture failed Terri Schiavo.

The young, helpless, handicapped woman finally succumbed today. She sustained a valiant, nearly two-week fight for her life, but she never had a chance. She was bullied to death by an unjust justice system, a system that itself was coddled by a morally bankrupt culture. She was inexorably and pitilessly starved and dehydrated to death in full view of an indifferent nation, with armed policemen surrounding her hospice to make damned sure that no one showed her a grain of mercy.

Her death was "legal," deliberate, premeditated, darkly evil, and inexcusable. It is a blot of shame on our nation.

And how does a Christian pray? I heard Dr. James Dobson, for whom I have enormous respect, praying earlier in this disgraceful chapter, and asking God to forgive us. I just could not join him. It has never made a lick of moral sense to me, to ask forgiveness for an ongoing, deliberate, and unrepented sinful act.

What could I pray? Perhaps this:

May God make us forgiveable. May He chasten us, shame us, and bring us to broken repentance. May He show us how far we've fallen, how monstrously we have rebelled, how arrogantly we've shaken our fist at His grace, goodness, wisdom, and sovereignty. May He bring us to the cross of Christ.

Then the black soil of this hideously wronged woman's killing might be made, in God's mercy, to bear sweet fruit.