Rob Bell, my Hero

Not to beat a dead horse, but there is one more point I want to make, and it might be relevant (haha) coming right before our election.

Here is Rob Bell, from the same interview...

In your book you say, "To preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless is to miss the heart of God." In what ways do you believe the church in America has "preserved prosperity" at others' expense?

The Church has missed the heart of God by speaking out against abortion while keeping silent about war. Both are forms of violence used to preserve prosperity. Abortion is prenatal war against the powerless child. War is postnatal abortion that destroys innocent life. The kingdom is life for the fetus and life for the civilian. The church embodies this life in a world of expedient and preemptive killing.

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To be fair, I cut out half of his answer, in which he talks about not wanting to generalize.

Setting aside all issues of style and prose, let us analyze the comparison.

Abortion = prenatal war
War = postnatal abortion

Let's accept his comparison, which assumes that all wars are being fought for exclusively selfish purposes, to "preserve prosperity" as he puts it. I think this is a gross simplification, but it must be acknowledged that often times wars are unjust and fought for unjust means.

The Church should speak out against injustice.

His argument is that the Church has spoken out loudly against abortion, but has not spoken out against the war. This assumes that one specific war, Iraq, was fought exclusively to "preserve prosperity." Again, this is a vast simplification, and might not be true. And even if the motives of those who fought the war were indeed to "preserve prosperity," we should analyze the effect of the war on its own grounds.

I am not defending Iraq.

So, we should speak out against injustice. Presumably, we should speak out against injustice in proportion to the injustice that is being done, yes? Well, let's examine the injustice of the Iraq war in comparison with abortion, and decide where are priorities should be.

Number of civilian killed in the 5 and half years since the war began

~90,000 (according to the Iraq Body Count website, a liberal website, which I mention only to assure you that I am using the most extreme statistics I can find)

Number of abortions over the same five and half year period

~7,535,000 (in America alone)

Perhaps we should expand worldwide, since Barack Obama has said that one of his first acts as president would be to re-enact funding for abortions worldwide. President Bush's first act as president was to halt this funding.

~231,000,000

What? Really?

So tell me, where should the church be raising its voice? Think about that, all you hip Christians, filing to the polls to vote for Barack Obama, and justifying it by the absurd equalities drawn by the good Mr. Bell. Let us speak out against war, injustice, etc! Yes! But please, please, don't think you can be coherent in your morals by supporting Obama BECAUSE HE IS AGAINST THE WAR. Even if it were entirely unjust war!

Whenever I read stuff like this from our emergents and their hangers ons, what I really hear is, "I want an excuse to vote like Democratic and not be a terrible Republican conservative stereotype like my uptight parents." Also, "maybe all my hipster friends that I'm incarnationally relating to will think I'm cool."