By: The Rev. Dr. W. Ross Blackburn

I am always amazed that the Lord had to send Nathan the prophet to convict David of his sin. If ever a sin was obvious, it was David’s. Adultery and murder are at the top of anyone’s list of grave sins. Perhaps this is the point. Certainly, denial is one way to deal with grave sin. After all, David’s sins were deep and permanent. Regardless of how much he might have regretted his sins, he could not take them back, and nothing that he could do could make it right. Uriah was gone, and Bathsheba was wounded and pregnant. Would David have been convicted if Nathan had come to him and said, “You murdered Uriah and committed adultery with his wife”? Somehow I doubt it. So the Lord sent Nathan with a story. Let me suggest a couple of lessons here. First, conviction of sin is the Lord’s doing. David was apparently unmoved by his sin, the Lord sent Nathan with a word that David would hear.

One of the deeply frustrating aspects of our abortion culture is that, despite the abundant evidence of dismembered little bodies and broken relationships and depression and an increasing callousness in our world toward human life of all kinds, we don’t see what we are doing. And arguments concerning the beginning of life or the proper place of sex seem to have little traction. Why? Because the intellect is not the main issue. We want what we want, and we will figure out how to justify our taking what we want. And we won’t look squarely at our sin, for fear of what might happen if we did. We need the Lord to convict us of sin (John 16:8).

Secondly, I find it curious that the Lord’s word to David was indirect. Apparently David’s sense of justice was intact, even though he was blind to his own case. So Nathan told a story. He didn’t give a sermon on adultery or murder, but rather told a story that aroused David’s sense of justice. It worked. And perhaps it would work now, for we live in a world intensely concerned with justice. For instance, our society in the main abhors the practice of rape for profit that is modern sex trafficking.

Can we draw the connections between sex trafficking and abortion? Our culture almost universally condemns slavery and racism. Do we see the connections with abortion and assisted suicide? Our world is increasingly aware and rightly intolerant of the oppression of women. There really is a war on women, but not from the direction that we are used to hearing in contemporary political election-year rhetoric. Can we see it? We live in a world whose sense of justice is, at least in part, intact. Herein, with thought and prayer, the guidance of the Lord, and the aid of the Holy Spirit, lies an opportunity.