Phantoms and abortion clinics

In the Great Divorce C.S. Lewis highlights a series of conversations between men and women that are phantoms and the Solid Ones...the ones who have embraced the cross and become what God had intended them to be all along. It is hard for me to know how phantom-like I truly am as a man and even more confusing now that I have trusted Christ for my salvation and, in so doing, have been made his servant. On one hand I am nowhere near (in practice) what He has made me to be or what He wants me to do. I just haven't gotten there yet. On the other hand, a life without Him is so foreign to me, so other-worldly, that I can scarce remember it. But I was there, thanks be to God I *was* there. So how solid am I? What mix of phantom and flesh do I have? I don't know but I do care. A great deal.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "Guns don't kill people...abortion clinics do." I initially thought it was quite clever and, the more I thought about it, the less clever it became. Just like there isn't one gun that has leaped off of the table in and of itself and killed someone there isn't one abortion clinic that has kidnapped a woman and performed an abortion on her unborn child. We, as people, are evil; objects and places, no matter how vile we may make them out to be, are not. They just aren't nor can they be without human or devilish intervention. To relegate a gun or a clinic to an act of evil is misguided and wrong and deflects the source of all evil - my heart. I am not a doctor who performs abortions nor am I even a gun owner. But I will not blame our nation's ills on anything inanimate. Jesus didn't die for a Smith and Wesson or for a particular doctor's office that does "those things". He died for me. And for good reason. I needed him to absorb the wrath of God that was being poured out. Poured out on me.