Blue Roses

I posted last Friday about loving your enemies. I decided to expound on that theme in a post today, explaining love's practical purposes.

(Yes, I'm a Trekkie)

I love logic. Because, logically, if you explain something and eliminate and/or prove wrong all the opposing arguments, you must be right. Right? Logic makes perfect sense, and if you're logically proved wrong, then you are wrong. That's why I've studied pro-abortion arguments for several years now, coming up with logical answers to p)rove them wrong. I've gotten to the point where I'm now studying pretty ridiculous (aka, desperate) pro-abortion arguments.




Unfortunately, logic won't always work. Because of blue roses.

There are no such things as blue roses. The general populace can agree to that. But suppose there's a man who has been born blind, and his mother told him that roses are blue. If you present a bouquet of roses to this blind man and tell him (correctly) that the roses are red, he won't believe you. You can enter a full-fledged logical debate with him, going through the science of eyesite and pigments, and also mentioning that, since he is blind, he has no way of seeing that roses are blue. It won't matter. Roses are blue simply because the blind man has already decided that they are.

The same is with pro-abortion advocates. If they are already positive that abortion is fine, no matter how illogical that conclusion is, you aren't going to logically change their mind. Because, to them, the roses are blue. That's also why graphic pictures of aborted babies aren't always effective. The pro-abortioners find the pictures offensive; they aren't sure why they do (I suspect because it's the human subconcious knows that it is a dead baby it is looking at, which is disturbing enough in itself, and because they subconciously know that the picture is helping prove them wrong), but they do. Pictures, in themselves or coupled with logic, isn't a guarantee for a change of mind.

In many stories of former abortion advocates, their conversion was precedented by a change of heart. Something spiritual had to change before their minds would change. I'm not talking about people becoming Christians, though that sometimes is the change. Here's my point: it's very hard to change peoples' hearts if you don't love them. You can debate them all you like--no love required there--but you won't get any spiritual response. You can only show the photos effectively when people are ready, spiritually, to see them. The story of Kristen Walker illustrates this specifically.

So feel free to debate, show photos, yell slogans, and all that other stuff. Just make sure you love too.