To the Editor:

Serious students of literature understand why the world’s greatest dramas are tragedies. Comedy competes poorly with suffering that is nobly endured for others’ welfare.

This season, that reality helps explain why the joyful account of Jesus’ birth in a humble Bethlehem barn owes much of its profundity to the death Jesus endured for our sake. He was betrayed by friends, condemned by religious leaders, severely beaten when innocent, profaned by a thorn crown and scoffers and nailed to a crude cross at Golgotha. Thus with love unconditional, he bore our sins and gifted to us a priceless salvation plan—because he knew we cannot save ourselves and thereby, need a savior desperately.

Two thousand years after Golgotha, one particular group in America identifies far more closely with Jesus’ sacrificial suffering than do the rest of us. Like Jesus, they know rejection and betrayal—by family and neighbors, government officials and religious leaders and by scoffers who question their humanity. Of their deaths, many are as ghastly as crucifixion and every American should abhor their number.

The injustice the victims have born is unconscionable and from God’s perspective, falls heavily on a passive church that has surely forgotten that “innocent blood” has a voice that’s invincible. The Bible says the voice “cries out from the earth” and is most assuredly heard, notwithstanding our deaf ears. It’s heard by the sovereign, compassionate judge who was slain at Golgotha and who records every abortion, hears the cry of every rejected child and identifies every offender and apathetic observer, as Proverbs 24:11-12 confirms.

Why are we the church so passive about the preborns’ cries? Why do our spiritual ears not hear them?

Must apathy continue to rule us?

Chris LaRose

Potsdam