The Crushing Cost of Free & Easy
Last week, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, I encountered, face to face, the crushing cost of free. I stood with a brother near the Tulsa, Oklahoma courthouse as a crowd of men, women, and children assembled to express their displeasure with the SCOTUS ruling concerning Roe.
To be clear, I am an ardent supporter of free speech, public debate, spirited opinions, and even civil disobedience. It should also be noted that I’ve been publicly engaged in sidewalk ministry for about two years now. And, to round out this brief resume of experience in communication, I spent three years supervising maximum security inmates while I worked through college in my mid-twenties. All of that is said just to make it clear that “I’ve seen some stuff and heard some stuff” over the years.
Generally, when doing sidewalk ministry, you’ll have the vast majority of folks ignore you. A few will listen. Occasionally, you’ll get the loud agitator that wants to argue. Contrary to what I thought when I first began engaging like this, those folks are actually helpful. They draw attention and can actually lead others to be more receptive, especially when it becomes clear that you are there to lovingly reason and calmly dialogue.
So, what happens when no one ignores you? What happens when no one will listen? What happens when everyone is the loud agitator? Glad you asked. I’m happy to share. First, the crowd swells from 20 to 50, from 50 to 200, from 200 to 500. Then the crowds see that you are there to stand for the life of the pre-born. They turn, with their coat hangers and vulgar signs threatening to abort judges, cut off men's genitals, or kill all the children and focus their general rage at life into a specific direction, that of silencing you.
As they charge across the street, screaming and shrieking (yup, literally shrieking), you can’t help but notice how young these folks are. You see in their faces youthful skin that is yet to wear the telltale signs of time’s erosion. You realize that these young folks are just a few years older that your own children. You are moved. Well, I mean, you are actually being moved.
They are pushing against you so hard that you fear your signs or phones will be damaged. And then the police form a skirmish line and move you because, as one officer said, he couldn’t ask me to leave but he also couldn’t guarantee my safety. So, you move down the street half a block only to have the jeering, leering mob follow you. In the rage filled screams and profanity laced taunts, you are moved a second time.
You realize that these young women *are* the high cost of free. Hundreds of young women, twerking and screaming, gesturing wildly, threatening violence against men who are old enough to be their fathers, are the cost we have paid. We, as a society, are paying. We who have sought to stay safe in our churches are paying. We who have agreed to send our children to church for pizza parties and social hour but to Godless Systems to education and world view development are paying.
That debt is coming due, the interest is high, and the terms are not tenable. It’s too late to declare bankruptcy, as the Creditor has already reduced the rating to the point where our women rage for the right to slaughter their own children.
Instead of fathers having the hearts turned back to their children, we have fatherless children. Instead of mothers pouring themselves into the next generations, we have both parents working two jobs and the children being raised by secular systems.
Instead of teaching them diligently to love the Lord with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength they have been taught that Billy can be Betsy, murder is healthcare, and abominations are love. Free love has given birth to wanton family destruction.
Free education has born us generations of intellectual jackals. Free porn has produced generations of young men and women with hearts enflamed by lust. And they are here now, in force, to claim their rights. You hear them scream. You are feeling them push you and feel their breath. Your ears are ringing. But all you really feel is sadness and resolve. You realize, in that moment, that all the things our culture has given up in the pursuit of prosperity have led to this place. In the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, and ease we have earned poverty, destruction, and rage.
And yet, with the empty husks of evangelical churches being filled by false prophets and prosperity peddlers, the Church is rising. Juxtaposed against the backdrop of women rioting to murder their young there is another type of woman.
She comes from every conceivable background. She may have, in times past, been one of the women described above. Or, by God’s grace, she may have never known the guilt of that sin, but she is acutely aware of her need for mercy in light of her other sins.
She, and others like her, have seen the crushing cost of false freedom and counterfeit ease and have chosen instead the ancient paths of repentance, mercy, self-denial and obedience to Christ.
They grow through the rocky crags of the post-feminist wasteland, beautiful vines bearing fruit and offering shade to those growing with them. These women have embraced the beauty, power, and enlightenment that is being a mother.
They pour their efforts into tilling the rocky soil of those hearts entrusted to them. Not content to fritter away their years in trivial pursuits, they turn all of their gifts and energies towards the propagation of Christian Culture.
Instead of careers, they value community.
Instead of self-actualization, they seek self-denial.
Instead of their best life now, they have set their gaze upon the prize of holiness, joy, and fulfillment in treasures that cannot rust or be consumed.
These mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters know that their roles as those who tend the children are the ones who shape and strengthen the future.
The Church is rising as women return to behavior that is reverent before their Creator and fitting of those created to usher in the next generations of God’s image bearers. These women are not slaves to wine, or anything else that intoxicates their peers.
They are learning how to be singularly and joyfully focused on their creative and beautiful roles as women.
They are learning how to devote themselves with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength to that which is good.
Instead of marching to express rage over their desire to kill their children, they study and work hard to learn how to raise their children and love their husbands.
Instead of brazen feminism, they develop beautiful femininity with powerful self-control and clear minded resolve.
Instead of lust and greed, they model God honoring purity.
They center their lives around cultivating the home and those entrusted to their care, building God honoring communities over temporary careers. Kindness to all and fierce love for their husbands mark these women. And in all of this and because of them, the Church is rising.
The Word of God is not reviled when women honor God by living as He commands. These women clothe themselves with strength and honor, not shame and hubris. By loving these women, the Church ensures that culture endures. The contrast could not be more stark, nor could the need be more pressing.
As I drove away from that mob last week, my very first inclination was to text my wife. I thanked her for being the woman she is and for her continued efforts to become the woman she is becoming. This is the path forward.
Shouting and tearing down is easy.
Patiently building in faith that our efforts are part of the Lord’s Kingdom plans, now that’s the stuff that makes girls into women, boys into men, and apostate cultures into streams in the desert.
Kevin Wolf, Jr.
Abolitionist - Oklahoma