Have You Not Read S3:E24 - Interview with John Michener (Part 3)

Opposition from the State, Churches, and the Pro-Life Movement

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are.

Michael Durham.

John Mishner.

Chris Kiesler.

We are going to enjoy a third segment of our time with John Mishner, and Michael, if you wouldn't mind opening us up on everyone's favorite subject, opposition.

All right, well, we are with John Mishner again for our third session, and we know that your job, your ministry in this field, opposing abortion, calling for an absolute end to abortion, to abolish abortion, is something that is met with all manner of opposition from different types of groups.

We understand the opposition would be coming from the state, from legislatures, but also we understand the opposition could come from those that should be on your side, on our side of this issue. What kind of opposition do you face, and how do you navigate through those moments and those personalities and those challenges?

Well, let me say right here at the beginning that in this session, you're going to hear a lot of doom and gloom and very negative stuff. I just want to invite you to hang in there. We are going to get to the wins.

We're going to get to the positive and encouraging side and the working of the spirit in the world through God's holy people, the church, but that'll be in the next episode. So stay tuned, but wait, there's more.

But now back to the doom and gloom. So when I first got started in full-time ministry, I was thinking that the opposition was going to be coming from all of the crazy young skulls full of mush who have been indoctrinated in our pagan, heathen cultural centers of education, and they were going to be marching and calling me names and waving signs at me and all this kinds of stuff.

And sure enough, all that did happen. But all of those types of people were reachable. I was able to enter into conversations with them. We were able to convert some. We were able to make them think. We were able to teach them and interact with them.

And those kinds of interactions were fun and they were evangelistic. And we felt like we were showing them the love of Christ, treating them like fellow human beings that deserve to have a rational, reasonable conversation about what's true in the world and that kind of thing, and that was great.

But what I was not prepared for was the opposition that came from people who were supposed to be on my own team. It was from other pro-lifers, leaders in the pro-life movement, leaders in churches and this kind of thing.

And every time I turned around, it seemed like someone was praying not for me but against me and actively opposing me. It was like the pastor, the priest, the rabbi and the pro-life politician walk into a bar to conspire against me.

But guys, this is no joke. This is actually happening. They are conspiring against us and they will be your greatest opposition emotionally and spiritually if you get involved in the fight to speak up and try and rescue our pre-born neighbors.

In fact, this is such a problem that I decided I had to write a book about it. There are so many pro-life books out there. There are so many books about abortion and abortion ministry out there. Do we really need another one?

That's the question that I kept asking because every time I would preach and teach and nag and do a workshop or seminar, everyone comes up afterwards and says, where's the book? I got to have the book about this.

You have a book about this, don't you? Aren't you going to write a book? Where's the book? I'm like, I'm too busy doing this thing with you. We've got to go out and minister to people. Well, the years rolled by and finally the time seemed right and so I set aside three months last year to put this book together.

Started working in October, had it done by the end of December. We're now in just the very final editing stages and I hope by the time you listeners hear this, you'll be able to go on Amazon and look for Overcoming the Dark Side of the Pro-Life Movement.

That's the name of the book, Overcoming the Dark Side of the Pro-Life Movement and it's going to walk you through my journey of activism and evangelism and all of the crazy hurdles and obstacles and opposition I got from other people in the pro-life movement and leaders in churches and pro-life politicians especially and that's some of the stuff we want to touch on on tonight as we go through.

Why Many Churches Avoid Preaching Against Abortion

Excellent. I appreciate you walking us through this because when people hear pro-life, they think the good guys and there's a lot of people who still use the language of pro-life and what they mean by that is abolish abortion but there's other people who use the language pro-life and they use that label but they don't actually mean abolish abortion entirely, do they?

Right and so the point of the intended audience for my book is the casual believer who would self-identify as pro-life and this person believes that abortion is wrong, it's an immoral choice equivalent to murder and that therefore, we ought to treat it like that under the law.

So if abortion is murder, then it should be a high crime, not just a misdemeanor, right? That should not be legal to do. So that's who I'm writing to and it doesn't matter what you call yourself, whether you would call yourself pro-life or abolitionist, I'm trying to wake someone up who right now is sitting in the pew and not doing anything and I want to get them engaged.

By hearing this story and I want to warn them that when they get engaged, they're going to face friendly fire and I want to prepare them for how to handle that, how to navigate that and not burn out. I've seen a lot of people come and go in both the pro-life movement and the abolitionist movement and because of the infighting, they just throw their arms up like Tom Cruise and walk away, right?

Grand exit right there, I'm done. Well, I don't want you to be done, I want you to keep fighting and so here's what's going to happen to you, be ready for it, here's what you can do about it and keep fighting because as long as you're engaged as an activist, you are literally saving lives and saving souls.

Don't walk away because if you were once called into this ministry, I'm calling you to stay in it regardless of what's going to be coming at you. So it was a really rude awakening for me. I mean, when I first got started, I thought, oh my gosh, I mean, babies are dying and when I show people my passion and my enthusiasm and invite them to come along with me and get involved, man, they're just going to jump right on board, say, let's go do it, let's raise an 18-foot tall exhibit of dead babies and wake people up and then all of a sudden what I got was, no, well, what do you mean no?

No, don't want you talking about it here, no, you can't preach about it, you can't present about it, no, no, you can't ask for funding, no, don't invite our people to come help you, no, we're not going to do that, we don't want to offend people, we don't want to scare people, we don't, I just got a lot of no's and I did not understand it for the longest time.

So like you said, the casual believer who identifies as pro-life thinks it's wrong and we should stop it and they want to do something about it. Where you really run into trouble is when you start talking about leadership, leaders, people with, who are wielding power and authority by virtue of having resources, like, hey, I'm the head of this organization, I've got a million dollars to spend, so I'm going to guard it and I'm only going to do what I want with it and I'm only going to use it in a way that won't undermine my authority or risk my losing more dollars.

And that's what was happening in the big time pro-life movement organizations, especially the Inside the Beltway ones focused in Washington, D .C. and on national stuff. They were amassing massive amounts of money and spending it and wanting to protect that money.

They don't want to do anything that's going to be too controversial or rock the boat and things like that. But really what my first taste of it was in churches because I was trying to invite local churches to come out and do evangelism with me and get involved and I just kept getting no's.

So it's the pastors, it's the elders, it is anyone who has stewardship power within this local congregation that is a basic, it's an earthly kingdom. Let's just be straight about it. There's a chapter in my book called Earthly Kingdoms and I think it'll be very enlightening to many of you but the thing is as soon as you build a building and pave a parking lot and start having programs and paid staff and all this stuff, these are earthly kingdoms.

And I'm not saying that they're inherently bad but when you have these things it's going to influence those in those earthly kingdoms to protect that kingdom and to protect their paycheck. So what keeps an earthly kingdom going?

Cash flow. So you have to have numbers, you have to have nickels and you have to have noses and you don't want to lose any of those. So if you're considering doing something that's going to be controversial like wait, you want my people to go down to the local university and hold signs of dead babies and start conversation about abortion?

Yeah, we're not real comfortable with that. I'm afraid that too many people in my congregation are going to be uncomfortable with that and if they see me trumpeting this this is something we're going to embrace as a congregation, they might decide to go somewhere else.

Now I've lost numbers, nickels and noses or I've got a few Democrats in my congregation, I don't want to lose them. Maybe I don't want to lose that one that's putting in 60 of the contribution. These kinds of things come into play and so I just want to say watch out for that.

Don't let it depress you, don't let it surprise you, that's going to happen. You're going to get opposition within the church.

So sometimes because of the controversial nature of this and not necessarily, we can agree with you in basics, we can agree with you in theory or we can agree with you in principle yet in the practice of it we're drawing a lot of heat and a lot of attention and this could seem like we're being too controversial.

We are controversial whereas we wouldn't necessarily have to. It's like we're going out and picking a fight rather than being purely defensive. If somebody were to come into our church and try to shout their abortion, in that case we might say, no, no, no, we disagree with you but we're not going to go out there and shout abortion is murder because that looks like we're being aggressive and picking a fight and what business do we have doing that?

So it seems like a bit of a, part of its discipleship, part of its expectation but ultimately you've noticed, what you've observed is if getting involved is going to threaten the financial security of leadership, the financial security of a church, this is very often what shuts it down.

Money very often is what is speaking louder than the morality.

Numbers, Nickels, and Noses in Church Growth

Yeah, it's not the only thing but it's definitely one of the key components. I mean, if you ask me, what are the primary reasons that a particular church congregation does not talk about abortion from the pulpit systematically or why they don't do anything beyond maybe donating to the local crisis pregnancy center, I would say there are six, seven, eight reasons.

And again, I got a whole chapter in my book, Earthly Kingdoms. This is why pastors and preachers and leaders of local churches don't want to get involved on this topic. Let's just mention a few of them before we move on.

Let's imagine together a congregation where we know statistically it's a fact, let's just say 10 of the people in this local church have a problem abusing alcohol. Like they're just constantly drunk.

They can't say no. They don't know how to imbibe for the joy in the moment and then set it aside and go be a father and a husband and a good employee and leave it alone until next weekend. They got problems, right?

Well, we all know it. The leadership of the church knows it but what if they never ever preached or taught about being a slave to addiction? If they never talked about alcohol, what if this church did not have any kind of recovery program in that church knowing that 10 of the people have a problem with it?

That's exactly the kind of thing that is happening with abortion. Probably one in four people, 25 of the congregation have some sort of personal connection to abortion. They've had one. They've paid for one.

They're missing a brother or a niece or a nephew that was aborted. Like it's touching everyone in the church congregation but no one's talking about it. There might be a pro-life sermon once a year around the anniversary of Roe v Wade or something and they say we're donating to the Crisis Pregnancy Center but is anyone in the congregation reaching out and saying, you know, it's wrong.

It's a sin that leads to death and if you've been there and done that, we have got to repent and then we've got to recover from this. Together we can do this. Here's our ministry. Here's our program. Here's our class.

Here's the way we're going to recover. Here's the way we're going to minister to each other but that's exactly what's going on. We live in a culture right now where we don't talk about controversial things.

That has been beat into us, has it not? I mean, we're programmed. Don't talk about controversial stuff. Let's talk about OU football. Let's talk about the tornadoes and the hailstorm but don't talk to me about the sinful decisions that I've made or might make in the future.

That's taboo and I think the leaders in our churches are right there. They're not willing to talk about those controversial things because that's a part of our culture.

And again,.

Because ultimately it makes people uncomfortable and it might make them leave and it might hurt cash flow. There's another dynamic going on too where I think it is very popular in modern culture to view emotional pain and distress as something that's bad, that's wrong, it's maybe even inherently wicked or evil and so if I were to cause Dylan anxiety, mental and spiritual anxiety, then would I hurt him?

And I think what we're doing is we're mixing up punching him in the face with causing emotional distress and acting like they're the same sort of thing. You know, just because you're uncomfortable by something I say or bring up about yourself or in your life, that's not me punching you in the face and trying to harm you for the sake of harming you.

And neither of those would hurt, by the way, I'm fine. I wouldn't. It's very difficult to hurt me emotionally or anything like that.

So silence is violent.

No, yeah, but you're right. Like that is something that we're discipled into. Like you were saying, we can't talk about controversial things, but it's also because there's church discipline being exacted on us.

If we do talk about controversial things, I remember going through college, like I got it in high school a little bit. I went to a rural high school, but when I got to college at OU,.

Like you said,.

Silence is violence. Or on the other end, if you talk about these controversial things or if you have even a controversial take and you don't even voice it, but you're just there and they know you have it in classes, they would try to like point you out and then get you to bring it out and then try and dogpile.

Yeah, they dogpile you on it. So there's church discipline actually being acted out on you if you do bring up these controversial things. And do you see that in churches as well? Like you mentioned that you get the nose from people, but do you see them pressuring people not to bring it up even within their own congregations?

You're coming in from the outside, but do we have congregations that as well, they won't allow some sort of discussion even about these?

Oh, absolutely. And the bigger the church and the more corporate it is, then the more they will shut down more and more topics. Like abortion is an obvious one. You know, if you want to go to say some like a Victory Church or church .tv, church .org, church on the high holy rock with 15 campuses and 15 ,000 people, the bigger they get, the fewer things they're willing to talk about.

And abortion is number one. And then they just add more and more things as they want to get more and more people in the doors, drinking their coffee and putting their ties in the plate.

It's kind of a marketing thing.

It is. It totally is. So if you take, you know, like the life churches or whatever, you know, I've had people go into their leadership meetings and saying, why aren't we providing some sort of recovery ministry for abortion?

And why aren't we talking about it in any of our classes or from the pulpit?

Why?

And the answer comes down from leadership. That's not part of our strategic plan. We're an entry level church. We're just going to give them the basic gospel. And if they want some deep learning, they can go somewhere else.

But then when push comes to shove, they don't really want them to go somewhere else. They want them to keep staying there, repaving the parking lot every few years.

You're talking about cashflow. You're talking about money and mammon seem to be the root of all this. If you have pastors or elders who feel like they could save those tithes to a greater extent as if, because what we're dealing with is cashflow in and cashflow out,.

Right?

We're dealing with basic economics or basic business ownership. You've got to be able to save something. If those pastors, if those elders felt as though their money went further or they saved something, do you think that they would be more willing to give a message against these things and not worry about that cashflow in?

Because, hey, we've got a savings account behind us.

I very rarely see larger congregations willing. They're not willing to think outside the box. They're thinking with fear and they're thinking about not losing the power and the money. If I were to come in and argue that, hey, look, if you will follow the scriptural pattern of preaching the truth, come what may, and then trusting God to bless you for upholding his law and his justice and mercy, they're not even willing to imagine that.

They always want to say,.

No, no,.

But I'm going to lose these people. They won't even give you the opportunity to say, yes, but you'll gain so much more if you do it this other way. They can't even think outside the box to see that potential.

You trace back the modern church growth philosophies that were popularized by Rick Warren and so on. You go back farther and you come to Donald McGavern, third generation missionary from the subcontinent of India.

And in the mission work being done in India, they began to do numbers, nickels and noses, on which mission stations were doing better than others. And they discovered that the mission stations that did not require Hindus coming out of the caste system, coming out of Hinduism, they realized that any church that did not require them to mingle with other people of other castes, those mission stations did great.

And they had a lot of people there. And boy, numbers, nickels and noses did really good if you didn't ask them to go against the caste system. But in the places where they said, you know, neither Greek nor Jew, nor Scythians or slave man, you know, everybody, everybody is coming together and we're all equal in Christ.

Those mission stations had a much harder time of going at it and tended to be the lower castes because the higher caste would not mingle with the lower caste. The lower caste were fine hanging out with each other.

And so upon observing this, they decided the spirit works best wherein you don't ask too much of people when they come to Jesus. And so the philosophy that Donald McGavern brought with him to the West Coast in promoting church growth strategies was this, don't ask people too much.

Don't ask too much of them to come to Jesus. Remove all barriers that are between them and coming to Jesus, whatever those barriers are. So that was the general principle that he brought.

But that's because Jesus loves you just the way you are.

You're making me throw up in my mouth.

In spite of who you are.

It's supposed to be in spite of who you are. He says, take up your cross and follow after me. And so with that mindset, that's been so deeply ingrained into the American church experience that when we're talking about larger corporate church growth models, their whole goal is to remove all barriers, whatever those are, that are in between them and coming to Jesus.

And so that's why they do surveys, they do marketing surveys, and they try to figure out what can we do to make sure that you're absolutely most comfortable. We're just trying to introduce you to Jesus and remove all discomfort out of the way.

The problem with that is that we lose sight of the need for repentance. And when Jesus came preaching, he said that the kingdom of God is at hand, the kingdom of heaven is at hand,.

Repent.

And believe in the gospel. He cared. He loved. He sees people in need of salvation. And he calls them to change. He calls for us to have a turnaround, turnaround about sin. And we really can't serve God and mammon, right?

We can't affirm the idolatry and the immorality and the injustice. We can't affirm the abortion or affirm these types of things. And at the same time, embrace and follow Christ. These things are not compatible.

If we love people, if we do care about people, we would like to see them saved, redeemed, taken out of these lies and these deceptions. So that is going to bring opposition. That's going to cause people discomfort.

They may walk away and say, well, how dare you? But as Christians, how many stories have we heard about people who were offended? They were made angry by the claims of Christ upon their life. They can't even remember the person who got them angry and telling them these things, but it stuck with them and it stayed with them and they couldn't go to sleep at night and it haunted them until finally they came to Christ and they're grateful for the fact that somebody told them something they didn't want to hear.

Well, and don't forget that the Lord warned the disciples that he came to bring a sword and he would be dividing friends and brothers and sisters and family members and to expect that. And also remember that it's a straight and narrow way and few there are that find it.

So in the context of what we're talking about here with the power and the politics that come along with the corporate church, understand that when you want to become an abolitionist or an anti-abortion activist.

Or pro-lifer,.

I don't care what you call yourself, but when you get involved in this, in this fight, just don't look for your pastor and your elder to go, yep, yep, yep.

Yahoo.

Let me give you resources in a classroom and help you promote it. That's just not going to happen, but not to end on doom and gloom with every section tonight, just go ahead and do good. Anyway, there's no law against doing righteousness and look to your small groups.

Look to your Bible class. Look to the people that come to your home. Look to your homeschool co-op. Look to your immediate friends and family. You decide what you're going to do to start ministering and serving.

Take your best friend and a couple of other randos with you and just get after it. And if you start doing good and saving lives, other true believers who are part of that remnant are going to see it and they're going to go, oh, I want to be a part of that too.

And you're going to have positive effect, but don't go looking for permission.

Yes.

And don't expect help from an organized corporate church.

Royal Priesthood and Direct Access to God

I think that's important to point out. I think that this is a kind of encouragement as a pastor. What blesses me is when people go out and they just want to serve Jesus and they want to bring his truth into various areas of society, of life, and they're just out there doing their thing.

Praise God. They're not looking for titles. They're not looking for official recommendation. They're not looking to be patted on the back and touted. If the Lord is leading you in that direction,.

Go for it.

And if you want to share it with me, I will pray with you and I will encourage you in that. And there may be somebody that I have in mind that I will say, hey, talk to so-and-so. I bet they'll be your best friend in this endeavor.

But what's very discouraging as a pastor is when people come and they have a conviction or desire, something's been laid upon their heart and they want to go after it, but they want official church recognition and everybody needs to think exactly my way and have the same intensity of feeling that I have.

And then if they don't get that, then they interpret that as opposition. And it's not. It's simply a matter of, hey, the Lord put this on your heart. You go do that. There's a lot of different parts of the body and we want to support you and bless you in that.

And there'll be other people who will be coming along with you, but you've got to step out in obedience and get out there, right?

Yeah.

And I would also remind us as another encouragement that we as believers are a royal priesthood. There is no priesthood anymore where you go to the priest and he makes the sacrifice for you. You don't take your lamb to the priest to have its throat cut.

You sacrifice this thing. You offer up the good parts to God and then you eat the others with your family for your holy picnic. We don't do that anymore. Now you are your own priest. You boldly approach the throne of God directly because you have been reconciled to your father in heaven and you can approach him boldly, the scripture says, to make your needs known to him.

And he's there to listen. So there's no intermediary. The only intermediary is our big brother Jesus, who's sitting right there at the right hand of the throne. And if you muck things up in your prayers, the Holy Spirit and the Lord can say, look, I've been where he's been.

This is what he's trying to say, God. So don't look for permission from the earthly kingdom, people who are the gatekeepers of the local classrooms and keep the crayons locked up because you can only use them for approved coloring programs.

Get your own coloring page. Go directly to God. He will bless your ministry. Get out there and do it. I also want to just sort of transitioning now to another point. You're going to also meet opposition in the pro-life movement.

Now, you may not recognize it at first as opposition, depending on where you're coming from, because maybe your point of view, your worldview, your ideology is the same as the mainstream pro-life movement leaders.

But there's a couple of ways in which that as you learn more and grow in knowledge and wisdom of what true justice is and what God requires when it comes to abortion and its abolition, you might find yourself running up against people in the pro-life movement.

Maybe they're politicians at the state capitol in the Republican Party. Maybe they are leaders and gatekeepers of huge institutions, maybe like the Susan B. Anthony list or Students for Life of America or Americans for Life.

These organizations wield millions of dollars, but what are they doing with those millions of dollars? What are they not doing with those millions of dollars? What are they for? And what are they against?

You might think they're on your side, but when you get in there, you might find out that they're going to be working against you. You know, maybe you're at the state capitol saying, you know, we need to criminalize all abortion, period.

It can't be chemical. It can't be surgical. Doctors can't do it. Moms can't do it. Nobody can murder an innocent pre-born human being, and that's what you're advocating for. But then you get up there and come to find out that your pro-life Republican Christian legislator doesn't agree with that.

And he's being told by a pro-life lobbyist who sends him, you know, $5 ,000 to $10 ,000 a year for his reelection campaign that he shouldn't be for that either. That's what you're up against because he tells you he's pro-life and that he wants to pass pro-life legislation, but none of that legislation does what you think ought to be done.

It might have exceptions for rape and incest. It might protect all women who want to kill their own children by abortion. They might call it pro-life, but then when you look at the details, it's not pro-life at all.

And it certainly won't abolish abortion. You're going, what the heck is going on here?

Opposition to the bill Dusty Devers has put together. They don't even listen to it. They don't even want to have it read on the floor because, and I think this is where, by contrast, it just makes it really clear.

That's actually what we should be after.

Right.

Rather than just making little, little maneuvers that many times are meaningless, but they're kind of like a token nod towards being pro-life. But when we're putting it out there into the light, I see opposition very often expressed in terms of let's not victimize women.

And this is how the, for instance, there was a news media coverage of Dusty Devers bill, and they brought it as a question to Governor Stitt at a media gaggle. And they said, what about this bill about abortion?

Anti-abortion bill that criminalizes or attacks mothers, which you're saying, you're saying that they're a mother, right? But they said that to the governor and he hears there's a bill that's against abortion, but it's attacking mothers.

And he comes off and says, I don't know what you're talking about, particularly what bill you're talking about. And he says, but Oklahoma, we're a very pro-life, pro-family state. So we certainly wouldn't be punishing mothers.

Yes.

He's been explicit on this point for the last four plus years. For the first four years of his governorship, he just really ignored abortion. And he never said anything about it.

Other than,.

Well, if you put a pro-life bill on my desk,.

I'll sign it.

But the last two years, it's the pressure that abolitionists have brought, have forced him to answer a little more clearly. The really great quote that I love was actually from last session a year ago.

And Senator Warren Hamilton from Southeast Oklahoma had a bill that was going to remove the explicit license to kill that women have in Oklahoma statute.

Yes.

I've read that.

So we have in statute, multiple times, in multiple acts,.

It says,.

No woman shall be prosecuted in the death of her own preborn child. Right? Multiple times in statute. So Warren Hamilton comes along and says, we need to remove this license to kill. We got to close the loophole.

There has to be the threat of the law so that people don't kill their own children. They have to fear that they might get prosecuted. This is equal justice. This is equal protection of the law, which is required by God's moral law.

And oh, by the way, by our constitution, we have unconstitutional statutes on the books when it comes to abortion, because we're saying these kids can be murdered and these can't, or this type of person can murder a child, but this kind of person can't.

So it's completely unconstitutional. But anyway, so a reporter from KOCO, our local ABC News affiliate said, Governor Stitt, will you support Senator Hamilton's bill? And he said straight up, no, we're not going to punish women in Oklahoma.

That is preposterous. That's a direct quote from the governor. So where's this coming from? Well, it's coming from what you mentioned just a minute ago, the concept that women who seek abortions are victims.

Well, we could do a program on that statement right there for the next hour and a half alone. That is one of the 10 corrupt commandments followed in the pro-life movement. Leaders of pro-life organizations and pro-life politicians have a certain set of commandments that are completely wicked and corrupt that they follow.

There's a couple of big ones at the top. I'm not going to go through all 10 tonight, but number one and number two are the big dogs. Number one is thou shalt have no other gods before the judiciary. Pro-life organizations and their leaders and pro-life politicians will do anything that some judge in a black dress tells them they have to do.

No matter how immoral or unconstitutional, they bow down to SCOTUS and the entire judiciary. So that's a huge one that we could do two hours on also. But the second biggest one right there at the top of the 10 corrupt commandments is thou shalt not ever punish the woman, period.

We're going to treat them all like they are victims. Now, let's ask a question. Are some women who seek abortion victims?

Yes.

Sure, absolutely.