Ron Kelsey is the archdiocesan consultant for the pro-life office. You can email him at: prolife@archkck.org or call him at (913) 647-0350.
by Ron Kelsey
Deception plays a prominent role in the battle for life. After all, this is a spiritual battle and the enemy is Satan, the father of lies and deception.
He tempts, tricks and deceives us into choosing our will instead of God’s will. He deceives us into choosing death rather than life by making evil appear as good.
The magnitude of the worldwide embrace of death is most dramatically demonstrated by the unimaginable scale of abortion. This pervasive choice of death led St. John Paul II to refer to our culture as a culture of death.
It is as if we are wandering in the dark with a compass which we cannot readily see. Hence, we are often lost and seldom on the right path. If God’s will is represented by the compass when pointing true north, it is as if we cannot see our compass pointing north due to our spiritual blindness. This blindness is caused by following our will, with a lack of humility, without considering God’s will.
How does deception manifest itself? Language is almost always abused in an attempt to hide truth and life itself. The beauty of truth is so compelling that it must be hidden in the dark with language that misleads, confuses, obfuscates, deceives, lies and may contain only partial truths.
For example, those who support legal abortion talk about women’s reproductive health and use that term as a euphemism for abortion, hiding the horror of abortion under the pretty veil of the language of women’s reproductive health. Evil must be presented in such a way that if one is to choose it, it must be perceived as good so that it is desired.
Deception also manifests itself with politicians who support the legalized killing of unborn children.
These individuals have been so deceived by political power, money, prestige, the desire for human respect or false support for women, etc., that they support and thereby cooperate in the evil of a mother and father participating in the killing of their child by abortion. In effect, these politicians have become opponents to love and life.
Through deception, a lack of humility and a strong desire to fulfill our wills, we have become a “stiff-necked” people wandering aimlessly in the dark.
Yet, we remain a people of hope. God has won the spiritual war and God is rooting for us and helping us. With God’s help, we can choose to build a culture of life. And in his greatest gift he has provided us with his compass pointing to the way, the truth and the life.
Of course, this compass is Jesus Christ.
