Planned Parenthood CEO Testifies before Congress

Jim Denison | Denison Forum | Updated: Sep 30, 2015

Planned Parenthood CEO Testifies before Congress

Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards testified before Congress yesterday. Her appearance was part of a continuing investigation into the sale of aborted babies and their body parts (euphemistically called "fetal tissue"). This practice was unknown to most Americans before ten videos released by The Center for Medical Progress exposed it.

On a more positive note, the ubiquitousness of cell phones is making anonymous acts of kindness less anonymous. Last summer, a black police officer helped a white supremacist suffering from heat exhaustion at a KKK rally. The picture taken by an onlooker went viral. NBA star Roy Hibbert took a cellphone picture of a policeman giving a set of boots to a homeless man. It too went viral.

 

Meanwhile, researchers have concluded that the "Angelina Jolie effect" is real. After the celebrity made public her decision to undergo a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, the public's awareness of these operations increased. And this from Relevant magazine: the cereal Cinnamon Toast Crunch has released a selfie spoon. You can use it to eat their cereal while taking pictures of yourself eating their cereal.

 

What we do in private inevitably becomes public. This can be good or bad.

 

In Psalm 101, King David stated, "I will ponder the way that is blameless. . . . I will walk with integrity within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless" (vs. 2-3). As a result, God could describe him as "a man after my heart, who will do all my will" (Acts 13:22). 

 

But when David chose not to "walk with integrity within my house," when he chose to set before his eyes that which was "worthless," his sin with Bathsheba was the result. That moral failure still stains his reputation thirty centuries later.

 

Private sin becomes public failure. Conversely, private integrity becomes public witness. (Tweet this) Who we are inevitably becomes what we do. And what we do becomes who others think we are.

 

Our culture increasingly views religion as irrelevant if not dangerous. Richard Dawkins calls religion "the root of all evil." Christopher Hitchens claimed that "religion poisons everything." Sam Harris declares that "science must destroy religion." In a society that looks more negatively upon Christianity than ever before, the integrity of Christians is more important than ever before.

 

When you face temptation today, remember that sin affects more than the sinner. (Tweet this) As Puritan Thomas Watson noted, "Sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages." Always.

 

Heed the warning of Puritan Thomas Brooks: "Every thing that a man leans upon but God will be a dart that will certainly pierce his heart through and through. He who leans only upon Christ lives the highest, choicest, safest, and sweetest life."

 

If you fall to temptation today, turn immediately to your Father for forgiveness. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to repent and the more damage your sin will do. Remember that "God loves each of us as if there were only one of us" (St. Augustine), and claim his mercy and grace.

 

Jesus predicted: "Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops" (Luke 12:2-3).

 

Make his prediction good news today.

 

 

Publication date: September 30, 2015

For more from the Denison Forum on Truth and Culture, please visit www.denisonforum.org.

Do you want to live a life in whole-hearted pursuit of loving God and others? 

Read today's First15 at www.first15.org.



Planned Parenthood CEO Testifies before Congress