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The Colorado Springs Killer

And the pro-life Christian who gave his life to protect hostages at the abortion clinic

I’ve been waiting to get more information on the Colorado Springs abortion clinic killer before making a comment. That hasn’t, of course, stopped some readers from taking to the blog to condemn him as a Christian loony, and to blame me and other pro-lifers for this atrocity. It will come as a disappointment to them, I suppose, that from what we have learned so far about Robert Lewis Dear, Jr., he is a random anti-social paranoid who has a long history of violently not getting along with people, including run-ins with the law. Rich Lowry has been gathering reporting from various sources, and has a good round-up here.  There is no evidence to this point that Dear is a religious believer, or has pro-life convictions.

It turns out that the police officer, Garrett Swasey, killed trying to save the lives of hostages at the abortion clinic was a part-time pastor and pro-lifer. As I learned from Get Religion:

Swasey was a co-pastor of a local evangelical congregation, Hope Chapel. Click here for a recording of his final Advent sermon, Sunday before last, preaching from Hebrews 3. This congregation called it’s pastors “elders,” a term that is usually associated with some form of ordination.

This appears to be a pretty typical evangelical congregation and it has posted its doctrinal statements here. The statement on marriage and family makes it clear that this is a doctrinally conservative, pro-life church.

A blog called The Cripplegate has excerpted part of Swasey’s last sermon, delivered on November 15. It ends like this:

Douglas MacArthur says, “The history of failure can be summed up in two words: too late”. I think it speaks to the illustration I’m about to give, where the devil and his cohorts are devising plans to get people to reject the Gospel. So one of them proposes, “Well, let’s go to them and let’s say there’s no God,” and silence prevailed over the group because every devil knew, that most people believe in some kind of supreme being.

63cd2b_a79b182c9b944bc5bd2be9e0d249799e‘There are no atheists in foxholes!’ another said. “Let’s tell them there’s no hell, no future punishment for the wicked.” That was turned down too because men obviously have consciences and know that sin has to be punished somehow.

And so this gathering was about to end in failure, and there came this voice at the back of the room. “Let’s tell them that there is a God, there is a hell, and that the Bible is the word of God, but tell them there is plenty of time to decide. Let them neglect the Gospel until its too late.” And all hell erupted in a glee, because they knew if a man procrastinated on Christ, they usually never accept Him.

There is much for us to consider today…we must consider the object of our consideration. What is it? Let us exhort one another to consider Christ not as we would imagine him, but as He is written about in the Scriptures. And finally let us not harden our hearts to the Gospel!

Let’s pray.

Lord you are tremendously patient with us, and in that patience we can become inattentive, thinking that somehow your grace, patience and mercy is something for us to consider, as a default position where there is not judgment or punishment for sin. Lord let us view grace as what it truly is, a costly tremendous gift, that cost you everything, that we might be in relationship with you. And because of the high price of that gift, that we might make you and the Gospel the forefront of our minds as the most valuable thing we possess, as we sang this morning , you can have all this world but give me Jesus! Give us you! So Lord as we sing I ask that our hearts would be attentive towards you, that we would consider you and what you’ve done and that we wouldn’t just leave it here but as we go about the day…that this would be the conversation that’s on our lips. that this would be what we post on Facebook, that this would be at the forefront of our Bible studies, that we would read attentively recognizing what a precious gift You are! In Jesus name, Amen.

As Jordan Standridge at The Cripplegate points out:

A man who hated abortion and hated murder–who gave his life helping others–didn’t hesitate about going to Planned Parenthood to save lives.

Think about that.

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