Guilt = Evidence?

“I had an abortion a year and a half ago.”

“How are you doing now?” I asked “Julie,” who’d approached our display at Columbus State Community College.

“Every day is like hell.”

Over the past seven years, we’ve had countless conversations with women and men who, like Julie, find themselves oddly placed in our culture. They hear pro-abortion propaganda seeking to make abortion seem normal, commonplace, even good (e.g., 1in3campaign.org), but this rings false in light of guilt, sadness many feel within.

While emotions can already be difficult to sort through, how much more complicated must it be when your society tells you those feelings are illegitimate—that you should only feel good about what you did?

Julie told me she knows now that she killed her child. I acknowledged this reality, but then presented her with the good news that God forgives those who believe in His Son.

In response, Julie said she is not convinced God exists.

Instead of starting with evidence for God’s existence from the beginning of or design present in the universe, I appealed to the flipside of the emotional problem of pain. I told Julie that the feelings she has from her abortion—that she did something truly wrong—only make sense if there is a God.

Indeed, if there is no God, there is no objective moral law-giver, and thus no objective moral law. Abortion, then, is not truly wrong. It’s morally equivalent to parenting and adoption. All are mere preferences in a lawless system. Julie’s feelings of guilt, then, do not make sense.

And yet she can’t escape the guilt she does feel. While emotions should not be seen as ultimate authority, Julie’s experience points toward God and underscores the inadequacy of an atheistic worldview.

Please pray she would recognize this and find forgiveness through Christ!