The United States Supreme Court ruled today that 58 million aborted babies is not enough. Our national sin of abortion now dwarfs the atrocities of the genocide of 6 million Jews by the Nazis, and the extermination of 20 million Christians by the Soviet Union. I can find no other words to describe this disgrace than those of Hermann Sasse directed at the Nazi regime:

The lie is the death of man, his temporal and his eternal death. The lie kills nations. Through their lies, the most powerful empires of the world were laid waste. History knows of no more unsettling spectacle than the judgment which comes to pass when the men of an advanced culture have rejected the truth, and are now swallowed up in a sea of lies. As was the case with fading pagan antiquity, where this happened, religion and law, poetry and philosophy, life in marriage and family, in the state and society, in short, one sphere of life after another, fell sacrifice to the power and curse of the lie. Where man can no longer bear the truth, he cannot live without the lie. Where man, even when dying, lies to himself and others, the terrible dissolution of his culture is held up as a glorious ascent, and decline is viewed as an advance, the like of which has never been experienced. Union and Confession, 1936.

O Lord Jesus, author and source of life, cast us not away because of our sins. Change the minds and hearts of the people of this nation, waning under moral ambiguity. Uphold your Church wherever it stands for life. Give us repentance where Christians have failed to speak and act and vote for life. Help us to continue to care for the least, the last, the needy, the downtrodden, and especially those who have succumbed to the lie. We plead it for your sake. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison
President, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod