'Our Bogus Moral Crusades'

I've always found it amusing that tobacco use is not permitted at Planned Parenthood facilities. Tobacco, of course, is evil, and obviously people who kill a baby every 96 seconds will not tolerate evil. As Douglas Wilson explains:

What happens when a land dishonors God and begins dismembering little children? What happens when we practice sexual perversion? Mankind is created imago Dei, despite our wickedness, and we cannot forget that we bear this image. As image bearers we therefore carry with us an inescapable sense of morality.

This means that if we will not have morality defined by the Word of God, then we must invent our own morality. We will invent our own standards of righteousness. With this in mind, look at our secular culture—although we have no fixed morality, we are still not lacking for moral crusades. We are not lacking for people who have a deep-seated moral indignation towards whatever particular pseudo-evil they have picked that must bear the brunt of their crusade. If we will not learn our morality from the law of God, we will find ourselves inventing our own list of things to be indignant about.

This is why we now find tobacco, sexism, wine, beer, and the history of Western Europe, to be very offensive. We are outraged at tobacco; we are outraged at wine and beer; we are outraged at the Bible’s teaching on authority and submission in marriage; and we are outraged at the heritage of Christendom. We are muddled and confused because we have been trading at the world’s oldest continuously-running swapmeet. "All too well you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition" (Mark 7:9). A woman, six-months pregnant, can dismember her unborn child without reproach, but if that same woman keeps the baby and risks a low birth-weight by lighting up a cigarette, she is shunned as a pariah.