“Gracious Father, send us your Holy Spirit that we may speak the truth in boldness and love, and open the hearts of those we encounter this day that they may cherish the life you have given them.”
This petition is often included in my prayers at the beginning of my shift as a sidewalk counselor outside of Planned Parenthood. For nearly two years now, since coming to the seminary as an M.Div. student, I have also worked for the local pro-life organization Coalition Life as a sidewalk counselor.
I weekly find myself on the front lines of the abortion debate, talking with women firsthand as they drive into Planned Parenthood. Knowingly or unknowingly, many are there to murder their unborn children. As I call to them from the sidewalk, I often face scorn and rejection, but I also get to witness my prayer being answered as women abandon their appointment and cherish the child God has given them.
I was introduced to Luther’s idea of oratio, meditatio, tentatio as part of my Introduction to Systematic Theology course my first semester at seminary. We read a John Kleinig article that sought to answer the question: “What makes a theologian?”[1] I find myself returning to the article and to Luther’s formulation of prayer for the Holy Spirit, mediation on God’s written Word, and temptation by Satan as I reflect on my experiences at seminary and as a sidewalk counselor.
There is certainly much prayer and meditation at the seminary. We pray before class, we pray corporately in chapel, we pray together around the lunch table. We also constantly hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures both in English and in the original languages. Satan is also constantly at work to tear down all the students, professors, and their families as we prepare to save sinners from his grasp. However, my time as a sidewalk counselor has also played a significant role in my formation as a theologian.
This work is very humbling. I am repeatedly tempted into idleness or apathy even in the middle of a conversation with a woman that I know is about to get an abortion. It is scarily easy to allow the conversation to end prematurely at the first sign of conflict or difficulty. I have found myself saying, “okay, have a nice day,” and letting her drive into the parking lot on multiple occasions after I was not sure what to say next or simply felt the tension rising in our conversation.
This sinful avoidance of speaking the truth to the women I counsel with is a constant temptation. In a society where niceness is a cardinal virtue, failing to speak the truth often seems the politest thing to do. But it is by no means polite. It is my duty as a sidewalk counselor to speak to these women as long as possible as I attempt to explain the resources that are available to them or the dangers of abortion, or as I seek to comfort them about their financial or medical situation. The desire to avoid conflict and politely let the women proceed into Planned Parenthood is a satanic temptation that I have fallen into time and time again.
I thank God through Christ Jesus our Lord that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This tentatio has shown me the weakness of my flesh and has brought me to the foot of the cross in repentance. I have been struck down by my sin but not destroyed. These temptations and satanic attacks have, by the grace of God, only demonstrated my need for God even more. They have brought me to prayer and into the Scriptures. Throughout all of the temptation I have experienced the righteousness, the sweetness, and the power of God’s Word with my whole being.[2]
My work as a sidewalk counselor has also taught me to love my enemies. Frequently, while I am on the Planned Parenthood sidewalk, there are people who volunteer for Planned Parenthood to hinder our work and get clients into the building as quickly as possible. These “clinic escorts” hold signs that call us protesters, they interrupt our conversations, and they tell clients falsely that they cannot talk to us and that the resources we offer them is not real.
For my first few months as a sidewalk counselor, I was able to mostly ignore these escorts. They would intervene and tell lies about me, but I would just continue to do my job without paying them much attention. However, after a while I began to feel very angry at the escorts and the injustice of what they do. After my shifts I would still find myself thinking about them and hating them for luring women into Planned Parenthood. Perhaps my anger was directed toward a righteous end, but I know that often the anger I felt was far from righteous.
Over time my emotions began to change. My anger began to shift to sadness and grief as I realized the spiritual bondage these people were in. I was saddened by their blindness and inability to see the wickedness that they themselves perpetrated. I grieved every time they laughed at us or scorned us because I grew to recognize the state of their souls. Being on the sidewalk for nearly two years now has given me concrete experience of the spiritual warfare all around us. The escorts have shown me the depths of what it means to be a slave to sin, and it is tragic to see them revel in the chains that bind them, because as they reviled me, persecuted me, and said all kinds of evil things against me falsely, I realized I was truly beginning to love them.
A couple of months ago I finished an adult Bible study on 1 Peter that I had been teaching at my Residential Field Education congregation. I did not realize this immediately, but as I studied this epistle and taught it to God’s people, I was also being formed by the Holy Spirit. The shift from anger to love was not my own, but it was one brought about by the Holy Spirit working through His inspired Word. I had been teaching my Bible study class about their faith being tested by fire, about glorifying God with good works as the Gentiles speak evil against them, and about partaking in Christ’s sufferings, but it took several months before I truly knew what those things meant.
As I continued the Bible study, I began to witness the changes that had started in my life. It was a slow process, one I did not recognize at first, but now as I reflect on the last year, I see God’s work in my life. I am so thankful that God has given me the opportunity to work as a sidewalk counselor during my time here at Concordia Seminary. I am thankful for lives I have been able to save from abortion. I am thankful for the lessons I have learned in the school of experience and the encounters I have had with satanic forces. I am especially thankful for the testing, reviling, and suffering that God has used to form me into a better theologian. Now, as I look forward to a new vocation as a vicar and continue walking in prayer and study of God’s Word, I can confidently confess with Luther:
I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations. This is what the enthusiasts and sects lack. They don’t have the right critic, the devil, who is the best teacher of theology. If we don’t have that kind of devil, then we become nothing but speculative theologians, who do nothing but walk around in our own thoughts and speculate with our reason alone as to whether things should be like this, or like that.[3]
Vicar Christopher Atlee
[1] John Kleinig, “Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio: What Makes a Theologian?” Concordia Theological Quarterly 66, no 3 (July 2002), 255-267.
[2] Kleinig, 264.
[3] Martin Luther as quoted by Kleinig, 256-257.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.