The Giver and the Power of Choice

Choice: It’s a power-loaded word.

My heart is heavy. It’s pounding. I’m grieving. And it started with a book.

“It’s not their fault. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

“But we do. So it’s our fault. And we need to do something.”

–The Giver

My daughter recently read The Giver by Lois Lowry, and I think sometime, somewhere, I had to read it too, but at her urging, I re-read the novel that has won awards and a precious position in “must read literature for children.”

I’m actually surprised that a novel that inspires independence and life is so popular in the liberal world. We immediately watched the movie and were pleasantly surprised by the film!

Quick Summary: In a typical dystopian society that has been engineered to be “perfect,” the hero discovers the truth and has to save the rest of mankind from the elite who are oppressing them.

Does this story sound strangely familiar? It should. It’s super trendy right now. But the thing that got me was their idea of “releasing” people. If a citizen disobeys 3 times, or if they’re unhealthy or old, they get “released to elsewhere.” You discover (spoiler!) that releasing is actually lethal injection.

And when it happens to a baby, the hero, Jonas, freaks out.

And that’s when I freaked out. Something snapped in me.

Jonas said:

They haven’t removed murder. They’ve just given themselves the power to choose who to kill.”

The power of choice to decide who to kill.

So Jonas has to make a choice: Will he turn away, or will he act?

That’s the choice I see before me as well.

While in my heart I know abortion is wrong, it’s murder–it’s pure evil from the mind of Satan–I live my days as though it isn’t happening. I rationalize that there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I vote against it, sure, but it doesn’t keep me up at night. It’s a cruel matter of our society that God alone will have to judge.

But is that the complete truth?

If Jesus delays, and one day there’s a holy adjustment to our world, and books are written about our generation, what will they say of us? If abortion gets outlawed and shown to be a heinous, murderous choice, what will they say of us – of the good – who knew it was wrong and turned their heads away? Who refused to act? Who sat idly by, watching funny videos on Facebook and arguing about organic produce?

Am I just as guilty as those during the holocaust who smelled the stench and saw the ashes floating in the sky and looked away?

So I’m praying – what can I do?

There are so many issues in our world. Bathrooms and beheadings and presidents and politics. And I’m not trivializing any of them. But oh dear God, to kill the tiny victims, the unborn, the children. It has to stop.

And so I’m praying for guidance. For a way to help. And it begins now: with these few words in the over-populated internet-sea of words. Just a pebble in an ocean of endless chatter. But it’s where I am. And it’s my start.