For decades, the Supreme Court’s decision to hijack the abortion question blunted the moral impetus for secular and religious leaders alike. It allowed for a dishonest debate, and for the left to claim our elected representatives alone have jurisdiction over matters of life and death, while rarely exercising this jurisdiction. For decades, from both the church pulpit and the bully pulpit, it allowed for cowardice. Soon that may be ending. 

For years, Supreme Court rulings like Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey allowed our leaders to hide. Republicans could campaign against it, rallying their base and decrying its injustice, then once in power make the excuse that, like it or not, Roe was “the law of the land.”
Democrats alike could claim they were personally against abortion, but believed it was up to the woman. Moreover, they didn’t need to vote much on the issue — it was already decided; it was “the law of the land.”
Even Catholic bishops could shirk confrontation, pointing to those politicians’ dodges and excuses, and hiding behind the same. No drastic action needed.
Those days are over, thank God. Over the weekend, San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone sent three letters: one to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, one to the faithful of the archdiocese, and one to the priests. In them, he detailed the difficult decision he’d made to bar the speaker from communion in San Francisco, before repentance and absolution.
The decision, he wrote, came after many years of prayer, and multiple refusals from Pelosi to change her ways or, in the end, even to meet with him. Instead, Pelosi was growing only more vocal in her support for abortion, even citing her Catholic faith as justification and directly challenging Pope Francis on the issue. He didn’t seek to punish; only to guide back to the faith.
The partisan reaction to the archbishop’s decision was quick and vicious. The archbishop’s “chief loyalty is not to Christ,” the editorial staff of The San Francisco Chronicle squealed.

“This is not your job, dude,” Whoopi Goldberg claimed. “That is not up to you to make that decision.”

The fight had finally come to a head, and no one suspected it would be easy. Little, however, could be done to avoid it, save simple cowardice.
That’s because for the politicians, the situation had changed dramatically. Texas’s Senate Bill 8 had successfully banned killing a child with a beating heart, convincing Pelosi and other abortion-supporting politicians to speak out more publicly than they had before.
Next, the leaked Supreme Court draft frightened Democrats into believing the end of Roe and Casey was nigh.

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Life, Isaiah says, is not found in vain self-exaltation. It isn’t found through subjecting the world to our arbitrary whims. It isn’t found by blotting out every remembrance of our fallenness or seeking to indulge every craven lust. Rather, life is found through acknowledging the crushing weight of our rebellion against God and turning to Him in humble faith.

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’ (Isaiah 57:15)
It’s hard to describe the degree to which the worship of self has become a foundational assumption of our age. It is, to borrow the old cliché, simply the “air we breathe.” And it’s a noxious fume at that.
But the kind of self-obsession I am thinking of goes deeper than any one example. It’s more than simply the general priority of self that has been endemic to every sinner throughout the ages. Rather, the kind of self-obsession I am referring to has more to do with our outlook on the world, with how we view the whole hierarchy of existence and our place within it.
Older breeds of self-interest, for instance, certainly preferred the interests of the individual over the interests of others, just as modern self-interest does. The difference, however, lay in the fact that those seeking to advance themselves in former times did so within an objectively established order. Their self-interest, in other words, was subordinated to the constraints of reality, like two ants fighting over the same leaf or two birds with a worm.
Modern self-interest, however, is different from this. It seeks to do away with hierarchy altogether and believes that the scope and priority of the self is unbounded. Thus, whereas previous generations recognized a world outside themselves to which their desires — even their selfish ones — were necessarily subjected, we recognize no such limitations.
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We must realize that while we are still on this fallen earth, suffering and hardships will be our companions. And even as we face the reality of suffering, we can wait expectantly for the day when “No longer there will be any curse” (Rev. 22:3). Until then suffering will exist.

Have you heard someone tell you that your suffering, sickness or financial struggle is a result of a generational curse or a sin you committed which opened the door to the curse? They say, “Maybe you were part of a ritual or an offering to a god as a child, and therefore you are facing the consequences now.” According to them, that curse needs to be found and then broken if you are to be free from its consequences. When such things are put before believers, they are often confused or start to think there could be some truth in this kind of reasoning. As always, a good question to ask as a thumb rule is: What does the Bible say about this?
1.The Curse of Sin. Man was commanded not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and was told that the consequence of disobedience would be that he would surely die (Gen. 2:17). However, Satan lied and convinced Eve (and Adam) to eat the fruit anyway (Gen. 3:4). When the first man Adam sinned and fell into sin, it brought the curse of sin over all humanity. Everyone has been plagued with sin since the fall. Not only was man under the curse of sin, but the whole creation is also groaning under this curse (Rom. 8:19-21). Sin brought in suffering, sickness and death.  All suffering today either directly or indirectly exists therefore because of the fall of man into sin. Therefore, all of creation waits and longs to be rescued from sin (Rom. 8:19-21). This means it is not incorrect to say that we are all affected by the curse which was brought about by sin.
But the question is, do Christians face certain sufferings because of curses incurred by past indiscretions (either of themselves or of their ancestors)?
 2. A New Creation.As we seek to think this through, let’s start with a foundational question: Who is a Christian? A Christian is one who has put their trust in Christ, who has repented of their sins and has understood that apart from Christ there is no other way to be saved, that Christ is the only way. A Christian is one whom God has rescued from sin and death through the suffering and death that Christ endured on the cross.
Paul, writing to Christians in Rome, says “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit”(Rom. 8:1-4 ).
The first Adam brought sin into the world, while the Second Adam (Christ) overcame sin and death at the cross.
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