When my parents were still living in Shreveport in 1935, they began talking together about having a baby. Mom made an appointment with a family physician, Doctor Rigby, and after the examination he gave her discouraging news. He told her that because of her bone structure, she shouldn’t try to become a mother. He warned her she could die in delivery.
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but my mother and father accepted the advice of Doctor Rigby. Months later, however, Dad told her he had been in prayer about their inability to have a child, and that the Lord had assured him they would have a baby… a son. I still have her written description of that conversation with my dad. She recalled, “I learned that when Jimmy said the Lord had spoken to him, he turned out to be right.”
If my dad’s words appear naïve and presumptuous today, you have to know something about his prayer life. Because he knew he was unprepared for the ministry, he prayed continually. It would be a lifelong pattern. On some days, he spent three to five hours alone with God. Dad was known in Sulphur Springs as the man with no leather on the toes of his shoes. He spent so much time on his knees that he wore out the toes before the soles. The Lord honored him and led him through his challenges and trials.
My mother soon became pregnant and I was delivered by Caesarian section on April 21, 1936. She suffered no complications and I was very healthy. Nevertheless, C-sections were dangerous procedures then and penicillin to prevent infections hadn’t been invented. My mother was warned again by Doctor Rigby not to have another baby. His advice was even more emphatic than it had been the first time. Today C-sections are done by lateral incisions to avoid weakening the uterus. When I was delivered, however, the incision was made vertically, and subsequent deliveries could be fatal. This is why I was an only child.
Some people think “only children” are likely to be spoiled. To them I say, “Look at how great I turned out.” (I hope you can see me smiling.) My mother and father loved me dearly. She had a remarkable knowledge of children and their care. She never took a class or read a book about mothering, but she had an intuitive understanding of the job. She also had a good support team around her, and she was a fast learner. In those days, the fundamentals of child rearing were taught to new moms by their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, friends, neighbors, and church ladies. In today’s world, however, families are often separated geographically, and even if they live nearby, women are likely to be employed outside the home. They just don’t have the time to advise the newcomers. Full-time moms are busy, too. They provide daily taxi service for their kids and struggle to maintain harried households. New moms are typically on their own.
Many years later I dedicated my first book for parents to my mother because she had earned it. It was called Dare to Discipline and incorporated many of the concepts and techniques I learned at her knee. Myrtle Dobson was a very bright and compassionate lady. My father and I also had a wonderful relationship. Indeed, I was a fortunate little boy.
We lived in a very small apartment that had only one bedroom, and my crib was positioned near my parents’ bed. There was no other place to put it. My dad told me later that when I was two years old, it was not unusual for him to be wakened in the middle of the night by a small voice spoken just above a whisper,
“Daddy. Daddy.”
He would answer, “What, Jimmy?”
I would then say, “Hold my hand.”
My dad would sweep the darkness in search of my little hand, and the moment he engulfed it in his own, my arm would become limp and my breathing deep and rhythmical. I had gone back to sleep. I only wanted to know that he was there. He was always there for me until the day of his death.
I was raised in the church, and what I learned there was deeply ingrained in my mind. I grew up in a devout home where I learned to pray before I learned to talk. That was because I imitated the sounds of my parents’ prayers before I knew the meaning of their words.
One Sunday night when I was four years of age, I was sitting by my mother at the back of the church on the right side. I remember the events of that evening as though they happened yesterday. Dad preached the sermon and then asked if there were people in the congregation who would like to come forward and give their hearts to the Lord. Many of them immediately began stepping into the aisle and going to the altar to pray. Without asking my mother, I joined them and knelt on the right side of the church. I remember crying and asking Jesus to forgive me and make me His child. Then I felt a big hand on my shoulder. My father had come down from the platform and knelt beside me to pray. My mother was also praying behind me. I wept like the baby I was.
Don’t tell me that a small child is incapable of giving himself or herself to Christ. I know better. What I did on that night was not coerced or manipulated. It was my choice and I remember feeling so clean. After the service, my parents went to visit some members and left me in the car. I sat there thinking about what I had done and wondering about the meaning of it all. It had been a dramatic experience and I wanted to understand it. What occurred that evening turned out to be the highlight of my life. I sometimes say with a smile that everything since then has been downhill. It’s a scary thing to experience the most significant moments of your life when you are four years of age.
I haven’t lived a perfect life and am endowed by a generous assortment of flaws, but I have tried to please the Lord from that time to this. My experience at the altar had a profound impact on me. The boxes of memorabilia that I mentioned earlier contained a note written by my mother shortly after I had asked Jesus for forgiveness. She said I was very serious about it. A few weeks later, I fell and hurt my hand badly. I wailed, prompting my mother to suggest, “Why don’t you pray and ask Jesus to take away the pain.” I did, but then continued to cry.
Mom said, “Well, what did Jesus tell you?”
I said, “He told me He was busy watering the flowers and trees, but He would help me when he had time.”
It made sense to me. My theology was a little confused, but the basic idea was right. I have called on the Lord many times since, often in utter desperation. On some occasions my prayers were answered the way I wanted. At other times He seemed to say, “Not now,” or “No,” or simply “Wait.” This third reply is the most difficult to accept.
Back to our theme: H. B. London and I are first cousins (our mothers were sisters) and we were the first members of the fourth generation to reach young adulthood since “the promise” was given to our great-grandfather. We were both “only children” and grew up like brothers. We were roommates in college and during the first semester of our sophomore year, he announced that God had called him to be a minister. The news made me nervous because I realized I was the first member of four generations of my family who hadn’t felt led into the ministry.
H.B. was ordained after graduating from seminary and served as a pastor for thirty-two years. He was also a “pastor to pastors” at Focus on the Family for twenty more, and spoke in more than one hundred denominations. He is semi-retired now and is finishing up his career again as an associate pastor and speaker.
I was marching to a different drum. I never heard the call that all of my relatives on my mother’s side of the family experienced. After finishing college, I was accepted into graduate school at the University of Southern California. Seven years later, I finished a Ph.D. in child development and research design, and was offered a position on the medical staff of Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. I served there in the divisions of child development and medical genetics for seventeen years. For fourteen of those years, I was also a professor of pediatrics at USC School of Medicine. Those assignments prepared me for what was to come.
As much as I enjoyed academia, I became increasingly concerned about the institution of the family, which was starting to unravel. In fact, that was on my mind when I was in college. I was on my way to a tennis tournament one day when I was in my third year. The wife of one of my team members was in the car and she recalls how I spoke that day about the weakness of the American family, and said we needed to do what we could to strengthen it. I was twenty-one years old and the path I would take thereafter was beginning to come together. The year was 1957.
The culture was to deteriorate dramatically in the next decade. The social upheaval of the 1960s wreaked havoc on traditional values and was aimed squarely at the institution of the family. Without sounding like a self-appointed prophet, I saw clearly then and in the early seventies where the nation was headed. I anticipated the collapse of marriage, the murder of millions of preborn babies, and the abandonment of biblical morals. As always, my father had the greatest influence on my values and beliefs during this cultural revolution.
In graduate school during the late 1960s, the academic world began moving toward the legalization of abortion. Some of my professors were emphatic about it and they served to confuse me. I didn’t understand the full implications of the issue, but I was irritated by the racist tone of these teachers. It is difficult to believe today what some of them actually said. One of them spoke for the others: “You know, so many inner-city children [meaning blacks] are being raised in squalid circumstances. Most of them don’t have fathers, and their mothers are often on drugs. These kids are growing up on the streets in violent gangs and have no adult supervision.” (Here comes the punch line.) “Frankly, it would be better if these babies were not allowed to be born.” I know now that they were reflecting the racist views of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
After hearing these comments the first time, I repeated them during dinner to my parents that evening. I remember so vividly my father being alarmed and angered by what the professors had said. He came off his chair and said, “Don’t believe it, Jim. Please don’t believe it for a moment. It is wrong and it is evil.” Big tears welled in his eyes and streamed down his face when he said, “I will never cast a single vote for any politician who would kill one innocent baby.” That phrase stayed with me and I have repeated it many times since.1
On this occasion and on many others, Dad was a beacon for me—a moral compass—that influenced my early professional life and steered me toward the principles of righteousness. Who knows how my value system would have evolved without this godly father who guided me into my adult years.
Those were also years of dramatic change for me. I met Shirley, who became my college sweetheart. We dated for three years before marrying on August 27, 1960. Shirley wanted to finish college and I was determined to be well into graduate school before taking on the responsibility of a wife and family. Noted Christian psychologist Dr. Clyde Narramore had advised me not to marry too quickly if I intended to get a Ph.D., which he strongly recommended I pursue. Five years passed before our daughter, Danae, came along. By then, I was only two years from completing my degree.
When I graduated in 1967, we began trying unsuccessfully to conceive another child. Shirley underwent treatment for infertility, but it also failed. It was a time of constant disappointment, but at least we had one child. Couples that have “empty arms” hear bad news month after month. Their travail is like the agonizing death of a dream. My heart goes out to them.
Finally, Shirley and I decided to adopt a baby. We applied at a Christian agency, and four months later we received a call from a social worker saying, “Your baby is here.”
We learned that a seventeen-year-old girl whom we have never met became pregnant out of wedlock, and she decided to carry the child to term. She allowed her baby to be adopted, and we were chosen by the agency to have that privilege. A beautiful little boy was handed gently to Shirley. The prayers of many years were answered on that day! We will be eternally grateful to the wonderful biological mother, whoever she is, that experienced the discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth in order to give life to our son, Ryan. Would you understand if I told you I have tears in my eyes as I write?
I grasped the full measure of my father’s passion about the sanctity of human life and began trying to tell others about it. Babies are not “a blob of tissue” or “meaningless protoplasm,” or “the products of conception,” as the proponents of abortion told the American people. It was an insidious lie! Babies are creations of God who have eternal souls. I will be their advocate for the rest of my life.
Three years after Ryan was born, I was driving home from USC and listening to the radio. It was January 22, 1973, and a reporter announced, as best I recall, “The U.S. Supreme Court just issued a ruling on a case called Roe v. Wade.2 3 It legalized abortion on demand for any reason or no reason throughout nine months of pregnancy.” I was deeply disturbed because I knew it would result in millions of tiny lives being lost. Even more dismaying was the lack of response from some of my Christian friends. My pastor, who I loved, didn’t even mention the tragedy the next Sunday morning, nor did many other ministers and educators. Perhaps they agreed with my professor who said, “You know, it would be better…”
In thinking about that era now, I remember seeing a newsreel of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historic speech to Congress made the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when he said, “December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy…”4 Though President Richard Nixon gave no speeches the day after January 22, 1973, it was also a date that will live in infamy. As I write today, almost 60 million babies have been put to death because of the decision made by seven imperious Justices. They are also dead now, and we should remember their names “in infamy.” They are Justices Burger, Powell, Brennan, Marshall, Douglas, Stewart, and Blackmun. Only Justices White and Rehnquist dissented. The hands of the others are stained with the blood of millions of babies.5
Many of my Protestant brothers and sisters continued to miss the significance of the Roe v. Wade ruling. I’m not a Catholic, but I am grateful that their hierarchy did “get it.” They spoke up fervently for life almost from the beginning. Even to this day, the Catholic community continues to carry the banner for unborn life. I am pleased to say that Protestants now appear to be awakening to the cause. Together, we are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. Nevertheless, a million babies die every year from “abortion on demand.” Life News recently reported that 1.7 billion babies have been aborted worldwide since 1973.6
I spoke at the March for Life event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on the forty-first anniversary of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 2014.7 It was one of the coldest days of the year, as an icy wind swept the city. I was introduced by my son, Ryan, who is also a passionate defender of life. Then I walked to the podium and said a few words before offering the closing prayer. I was so cold on that below-zero day that my mouth hardly worked. As I looked out on that frozen crowd of sixty thousand people, I was gratified to see that most of the marchers were teens and young adults. They were applauding and cheering wildly for the Sanctity of Human Life. There is hope for America’s future!
My purpose in sharing this brief history is not to boast but to show the linkage between my life’s work and the early prophecy of my great-grandfather. Though I am not a minister, my ultimate objective has been to introduce people to Jesus Christ and to do it through the institution of the family. When I consider the call to preach responded to by every other member of my family, from my great-grandfather to H. B. London, I am inclined to wonder, “What’s the difference in my case?” I rather think there is none.
And by the way, our son Ryan is an ordained minister in the Southern Baptist denomination and our daughter Danae is a speaker and writer in the service of Jesus Christ. They represent the fifth generation, and George Washington McCluskey must be smiling at us from heaven.