Sanctity of Human Life Sunday was 2 weeks ago. I have been thinking ALOT about sanctity of human life. Partially because I am currently responsible for mercy and justice issues at our church and partially because I think about this sort of thing all the time anyway, which is likely why I am currently responsible for mercy and justice issues at our church.
During my lengthy post, Half Ideas, I talked about the idea of a spiritual legacy and how you don’t need to give birth to children to leave a legacy in the Kingdom of God. In fact, that correlation is weak at best and heretical at worst. I’ve been thinking further along those lines.
Especially around an election year such as the one we just had, abortion becomes a hot-ticket topic and gets alot of press. For some reason, voting is considered the surest way to get the results you are looking for regarding abortion. Don’t like it? Vote! Think other issues matter too? Oh well! Vote every 4 years and vote pro-life and fulfill your spiritual duty and basically do nothing in between and that’s the solution! After 30+ years of doing that with very little change in the legal realm of the abortion issue, I think Christians especially are starting to ask important questions about how to really solve this problem. This is a very good thing. I myself am asking some questions…
Who is to blame? Who is causing the problem? What is the solution? Who will cause the solution?
Would you believe it… I’ve found some answers! They may not be the answers you were looking for… I can promise you that they weren’t the answers I was looking for! But these things? I KNOW these things to be true.
Who is to blame? Well, it’s me.
Who is the solution? Surprisingly, again, it’s me.
We like to get very hoity-toity about those “horrible” people who would hurt another person or take a life or do something that we consider morally worse than the sins we participate in. We like to tell ourselves, “If I don’t get an abortion, then I’m not the problem here. It’s those people who seek that out… and the professionals who serve them… and the judges who legalize them… BAD people. We should pray for them. And we should make their lives so miserable legally that they can’t resort to being bad anymore and they’ll have to be good… like me.” And we imply that we should pray for them precisely because we believe they are going straight to hell and are not candidates for relationship with God. Because they are bad. Bad, bad, bad. And then we feel good. Good, good, good.
But that is not how it works, because it’s me. ME. Not those people over there who are bad. It’s me who is bad. I’m the problem. I have this hope, this deep abiding hope inside me, that allows me to know that things are not as they should be. I serve a King who is transforming my heart and making all things new and He will eventually do that everywhere! And I sit on this information feeling good, good, good. But that’s the problem. Because everywhere I look, I can see people who hurt. They need hope. Not the verbal “you’d be okay if you were more like me” fake stuff. Hope! Real hope! Proof that Jesus is who He claims to be because they can see it in me when I take off my mask and turn off my facade. Am I comforting the lonely so they don’t feel utterly alone and without support in making huge decisions about pregnancy? Am I mentoring children and displaying the radiant beauty that comes from knowing you are intrinsically valuable because God values you, not because you are trying so hard to be lovable to anyone you can find to accept you? Am I building friendships with women who don’t know what a marriage and a relationship that reflects Jesus looks like so we can learn about that together? Do people receive grace from me? Am I fighting injustice that allows poverty’s death-like grasp on lives all around me and saps the strength and creativity and hope out of all who fall into its grasp? Am I so in tune with the needs that are out there and also with the Source of my hope that I can be the connecting bridge to bring those two together?
No. No, I’m not. People lose hope and I have it and I could offer it and I don’t. Instead, I think self-righteous things like, “You’re bad, I need to be away from you and I need to keep my kids away from you and I’m going to go sequester myself in false safety that makes me feel good because I don’t want to believe that the pain you are in exists. Don’t touch me.” I might not say it out loud. But I say it. I say it with my lack of participation in people. So instead of pointing a finger at a politician or a political party or a clinic or an individual or a desperate mom-to-be or the injustice of poverty, I’ll give you a much more feasible target to aim at… you know, if a target is what you are looking for. It’s me. I’m the problem and I know it. And now you know it.
The craziest thing ever is that I am also the solution! I love being a mom. I really love it. I have alot more mothering to offer… more than I can give to my 2 children. I care and I love and I hurt and I deal and I am a person just like everyone else. Where is all of that going to go? I invest myself into Zach and Rissa and they are very worthy causes! I’m so excited about how they will change the world for the Kingdom of God. They are just about the coolest people I can even imagine and I get to love on them everyday and try to teach them what I know. But there are babies all over dying with no food. I have food. There are orphans with no love. I have love. There are kids with no one to believe in them. I have belief. I have arms for hugs and lips for kisses and tears for sharing hurts. I have feet to go and money to spend and time to share and ears to listen. I’m the solution. No matter which part of the solution I am, I am part of it. And that part is missing without me. Some will adopt. Some will provide foster homes. Some will mentor. Some will be a safe haven for people who need one. Some will pray. Some will give money. Some will say, “I’ll live like you do because we are the same. We are equal and I love you and I won’t let anything happen to you that I wouldn’t let happen to me. Let’s do this together.” I don’t yet know what my exact part of the solution will be, but I can help if I’m willing.
I can’t really vote away the results of my own stubborn refusal to love and to care. So many Christians pray that God will remove abortion and it will just disappear. Let’s say that happens! Poof, it’s gone. Now what? We win? No! If that were to happen, our work would begin. There are millions of children to raise and love and millions of moms to support and millions of godly men needed to be father figures. Rather than just praying that God will change other people’s hearts, I mostly pray that He will change mine. So that I’ll stop being the problem and I’ll start becoming the solution. Because it’s me.
As a sidenote, if you haven’t yet seen Bella, it was one of the best films I have ever seen. It deals with much of this and I give it my highest recommendation.
Great post – thanks for putting it all out there. And I think your attitude is one we could all adopt; the problem is ME. When we stop looking (yearning, hoping, grasping, longing) for other people to solve problems and start accepting some of the responsibility ourselves, I think we have put at least one foot on the path of progress. Maybe even two feet. =)
I have had bad “evangelical/apologetic” experiences where I tried to convince someone that they were wrong. How in the world did I ever think that would show the love of Christ? Saying it with my mouth while slapping the person with my hand only proves that I am good at hypocrisy. And I think the world has been hammered over the head enough with Christian hypocrisy.
So, yes, I am looking forward to the great, elusive “Time for a Change.” And instead of waiting for someone else to make the change happen, I’ll make my cautious way down the big mountain of ME.
Jaime,
This is just so true. I’ve been talking about these things with a lot of my friends. There’s no use blaming a problem that we by voting have never eradicated. It takes a bigger picture. God never instructed us to judge the wicked things in this world. In fact, he told us it was His job, not ours. He did though instruct us to “care for the least of these”.
Love it,
Nick
An amazing post as always, Jaime! Internet Monk just did a post that touches on many of the same ideas.
i agree, and this is a truism beyond abortion but in all realms of sin.
My sr. year of college i had this revelation and at that time it meant that as a guy, my hypocrisy and sin was evident in attitudes and actions that objectified women, even if only in thought or rather “innocent” things. It was one of the sins of the heart that is at play in the tragedy of abortion.
Now, it looks more like: my role is to have a family that displays the things you talked about. raising kids well, loving my wife. valuing kids and not being afraid to have them. displaying this to others and encouraging them. not being afraid of what the world will say.
These aren’t “solutions” to the abortion problem, like reaching out to the poor, etc… some things you named. But they’re what the ME response is, how I pursue the Lord in that area of my personal share of the collective guilt.
President Obama’s election is a glorious opportunity to stand firm and learn courage– just the simple courage of walking into a mall with your entire family if you number more than 4, or speaking up when co-workers chastise the reproductive “choices” of those who have too many kids. Let’s not resent them when they come– it’s God’s work.
The Theologian Martin Buber in his landmark treatise “I and Thou” makes the point that God exists in the interconnections between people. It is through isolation that evil is able to manifest in the world. Isolating yourself from those you see as bad creates a space in which evil can exist. Through connections to your fellow human beings, even if there actions are judged to be bad by you, God is there in the connection you share. You both can see one another as alike despite differences in behavior, making the ability of evil to impact either of you less. Buber’s work was instrumental in the formulation of Vatican II, and underlies the Catholic Church’s dedication to outreach to people of all faiths and no faiths at all, not for prostilitizing but because it makes the world better for everyone.