(Or Abortion vs. Cecil the Lion)
Jesus literally lived life between two worlds.
He lived life between two kingdoms.
And he lived life between two cultures.
If you’re at all familiar with the way he drifted between these kingdoms and cultures, you’ll know that he often simultaneously upset both sides. He challenged cultural standards (ex: his interaction with women, tax-gatherers, and drunkards); he challenged humanity’s standards (ex: the Sermon on the Mount); he simultaneously fulfilled the law and ended it. I could go on, but let’s just agree that he was counterculture, and he was a revolutionary. Neither of which tend to please the mainstream, and historically, neither of whose stories tended to end well.
I say this because before I share my thoughts I want to draw our attention back to the foundational principle that as Christians we are to be imitators of Christ. The political climate of Jesus’ day was vastly different from our own. To apply modern labels such as “conservative” or “liberal” to a person living in the Ancient Near East 2000 years ago is misguided to say the least. Christ never took the hardline conservative approach of the presiding Jewish elite, in fact to them he would have been perceived as a lefty, socialist. Neither was he ambivalent toward the subjects of holiness and morality, whilst emphasising a call for justice to the poor, the oppressed, and the immigrant.
Jesus modeled a third way; an alternative to picking and choosing between the left and right.
And this meant that he rarely pleased anyone.
Today’s Christians are not especially known for imitating this particular Way of Christ. Judging from what’s trending on Facebook & Twitter, Christians on the right and the left have their feet firmly planted in those respective camps. Indeed, Christians on both sides tend to use rhetoric that pleases their side and enrages the opposition. I wonder… if we’re imitating Christ, where are we planting our feet? Or maybe a more pointed question: what version of Christ are we imitating?
It’s a tricky thing to try and discern where Jesus - whose historical accounts in the Bible are cast against the backdrop of a 1st-century Jewish culture - would’ve stood on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, watching TV, driving cars, listening to rock music, contraception, genetic engineering or Cecil the Lion. All of these modern realities lack explicit biblical commands, and therefore require us to make reasoned, moral judgements based on the ethical principles Jesus taught.
I won’t say that this is the first of a series of blogs on some of the social and political issues that fill our social media feeds, but it might be.
Cecil the lion has obviously been at the forefront of everyone’s agenda recently...and not principally for the protection of animals. The callous circumstances surrounding his murder have been exploited in order to shame those crying out for justice so that they will see how much greater other injustices around us are...the injustices that no one seems to be flooding social media about.
Abortion has been the vanguard of this alleged imbalance of values and ethics. The cry that human life matters more than a lion’s is the platform on which pro-life advocates are restating their positions on the value of human life. And for the record, I agree that the life of a person, born or unborn, is more valuable than that of a lion.
But we’ve been having the ‘abortion’ conversation for more than 30 years now, and very little has changed in the arguments or positions on either side, and if we’re honest, there’s been precious little progress in either direction.
One of the primary problems that both sides are guilty of is that, like most things that we advocate for or condemn, we have dehumanised what we’re talking about and reduced it to an issue; a black or white, right or wrong, moral or immoral issue that can be contained, quantified and legislated.
The mission of God has a church (that’s us!). We’re called to advance the kingdom in every way we possibly can, and that often means thinking outside the box… thinking counter-culturally… thinking like a revolutionary. (Uh-oh)
When we dehumanise the topics that we’re discussing, and reduce them to issues - issues of right & wrong, black & white, moral & immoral - we often jettison the very values and ethics that Jesus emphasised and modeled for us to imitate.
Making abortion illegal and claiming that as a victory is not only an incredibly hollow achievement, it’s an impractical solution. It’s short-sighted and woefully naive as well. Surely no one really believes that outlawing the legal practice of abortion means the end of abortion, do they? And isn’t that the point; to preserve unborn lives? Would pro-life advocates sleep better at night because legal abortions were no longer happening, even though illegal ones still were? If the U.S. government were to make owning guns illegal, would that solve the problem of gun violence? The rhetoric by supporters of the 2nd Amendment suggests that gun violence would continue.
In order to end a practice, one cannot simply make the practice illegal - one must go deeper into the fractured system - where it’s messy and complex - and deal with the all encompassing breadth of the matter. This is typically where people don’t want to go. It’s dirty and sweaty and it smells… b/c there are people there. Real people. Sure, it would be easier just to pass legislation, never engage the humanity of a problem, and call it a day, “We sure showed those pagans!”
But God’s church is called to something more.
And there’s a whole world that needs to see more from us.
Because we are so polarised on this issue, any chance of open, civil discourse has been lost. It is a conversation that rapidly disintegrates into judgement and shouting and personal attack (on both sides). One side is imposing a moral ethic that the other does not share, and the other has dehumanised the topic altogether so it has been reduced to a matter of rights and entitlement. As the church - the third Way - we can uphold the morality and value of human life, while at the same time challenging that ‘life’ extends beyond the womb.
Are pro-life advocates prepared to adopt or foster children that otherwise would have been aborted?
There are currently 397,000 children in the foster care system in the U.S. According to the most recent data, 20% of children in the U.S. had no breakfast this morning, and will go to bed without dinner. Theses are not fetuses. These are living breathing children, and they are malnourished.
We’re not dealing with a simple issue of right and wrong here. We’re dealing with systemic evil; a broken system that no legal victory is going to change.
If the pro-life movement really wants to end abortion they need to be willing to look at hard things like poverty, access to affordable healthcare, reasonable living wages, etc.
This is what the world sees as the pro-life agenda: They want women to be forced to give birth to a child, but are completely unwilling to make sure that child and the mother have the things they need to survive. In the current discussion, if one defends the pre-born they’re “pro-life” but if one defends the post-born, they’re a socialist.
As Christians we’re sending mixed-messages… messages that aren’t compatible with the teachings of Jesus. We seem to care more about the pre-born than the post-born, and this makes us pro-birth, not pro-life. Millions of Americans are stuck in an inescapable life of poverty because their living wages are insufficient to provide basic needs such as food and affordable housing.
I recently read that according to the Low Income Housing Coalition, the best case scenario for minimum wage workers can be found in Arkansas and West Virginia, where one would only need to work 63 hours a week at minimum wage in order to rent a two bedroom apartment at fair market value. Live in New York? You're looking at working 136 hours a week in order to pay just for housing. It's impossible to say that we are legitimately in favour of "LIFE" when millions of people are unable to afford basic housing regardless of how hard they work.
We must be honest about what we mean when we say ‘pro-life.’
If you’re saying, “I care about you when you’re in the womb, but the moment you’re outside the womb you’re on your own!”
If you’re saying, “I value pre-born life, but once you’re post-born I don’t want my taxes paying for your food, housing or healthcare.”
If you’re saying, “It’s my theological mandate to ensure that you are protected in the womb and brought into this world, but I’m not concerned about whether or not your mother is able to provide food and a home for you; I’m not concerned whether or not you end up in the foster care system because your mother was unable to care for you.”
If these are true about your current position on the abortion issue, then you are not pro-life - you’re pro-birth… or at least only pro-one stage of life.
You’re not wholly and completely pro-life.
You’re not ‘pro’ the life that Jesus said he came to bring - “abundant life.”
If we really want to see progress on the abortion front, then we must reframe the discussion entirely.
We must restore the humanity to what we’re referring to as “life.”
We must begin to value the life of the post-born as much as we value the life of the unborn.
And as imitators of Christ this actually makes our job easier. The only model we have to imitate is how he cared for the post-born: the widow, the orphan, the leper, the immigrant, the oppressed, the marginalised, the blind, the afflicted, and the poor.
If we fail to engage the abortion crisis from a holistic human level, then we will find ourselves in the same place that we’ve been for 30 years.
The conservative, religious right doesn’t have the answer - despite their theological death grip on traditional family values.
The liberal, progressive left doesn’t have the answer - despite their commitments to personal freedoms and social justice.
The answer lies in a third Way: Christ’s Way - Christ’s Truth - Christ’s LIFE.
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