Why "Pro-Life" is Killing the Church

Before I get started, let me explain that the title of this blog post is controversial only to the point to get you to actually read this.  It does not insinuate that I think that the church should be in favor of abortion or even that I am in favor of abortion myself; I would, in fact, argue against both the former and latter. All that this title is doing is providing a bold enough statement to at least pique your interest. Call it a marketing technique.

Also, before I get started, let me acknowledge that it is not in my nature to be political, and anybody who knows me well would likely agree with me; hence, before I begin, I want to recognize how uneducated I may be in this particular field that I may limit any condescension or audaciousness that may be unintentionally communicated through my writing.  It is not my intention to take a political stance or even be harshly critical of a political stance as much as it is to evaluate those that currently exist from my own relatively non-political point of view.  On that note, let me start a non-political discussion about an extremely political topic.

Abortion is a hot topic nowadays, especially within the church.  It has come to be today the divisive power in today's society (both religious and secular) that the theories of Galileo and Darwin were to the churches of their respective times even to the point that some Christians have now come to centralize their entire political decisions around this issue in hope that an immense evil may be overcome, which is neither inherently ignorant nor noble of them, in my opinion.  It is treated as an absolute in many Christian circles, as if to say that God himself has willed the church to lead a crusade against the very killers of unborn children.  For all I know, maybe God has.  After all, I am not God, and I would be foolish to openly discard the will of God.  Abortion itself, though, from my point of view, has created ambiguity within two realms, morality and legality, and, as a political issue, should be viewed in light of each.  One would also have to note that morality and legality do not necessarily exist in a purely cause-and-effect relationship; surely what is illegal could be considered immoral if only for the fact that it is indeed against the law, but what is immoral certainly cannot be inherently illegal.  Morality is too undefined and arbitrary to be the basis for law.  For instance, insulting your boss behind his or her back can be considered immoral, but it is not illegal.  Thus, regarding abortion, it would appear that four stances exist:

1. Abortion is morally acceptable and should be legal.
2. Abortion is morally acceptable but should be illegal.
3. Abortion is immoral but should be legal.
4. Abortion is immoral and should be illegal.

Traditionally, stance number one would be considered the "pro-choice" stance, and stance number four would be considered the "pro-life" stance, although we cannot ignore the fact that there exist people who side with stances two and three.  Again, though, this is a non-political discussion, so I want to avoid systematically analyzing the validity of each argument as if to determine the most logical choice; I would consider such an endeavor to be futile, and I do not envision that it would do much good.  I will, though, take a moment to examine stance number four, which, generally speaking, would likely be the stance that most Christians would take, the "pro-life" stance.

As a whole, the church is pretty vocal about its allegiance with the "pro-life" movement, and I do believe that the church ought to be this adamant about the value and sanctity of human life.  I would say, then, that the church's shortcomings in approaching this topic are not in its intentions; however, the church needs to ask itself two questions when dealing with political issues like this:

1. What are our goals in taking a political stance in the way that we have?
2. What have we accomplished in taking a political stance in the way that we have?

The church's goals in being pro-life are anywhere from far-fetched to unclear, as far as I can see.  Specifically, many Christians fail in communicating whether they wish to see a social change in the morality of abortion or rather a legislative change in the legality of abortion; some strive to raise awareness within the public in order to bring about personal conviction and repentance in individuals, yet others strive to make their voices heard by the legislative powers of our nation that by under law, no fetus may ever again be killed.  I am in no place to say which is the wiser course of action, but I can say that it is hard to get anything done when we cannot agree on what we want done; hence, the church ought to be more intentional and articulate of its goals because if it is not careful, then either the church can get caught determining law, or the government can get caught determining morality.  Either would be a difficult line to walk for this already unstable country.

As I mentioned earlier, the church also needs to evaluate what it has accomplished in its various courses of action regarding this issue.  I think that it is safe to say that the church has successfully declared to the masses its opinion about the immorality of abortion, and I would also say that that is a good first step; however, politically speaking, the greatest victory the church can even attempt to claim is electing a president who opposes abortion (although the church can hardly assume responsibility for winning an election for any candidate) but who also fails to emulate Christian values and morals in perhaps every other aspect of his political platform.  This is why I want to further examine the church's accomplishments from a non-political perspective.  After all, I'm sure I know what you're thinking right about now: even though I said this would not be political, it has been nothing but political so far (not to mention that I have yet to offer an answer as to why "pro-life" is killing the church).  Let me offer you this: the church is not "pro-life" but rather has become what I will call "anti-abortion," and that is where the problem lies.  Let me explain.

As I mentioned earlier, abortion is often treated as an absolute in many Christian circles.  "I am a Christian, so that means that I must be against abortion."  While the argument for Christians to be pro-choice in good conscience is albeit a weak one, the danger of approaching any topic in this manner cannot be ignored.  Consider the following statements that subconsciously ruled church thought for centuries:

"I am a Christian, so that means that the earth has to be the center of the universe."

"I am a Christian, so that means that God wants me to slaughter hundreds of Muslims to reclaim the Holy Land."

"I am a Christian, so that means that the earth has to have been created in seven days." (I do not mean to open up a can of worms here; I only want to demonstrate a point.)

Yes, I understand that comparing the Crusades to abortion is a sure apples-and-oranges scenario, and I also understand that I may be unintentionally insinuating that the church's current stance on abortion could eventually turn out to be foolish hundreds of years from now.  That is hardly my intention.  Know that all I really mean to say is that when we create a Christian political stance that must be inherited from generation to generation without explanation, consideration, or contemplation, we create closed-minded Christian soldiers who have no regard for the opposition and are unwilling to be open to even the slightest deviation from their beliefs, whether abortion-related or not.  When we create a Christian political stance on abortion that implies that its state of immorality unquestionably ought to lead to its state of illegality, we create a generation of Christians in a post-Christian world that is unable to think for itself about how it can incorporate its faith into politics.  Talk about trying to pick the lesser of two evils.

This is why "anti-abortion" is different from "pro-life."  "Anti-abortion" creates enemies over one subject that inevitably causes them to be hostile towards one another in regards to most every other subject out of pride, arrogance, and the refusal to be wrong.  "Anti-abortion" can only be communicated through argumentation and condescension and forces its followers to become the very evil they claim to oppose.  After all, which is worse: to kill innocent children or to pompously condemn the killers of innocent children?  (Look up Matthew 5:21-22.)  Neither is more or less admirable than the other, and neither is necessary.

So then, what has the church accomplished through its "anti-abortion" stance?  Probably not much that the church is called to do.  Has it given glory to God, or has it reduced God to a code of ethics?  Has it evangelized to the lost, or has it communicated hopelessness and bigotry?  Has it in any way demonstrated a worshipful or loving attitude that proves that we Christians are seeking the Kingdom first and not striving for the same political power and influence that led to hundreds of years' worth of corrupt popes and hypocritical church leadership?  "Pro-life" becomes "anti-abortion" when its followers are in favor of the lives of the unborn at the expense of understanding and appreciating the lives of the living.  Is there not room to care for both in our conglomeration of faith and politics?

Perhaps, then, the title of this post is misleading.  Perhaps "pro-life" is not killing the church but, on the other hand, could be an antidote that cures decades of accusation, victimization, and debate.  Maybe if the church adopted a "pro-life" stance that gave the millions of people affected by abortion no reason to feel marginalized and unwelcome within the church, the world would realize that the church is not merely throwing piety in its face when advocating for the banishment of abortion but is rather trying to love because Christ first loved us.  Funny, I swear that I read that somewhere.

Undoubtedly, disagreement is always going to exist in this world between any and all peoples who come from different cultures, upbringings, and environments, and it will always be difficult to manage disagreements in various areas of life without causing chaos and hatred between different peoples.  Therefore, peace cannot and will not be achieved as the byproduct of the absence of conflict but rather will be embraced when we learn how to overcome our dualistic tendencies to yield the potentialities of coexistence and cooperation.  This goes for all issues, not merely abortion.  The only way that the church can have a reasonable voice in politics is if it, in a way, stops trying to.  It needs to learn to exist through disagreement and redefine both what powerlessness is and how crippling powerlessness in politics does not have to be.  After all, Jesus does not call the church to a life of legal reform but rather to a life that gives glory to him and demonstrates love for others, and it is imperative that it does not forget that.

So then, what should the church do to move forward?  For one, I am not suggesting that the church abandon the "pro-life" stance or even that it diminish its passion for preventing the deaths of countless unborn children.  On the contrary, I do believe that a Christian care for humanity supports that cause and that Christians ought to be the forerunners in supporting that cause.  We cannot, however, forget who we are.  We are not standers upon soap boxes declaring to the world the need for repentance.  We are not spewers of judgment upon those we deem as wrongdoers.  In short, we are not saviors, but, thankfully, we know who is, and it is our duty to make that savior known all the more.

Joe Pesci, Dr. Suess, and Ernest Hemingway

In a talkative world, something that often goes misunderstood is that few words are needed to sufficiently send a message. Surely a lengthy blog post is an ironic and maybe even inappropriate forum to express such a notion, but there undoubtedly are times, especially for somebody as soft-spoken as I am, when an overflow of words is not necessary to adequately bring about a point, regardless of the profundity of said point. For instance, Joe Pesci, when accepting his Oscar for his performance in the movie Goodfellas, stepped up to the microphone and said to the enormous crowd in front of him and to the countless viewers at home, "It's my privilege. Thank you," and walked away without a second thought. He said all that needed to be said in that moment and nothing more, but, on the one hand, perhaps Pesci only couldn't go more than five words without saying something that couldn't be displayed on national television, so maybe that's a bad example of this idea. Consider this, then: a children's author was once bet fifty dollars by a friend to compose a children's book using no more than fifty unique words. That author, named Theodore Geisel (better known as Dr. Suess), accepted that challenge, and the result was what has come to be known as Green Eggs and Ham. Even though Dr. Suess never claimed his winnings from his friend, the success of the book surely made up for it. Similarly, there was once a challenge between writers of the early 1900s, the most famous of which was Ernest Hemingway. The story of this challenge tells that Hemingway once bet a table of his peers at a lunch ten dollars each that he could compose an entire story in only six words. Once his companions agreed to his terms, he continued to grab a napkin from the table, upon which he wrote, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." After the napkin was passed around the table, Hemingway collected his winnings from each member of the party.

All three of these stories certainly support the notion that even only a few words can speak just as well as (if not better than) paragraphs. Pesci got his brief point across while evading unnecessary (and probably unwanted) pleasantries and formalities. Dr. Suess created something historically creative while utilizing the beauty of simplicity. Hemingway spoke to the innermost emotions of all people capable of demonstrating empathy using only what was necessary and letting the human heart fill in the rest. These instances demonstrate how unneeded words are in certain scenarios, and this is the principle upon which I want to fixate for a while. On that note, let me transition (maybe a little awkwardly) from Joe Pesci, Dr. Suess, and Ernest Hemingway to the author of the Gospel of John.

John 11:35 is famous, frankly, only for being the shortest verse in our Bible. That's all that most people know about it, but certainly people cannot be blamed for not being able to expand upon a verse that only reads, "Jesus wept." It's hard to reach profound conclusions from a mere two words (three words in the original Greek). However, as was true with Joe Pesci, Dr. Suess, and Ernest Hemingway, these few words pack a punch stronger than what may appear on the surface.

For those of you unfamiliar with the passage, John 11 is the famous story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Verse 35 tells of Jesus approaching the tomb of his dear friend and, after encountering the deceased's mourning sisters and colleagues, weeping amid the gloomy circumstances out of love for those affected. That's basically it. Again, there's not really that much going on in this particular verse, but hang with me. Jesus' actions in this one verse reveal so much about his innermost being as God and as a human, and it models how we should strive to behave as godly humans.

To examine what this verse reveals about Jesus' character, one must ask two questions. Firstly, one must ask why Jesus wept. It's clear, though, that Jesus wept because of his love for the other characters of this narrative; he was heartbroken because he experienced the pain and suffering of those dear to him along with them. Even though he consciously reigned supreme over the situation and had a plan of healing in mind and under control, he still bothered to take the time to observe the imminent heartbreak in that moment in communion with those co-witnessing it. Secondly, one must ask what Jesus didn't do. I understand that there are essentially an infinite number of possible answers to this question, so consider instead what Jesus didn't do that you, I, or anybody we know would've done. For instance, Jesus didn't point the blame elsewhere and defend himself against those who pleaded, "If you had been here, [Lazarus] would not have died" (v. 21, 32). He didn't immediately search for a solution to the present problem, even though he, the almighty God of the universe, certainly had the resources to do so. He also didn't remove himself from the moment and impersonalize the situation by taking the principles at play at that particular moment and applying them to all issues of similar nature throughout the world, thus creating an unnecessary (and probably unwanted) political statement through an event that required nothing more than his compassion. For instance, Jesus didn't come to Bethany, Lazarus' home, to use the effects of Lazarus' sickness as fuel to start a movement against the inadequacies of the medicine of that time, using the hashtag #PrayForBethany. One should notice that Jesus didn't even respond with words, and John similarly recorded the event as simply and bluntly as Jesus lived it; both Jesus and John understood that the situation did not require a speech.

Moreover, one has to conclude that this kind of mindset has to be God's nature still today. Hence, to fully know God, it is imperative to know that even to this day, he responds to pain by weeping. Our sufferings truly do break the heart of God, and if that doesn't communicate to you the incarnational, compassionate, humble nature of our God, then you sadly misunderstand the magnitude of the Gospel. God doesn't weep out of pity; he weeps because he became a human and thus experiences our sufferings alongside us. Just as Jesus wept for his friends whom he loved and who experienced the death of their loved one, Jesus now weeps with us, his friends whom he loves, when we undergo the troubles of life. Jesus wept, and now we can know for certain that we have ultimate communion with our God of love. That should bring us hope.

Just as it brings us hope, though, it should present us with the responsibility to do likewise, as is true with much of Jesus' ministry. We should observe Jesus weeping and similarly strive to weep for what makes him weep. We should respond to the pain of others by mourning with the mourners not because we feel sorry for those in a worse condition than ours but rather because we, too, truly feel the heartbreak that has consumed them. Just as the divine descended from on high to join in the suffering of humanity, we ought to humiliate ourselves to co-experience the pain of others before frantically attempting to right all of this world's wrongs, for fixing what we see as broken without first sharing in the brokenness is truly one of the most impersonal, selfish deeds we, as Christians, can perform to the world in which we live. When we first jump to a solution without observing and absorbing the problem, all we do is point fingers and voice our unnecessary (and probably unwanted) opinions at the expense of those in need of nothing more than compassion. Jesus wept, and we should weep with him.

Like I said, John packed a pretty big punch with just these few words. The simplicity of Jesus' actions in this single moment has so many connotations and implications for a world in pain and in need of compassion. For instance, since it is so fresh in everyone's minds, let me relate this to the mass shooting that recently took place in Orlando, Florida. Let me establish one simple truth about the massacre before going forward: Jesus did, in fact, weep over the victims in Orlando. I can say that with full certainty, but let me ask one question: did we? Yes, I'm sure many of us, upon hearing about the tragedy in Orlando, felt sorrow, disgust, sympathy, and anger, and I'm sure many of us even shed actual tears. But did we weep as Jesus wept? At the risk of overgeneralizing, I'd argue that many of us did not.

Like I mentioned earlier, we live in a talkative world, so when events like this mass shooting happen, we're only conditioned to respond with words. Hence, perhaps some people in the church believe that our vocal culture has exculpated us from the Christian duty to be a people who even possess the capability to respond silently. According to these people, if the church were to respond to front-page disasters with nothing but weeping, not a single person of this talkative world would think that the church bothered to even notice, and if the public isn't fully aware of the church's stance, then the church has become static. It was people who thought like this that were more heartbroken by the imminent danger of radical Islam, the failure to achieve equality for the LGBT community, and the ineffective gun control laws in need of reformation than by the loss of human life. It was people who thought like this that voiced an opinion about what could have been done to prevent this travesty before they voiced a prayer out of love and compassion for those who are in need of nothing else. It was people who thought like this that did not weep as Jesus wept. Most importantly, those people who thought like this were probably often you and I. After all, how many of us posted something with the hashtag #PrayForOrlando without actually praying for Orlando?

I can assure you this, the people of Orlando have no interest in your hashtag if it is not accompanied by the appropriate sentiment, and that sentiment is exactly what John describes in John 11:35. It is not pity. It is not an attempt to mend what has been broken. All Orlando needs us to do is mourn with the mourners, to share in their sufferings, to humiliate ourselves alongside them to achieve solidarity before achieving a solution. That is to weep as Jesus wept.

Surely we don't have to wait for mass shootings to happen to weep as Jesus wept. In fact, it's probably easier to show this kind of love and compassion to people in our immediate areas than it is to reach to a city halfway across the country. Pain exists in smaller degrees in the less significant endeavors of everyday life, but such instances are no less deserving of a humbly compassionate response. There is always suffering that needs to be met with compassion. Henri Nouwen defines compassionate living nicely in his novel Compassion. He claims that compassion is "not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there." That is how we live everyday as Christians in a hurting world. That is to weep as Jesus wept.

Compassion is a message that does not need to be communicated through words. I'd go as far as to say that compassion is a message that is often polluted when accompanied by words. Thus, to respond to those who are in pain, we ought to understand that before people need our thoughts and our actions, they need only our presence in the depths along with them. This chaotic world will not always be peaceful, but when the world knows how to weep as Jesus wept, then it will know peace nonetheless.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matt. 5:3-4).

Farm Video Blog

Short Video

Week 14

Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven appeared to be immensely different than any other novel presented in this class. I understand that I am not entirely familiar with the content or style of the other novels because I was not assigned to read them, but at least from what I've observed, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is very unique. For one, it's written in a series of short stories, giving a very sporadic, discontinuous feel to it. However, the biggest difference between this novel and others from this class is that it has nothing to do with agriculture or food production, and my group, when reading it, found difficulty in relating it to a class dedicated solely to studying various issues in agriculture and food production. Of course, there were themes, such as community, family, and resilience, that overlapped with a lot of what we've been discussing in class, but overall, this novel was a bit of a non-sequitur, if considered meticulously.

Really, though, this novel points to something broader that encompasses most of what this class has been iterating: a place to call home. The novel follows the lives of several Indians living on a reservation, and Alexie does not paint a pretty picture of their lives through the many stories of the trials and difficulties of reservation life. What makes this life most unbearable is that it is not the life that they chose; it is the life that was chosen for them. The Indians, throughout their history, were forced off of their native land and into the reservation, and they have experienced various forms of oppression and discrimination from the white community since. Hence, the reservation is not a place that the Indians call home, and the novel shows them often wanting to leave the reservation and coping with the problems they experience while on the reservation through alcoholism, reminiscence, and a lot of complaining.

Thus, a place to call home, according to the novel, is as much a physical place as it is a state of mind. Yes, the Indians in the novel dream of reclaiming their ancestors' actual land because it was taken from them, but in actuality, any place, even the reservation, would suffice for them if it is free of hardship and oppression. They don't focus particularly on abandoning their physical location as much as they do escaping the difficulties of their lives, and this strongly echoes what this class has been emphasizing. By studying these imminent crises in agriculture and food production, we've established that our home, the earth, in its current condition, is not what it should be, but that does not imply that we give up on it as our home and succumb to the inevitability of the brokenness of the earth. We don't strive for a life apart from what we've unfortunately destroyed; we strive for a life apart from destruction. Like I mentioned earlier, a place to call home is as much a physical place as it is a state of mind, so we cannot rely on the earth to be a sufficient home itself; we must work ourselves to consider it as such and to thus treat it as such.

Hopefully this serves as an adequate conclusion to the semester as a whole. The earth is our home, and we ought to strive to feel at home in it. Of course, this takes on several different applications and manifestations, so it is a fairly broad statement. Thus, hopefully it encompasses most of what this course has communicated, and hopefully it carries enough weight to actually have some sort of meaning to our lives.

Week 13

Well, I didn't have any ideas at the end of class on Tuesday about what to do for a service learning project next semester, so I figured I'd give it some time to see if anything came to mind before I blogged about it. That didn't really work out so well. A whole Thanksgiving Break has passed, and I didn't spend a single minute of it thinking about any sort of service learning project. I can't say that I'm surprised, though. To try to come up with something worthwhile, then, I've been reading through a few of others' blogs, and not many people seem to have much more inspiration than I do, so I'm finding comfort in the fact that I'm at least in good company. Anyway, since I barely know the requirements, goals, or limitations of this project, I don't have any groundbreaking ideas, but when do I ever? If I had to throw something out there, I would suggest that I further my involvement in where I already volunteer, GatheringPoint Church of the Nazarene. I don't know how I could connect my service there to this class, but, like I said, I don't know the limitations of this project, anyway, so I'm sure I could find a way. All I know is that I love serving there, it pertains to my major, and there is plenty of service and learning to be done there. At this point, that's all I got.

Week 12

Am I the only one who thinks that there was even less to write about this week than there was last week? I mean, we at least had good ol' Wendell Berry to discuss and evaluate last week, which is always fun, but this week, on the other hand, it almost seems as if we were slapped in the face with a couple of grim novels about unfortunate people struggling to make ends meet when the crap hits the fan in all areas of their lives. Oh, yeah, the novels were about farming, too.

Where is the value in that? At this point in the class and amid this current global episode in human history, must the bleakness of this world be reiterated? I think we get it by now. Hence, a hopeless depiction of humanity is surely not what we need to be exposed to right now, so why, then, are we being exposed to it? What is our goal in this? Are we increasing our appreciation of the earth by continually inspecting its imminent brokenness? Are we trying to become one with the earth and its Creator by becoming familiar with creation's problems? Doesn't this all seem a bit counter-intuitive? I could hash out my beef with the seemingly overwhelmingly pessimistic course material again, but anything I have to say about that subject has already been said in previous blog posts. I'll lay off of it this week and try to branch out in a bit of a different direction.

There was one thing that I did find rather apparent in both of the dark, depressing novels from this week: the value and implications of our interactions and relationships with others. In John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, he portrays people having no means of surviving the day other than relying on each other to help provide for one another; people helping other people thus constitutes as healthy relationships, according to Steinbeck. Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, on the other hand, portrays a very different side of human interactions and concludes that people abusing, killing (or at least attempting to), abandoning, and sleeping with other people constitutes as unhealthy relationships. I'd buy that. That makes pretty good sense to me. In either novel, though, relationships form the characters' personalities and affect their experiences throughout the story. In essence, then, I felt the novels were as much about man's relationship with fellow man as they were about man's relationship with the earth.

So what?

Well, maybe this truth is what ends up reconciling me with this class this semester. In these novels, when the characters are faced with difficulties, the adequate response, as implied by the authors, seemingly is to rely on others to survive troubled times, so maybe that's the solution to surviving these "troubled times" in this class. Throughout this semester, we've all been exposed to the same brokenness; we've all been together when we've seen the "crap hit the fan." So what ought our response be? Well, if we apply what these novels seem to imply, then we ought to stick together amid this abundant negativity to avoid being overwhelmed.

To me, this means that I ought to get out from behind this computer screen when voicing my concerns and actually attempt to become a part of the community of our cohort. This doesn't mean that I'm suddenly going to be raising my hand every six minutes in class; I think it's fairly obvious that that's just not who I am. Rather, like it's been established in class, it all goes back to a change of character more than it does a change of behavior. Thus, I need to fix my attitude. I need to stop viewing class discussion as a time of overly harsh criticisms and unnecessarily pessimistic analyses that lead to my disinterest in participation in the community and instead think of it as an opportunity to enhance my relationship with "fellow man" in order to avoid becoming exhausted from dissecting the class material on my own. Even if the thoughts I conjure when alone are meaningful and productive, there's only so much I can gain when distancing myself from the majority of our cohort. What can I say, though? Sometimes introversion gets the best of me.

I know I always seem to be learning a new lesson different from that which was presented in class each week, and I know that seems like I'm avoiding learning from the actual course material. Do know that that's not the case. There's just only so much that I can learn about agriculture and ecology, so I'm simply doing my best to find principles in the class sessions that apply directly to my life and help me come to peace with my difficulties and disagreements with this semester's class.