Issues are rarely straightforward or isolated. Our choices in life are almost never between good and evil or even between good and best. We want life to be simple and it is not.
Take the cause of the unborn. Those of us who oppose abortion say we do so because we believe the unborn is a human being and as such has value. As Christians we believe human beings were created in the image of God, therefore all human life has inherent value. So therefore, we are compelled to protect the unborn.
But what happens after that child is born? Does he or she still have value? What happens when that child grows up? What happens when that child gets old and nears death? Almost all Christians would agree that every stage of that person’s life has value, even the elderly person who has dementia or a young adult who has some severe birth defect or brain damage.
What if that child smells or behaves differently than our own? What if that child is black or brown? Or poor? Or comes from a really messed up family situation? What if that child never accomplishes much in life by our standards? What if that child grows up and does something really, really bad and winds up in prison or on death row? What if that child happens to be standing in the way of our guns being fired to keep us safe? What if that child grows up and is taught to fire a gun at our grown-up child who has been taught to fire a gun at him?
Ah, the questions start to get awkward. We continue to agree that the answer is that all human beings have value, but we struggle with where this line of reasoning is headed. Why? Because we have other values as well and those are starting to clash with the inherent value of human life and we are uneasy with the tension all this clashing creates.
So, for the moment, let’s keep it simple. How can we preach that the unborn child has such great value that we will go to whatever length to preserve that life only to deny that child access to life after that child is born? You cannot preach for decades on end that some lives are more valuable than others and expect people to suddenly turn around and say all unborn human lives should be protected. You cannot treat some humans constitutionally as only three-fifths human and then expect that a couple centuries later everyone will have changed and start to treat the pre-born as one-hundred percent human.
You can’t fight for the life of an in-womb child and then abandon him or her when he or she is born into a highly dysfunctional family. You can’t say we should do all we can for that pre-natal infant and then not give them our all when they are going to school and growing into adulthood. You can’t tell me not to call that child a fetus and then call it names when it is full-grown.
We reap what we sow. Sow countless generations of disdain for certain forms of human life and you will harvest countless generations of disdain for certain forms of human life.
One organization has set as its goal to wipe out child abuse in five generations. Seems like a long time. People who study such things say it will take that many generations to completely undo the affects of abuse in society – three generations in a given family.
It’s only been a few terms since the U.S. Congress officially forbid lynchings. It’s only been a couple of generations since a black man with a Ph.D. could earn the right to vote only if he correctly named the exact number of marbles in a jar. It’s only been a handful of seasons since Evangelical whites started apologizing for pushing their black brothers and sisters away or turning a deaf ear on their pain.
We have a long way to go and a rough road to hoe to help our world stop disvaluing human life. And we have to start with ourselves. If we want others to value the unborn, we also must learn to value the born.
2009-02-09
Authenticity and Corporate Sin – Part IV
The Pro-Life Movement will only truly succeed when we as Believers repent of our corporate sins and those of our forefathers and foremothers, and recognize that sins of racism and sins of murdering the unborn are one and the same. You cannot be selectively pro-life.
There are some Pro-Lifers that preach a single note. They say the only issue we are to be fighting for today is the cause of the unborn. What they don’t understand is how much the issue of racism affects our inability to fight the plight of the in-womb child.
Prior to 1973, most white Evangelical Christians (there were exceptions) did not engage in the Civil Rights movement. Many actively opposed it even. For whatever reason, the American Evangelical Church turned a deaf and fearful ear on the move toward racial equality in this nation, preferring to concentrate on more “spiritual” matters.
There were raging debates behind secretive ecclesiastical doors in the 1950s as to whether blacks should be ordained in our (white) churches. Some preachers even stood on the steps of their churches to keep blacks out (not that very many were pushing to get in).
A few leaders like Billy Graham, who had gone along with racially segregated rallies earlier in his ministry, began to change and even take action. Graham started pushing integration in certain denominations by inviting people of color from those denominations to join his evangelistic team. In at least one of those cases, the offending denomination quickly and quietly moved to ordain the newly anointed team member.
But as has oft been said, racism cannot be legislated out. And so racism has persisted. Conservative white Christians disappeared out of the ranks of the Democratic Party from the mid-60s through the early 1980s as that party embraced the Civil Rights movement and blacks en masse. The Christian whites largely fled with their unrepentant racism to the Party of Lincoln, much to the harm of that party.
It could be argued that this shift came because the Republican Party embraced the Pro-Life movement – and that did play a role. But they fled the Democratic Party just as they had fled their old neighborhoods when the blacks moved in.
I watched all this and I documented it and found opportunities to preach about it. But I struggled with what more to do, sad that I had been born too late to be involved in the marches of the 1960s. I clung to my faith, having learned that all the questions don’t have to be answered for faith to be embraced. But I needed a solid foundation on which to support that faith. And like Gandhi, I wrestled with a Church and a Christ in polar contrast.
I have come to the conclusion that hypocrisy is no excuse for abandoning faith. At the same time I firmly believe that hypocrisy is always inexcusable and must be confronted wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head, especially when that hypocrisy is found in the house of faith.
Many Evangelicals are quick to say that racism is no longer an issue we need to deal with. We’ve had our ceremonial foot washings and have opened our doors to people of color. We’ve moved passed all that and it is time to move on.
In this they are dead wrong. Witness the Willie Horton affect in the 1988 Presidential Campaign or the not-so-subtle racial undertones in this most recent election. Witness the way in which white Christians still hesitate to see racism as a spiritual matter, one that the Church, especially their church, should speak out on, let alone do anything about. Witness the subtle ways in which the white church continues to keep people of color selectively at arms length or at a safe ceremonial distance.
Present sins or no, the racial sins of the American Christian past are heavy enough weights alone on the cause for Pro-Life today. Until we repent and get proactive about how we as believers value human life, we will never be able to convince a “heathen” nation that an unborn child has value.
There are some Pro-Lifers that preach a single note. They say the only issue we are to be fighting for today is the cause of the unborn. What they don’t understand is how much the issue of racism affects our inability to fight the plight of the in-womb child.
Prior to 1973, most white Evangelical Christians (there were exceptions) did not engage in the Civil Rights movement. Many actively opposed it even. For whatever reason, the American Evangelical Church turned a deaf and fearful ear on the move toward racial equality in this nation, preferring to concentrate on more “spiritual” matters.
There were raging debates behind secretive ecclesiastical doors in the 1950s as to whether blacks should be ordained in our (white) churches. Some preachers even stood on the steps of their churches to keep blacks out (not that very many were pushing to get in).
A few leaders like Billy Graham, who had gone along with racially segregated rallies earlier in his ministry, began to change and even take action. Graham started pushing integration in certain denominations by inviting people of color from those denominations to join his evangelistic team. In at least one of those cases, the offending denomination quickly and quietly moved to ordain the newly anointed team member.
But as has oft been said, racism cannot be legislated out. And so racism has persisted. Conservative white Christians disappeared out of the ranks of the Democratic Party from the mid-60s through the early 1980s as that party embraced the Civil Rights movement and blacks en masse. The Christian whites largely fled with their unrepentant racism to the Party of Lincoln, much to the harm of that party.
It could be argued that this shift came because the Republican Party embraced the Pro-Life movement – and that did play a role. But they fled the Democratic Party just as they had fled their old neighborhoods when the blacks moved in.
I watched all this and I documented it and found opportunities to preach about it. But I struggled with what more to do, sad that I had been born too late to be involved in the marches of the 1960s. I clung to my faith, having learned that all the questions don’t have to be answered for faith to be embraced. But I needed a solid foundation on which to support that faith. And like Gandhi, I wrestled with a Church and a Christ in polar contrast.
I have come to the conclusion that hypocrisy is no excuse for abandoning faith. At the same time I firmly believe that hypocrisy is always inexcusable and must be confronted wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head, especially when that hypocrisy is found in the house of faith.
Many Evangelicals are quick to say that racism is no longer an issue we need to deal with. We’ve had our ceremonial foot washings and have opened our doors to people of color. We’ve moved passed all that and it is time to move on.
In this they are dead wrong. Witness the Willie Horton affect in the 1988 Presidential Campaign or the not-so-subtle racial undertones in this most recent election. Witness the way in which white Christians still hesitate to see racism as a spiritual matter, one that the Church, especially their church, should speak out on, let alone do anything about. Witness the subtle ways in which the white church continues to keep people of color selectively at arms length or at a safe ceremonial distance.
Present sins or no, the racial sins of the American Christian past are heavy enough weights alone on the cause for Pro-Life today. Until we repent and get proactive about how we as believers value human life, we will never be able to convince a “heathen” nation that an unborn child has value.
2009-02-02
Authenticity and Corporate Sin – Part III
Some people, in what is called the “Pro-Life Movement”, like to say today that their movement and the Civil Rights movement of the middle of the last century are similar causes. I dare say that most people who believe that don’t know what they are talking about.
I agree with them, but not for the reasons they think. Many people who are crusading for the unborn say that they are the new civil rights movement, that they have taken on the mantle carried by the likes of Martin Luther King. They mean that they are as justified in their social activism as were those of the earlier movement. They covet the blanket of acceptability.
What we don’t understand is that many of today’s Pro-Lifers are closer to the truth than they realize. And in fact until they acknowledge that truth, their cause is doomed to fail.
What am I talking about? Back in the 1950s and 1960s a lot of good, religious people in America – white folks, that is – were very critical of the civil rights movement or were at least fearmongering about it. They saw King and his minions as a threat to God-fearing people and civil society in this country.
Evangelicals for the most part sat out the Civil Rights movement either because they didn’t think it had anything to do with spirituality and faith or because they were too busy reaching the lost. Maybe not reaching the lost Americans of Color, but reaching their lost white neighbors or the real heathen somewhere else.
Now consider the Pro-Life movement since Roe v. Wade. That landmark decision which catapulted the anti-abortion cause to the forefront of Evangelical thought happened in the waning days of the Civil Rights movement which had consumed and convulsed the country for the two decades prior. Evangelicals who had slept through the 1950s and 1960s or at least cowered behind their curtains and their moving vans as blacks took control of their neighborhoods were suddenly galvanized to do something about the poor innocents being slaughtered – as well they should have been. They even shed tears for poor innocent black babies, not that they wanted more, they just didn’t want to see them die in the womb.
Why did a life so unworthy of Christian compassion before 1973 become so worthy of Christian action after 1973? This troubling question is a very personal one for me.
I came of voting age in 1973. I was the youngest person ever to vote in my county because the constitutional amendment lowering the voting age took effect on my 18th birthday. Several things were culminating in my spirit – my right to a voice in American society, my coming into legal manhood, the birth of the Pro-Life movement, the end of the most active phase of the Civil Rights Movement, the winding down of the Vietnam Era, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It was, to say the least, a very momentous year.
But it was a troubling age for me. It brought me to a deep and long crisis of faith because I could not understand how selective American Evangelicals had been in their acts of righteousness. And that troubled feeling was to grow over the next decade or so as I unearthed much of the corporate sin of my fellow believers throughout the decades prior in shutting blacks out of our churches and in opposing a movement that spoke out against this great sin of our nation.
In silencing our prophetic voice prior to 1973, we found ourselves spiritually hoarse in the years that followed. We lost our ability to be prophetic – and instead became pathetic when it came to preaching justice.
I agree with them, but not for the reasons they think. Many people who are crusading for the unborn say that they are the new civil rights movement, that they have taken on the mantle carried by the likes of Martin Luther King. They mean that they are as justified in their social activism as were those of the earlier movement. They covet the blanket of acceptability.
What we don’t understand is that many of today’s Pro-Lifers are closer to the truth than they realize. And in fact until they acknowledge that truth, their cause is doomed to fail.
What am I talking about? Back in the 1950s and 1960s a lot of good, religious people in America – white folks, that is – were very critical of the civil rights movement or were at least fearmongering about it. They saw King and his minions as a threat to God-fearing people and civil society in this country.
Evangelicals for the most part sat out the Civil Rights movement either because they didn’t think it had anything to do with spirituality and faith or because they were too busy reaching the lost. Maybe not reaching the lost Americans of Color, but reaching their lost white neighbors or the real heathen somewhere else.
Now consider the Pro-Life movement since Roe v. Wade. That landmark decision which catapulted the anti-abortion cause to the forefront of Evangelical thought happened in the waning days of the Civil Rights movement which had consumed and convulsed the country for the two decades prior. Evangelicals who had slept through the 1950s and 1960s or at least cowered behind their curtains and their moving vans as blacks took control of their neighborhoods were suddenly galvanized to do something about the poor innocents being slaughtered – as well they should have been. They even shed tears for poor innocent black babies, not that they wanted more, they just didn’t want to see them die in the womb.
Why did a life so unworthy of Christian compassion before 1973 become so worthy of Christian action after 1973? This troubling question is a very personal one for me.
I came of voting age in 1973. I was the youngest person ever to vote in my county because the constitutional amendment lowering the voting age took effect on my 18th birthday. Several things were culminating in my spirit – my right to a voice in American society, my coming into legal manhood, the birth of the Pro-Life movement, the end of the most active phase of the Civil Rights Movement, the winding down of the Vietnam Era, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It was, to say the least, a very momentous year.
But it was a troubling age for me. It brought me to a deep and long crisis of faith because I could not understand how selective American Evangelicals had been in their acts of righteousness. And that troubled feeling was to grow over the next decade or so as I unearthed much of the corporate sin of my fellow believers throughout the decades prior in shutting blacks out of our churches and in opposing a movement that spoke out against this great sin of our nation.
In silencing our prophetic voice prior to 1973, we found ourselves spiritually hoarse in the years that followed. We lost our ability to be prophetic – and instead became pathetic when it came to preaching justice.
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