Asking to Love; Not to Be Loved

Written by Miles Williams

There’s a prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that goes like this:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where this is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

When I pray to God, my prayers are often not as selfless as this prayer by St. Francis. When I pray, I often ask for peace; rarely do I ask that I be an instrument of peace. When I feel hated, I ask to feel loved; not to love. When I receive injury, I can hardly find the capacity to ask that the one who has inflicted injury upon me should receive pardon in return. I often doubt too much to be a pillar of faith. I find it all too easy to despair because hope is often impossible. I’m often too consumed by darkness to even consider being a light. I’m often too sad to think joy could fill my heart. I want consolation. I want to be understood. I want to be loved. 

                My prayers often stink of selfishness. But why shouldn’t they? Christ has said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matt. 21:22, NIV). Why can’t I, and everyone else, ask for pardon, consolation, and love?

                Consider for a moment from whom we often receive pardon, consolation, and love. We ask God for these things, but God often uses people as His instruments for pardoning, consoling, and loving. St. Francis opens his prayer with “Lord, make us instruments…” He further closes with, “it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” 

                It may be true that, “if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer,” but Christ tells us much more than this. 

·        * 1 John 4:20, ESV:  If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

·        * John 13:34-35, ESV:  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

·        * 1 Peter 4:8, ESV:  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

·        * 1 John 4:7-10, ESV:  Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

·        * Romans 12:10, ESV:  Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

And I could quote many more…

                What is the point? It is far better to love than to be loved; far better to give than to receive; far better to forgive than to be forgiven. There’s a familiar quote by JFK that goes, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” Christ seems to tell His followers something very similar: ask not what can be done for you, but what you can do for others. The Christian walk has nothing to do with demanding love; it is all about offering it to others similar to the way Christ showed love by dying on the cross for a world that only showed Him hatred and rejection in return.

                In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ tells the teacher of the law to “go and do likewise,” in reference to the love the Samaritan showed the Judean lying beaten on the side of the road. What we often miss with this story is that the Samaritan helps his enemy. What had this Judean, lying robbed, beaten, and half dead on the road, ever done for him? This Judean had more than likely spoken harshly of Samaritans, perhaps using some unsavory words, and he may have even insulted this very Samaritan at some point in the past. Nevertheless, the Samaritan man helped the person who likely would never have helped him.  He loved the person who likely hated him. 

                …Go and do likewise.

                Love someone, pardon someone, console someone, give to someone, and make peace with someone. Be an instrument. Consider what you can offer to those around you, not what they can offer you.

How to Forgive

When they arrived at the place called The Skull, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing." And they divided His clothes and cast lots (HCSB, Luke 23:33-34).

Mark Twain once said that "forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it." Given his various critiques of the Christian faith, I doubt that Mark Twain willingly would have chosen to recognize the deep theological significance of his words; and if he did, he surely would have thought his rendering more poetic and deeply theological than the Christian truth. Nevertheless, what Twain iterates so succinctly and beautifully is that which Christ demonstrates via his crucifixion: that "in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them" (HCSB, 2 Corinthians 5:19).

For what is it that the violet can do when crushed? It can do nothing but impart its fragrance upon the foot that destroys its beauty and ends its life. Similarly, when Christ suffered crucifixion, God did nothing but offer reconciliation to the world through Christ's death. Rather than count their crimes against them, God offered the world forgiveness. Forgiveness is the blood Christ sheds on the sinners who have killed him.

But let us not stop with Christ's forgiveness. As Christ told his disciples: "For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don't forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing" (HCSB, Matthew, 6:14-15). While one can easily take this teaching to mean "forgive or else," one instead could take it to mean, in light of our commentary thus far, that we should at all times live life as does the violet: always vulnerable, never able to seek revenge, but only capable of benefiting those who wrong us, even though we will be worse off for it. Indeed, while perhaps forgiveness now may benefit us later, for now forgiveness will gain us nothing. What good did Christ's suffering grant him while he was still on the cross? What good does a heel grant the hapless violet? Those who forgive seek not their own well-being, but the well-being of the ones who have hurt them most. We are to be a people who forgive. As Paul reminded the Christians living in Corinth: "Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation" (HCSB, 2 Corinthians 5:18).

The Kingdom of God is like a field of violets trampled by the heels of the masses---though they are crushed underfoot, they shed a beautiful fragrance upon their transgressors, and the aroma cannot but reach the nose of God who smells and is pleased by the perfume.

What is Justice?

The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37):

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;' and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

To ask, “Who is my neighbor,” is to doubly ask, “What is justice.”  Justice, according to John Perkins, is responsibility. But what is responsibility other than the ability to engage in a response? Justice, I argue, is responsiveness, and I simultaneously regard injustice as unresponsiveness.

          
If justice is the responsibility that each person has for all other persons, then injustice occurs wherever a person refuses to respond to another, whether that other's condition be that of pain or pleasure, joy or sorrow, laughter or tears. To be responsible, and so also to be just, one must respond with celebration in the presence of the happy, one must respond with mourning in the presence of the sad, one must respond with aid to the needy, one must respond with company to the lonely, food to the hungry, a song to the victorious, and encouragement to the defeated. Justice is to respond to others, to be a participant in the lives of others. To find injustice, one need only look for unresponsiveness on the part of one human to another. To be just, therefore, is to live as though there are other people in the world. To be unjust is to live as though there is no one else but you.

          
The parable of the Good Samaritan perfectly describes justice because, in it, Jesus reminds us that to be just is to be a neighbor, and to be a neighbor is to respond always to those we encounter on life’s roads. But, because we today live in a world of planes, trains, and automobiles, we forget that everywhere we go in life people are there also. As Arthur C. McGill reminds us in his book Suffering: A Test of Theological Method, when we travel, we isolate ourselves from the road and from the others traveling along it. We make it easy to be like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan. How much easier it has become to pass people by as we travel at 60 miles per hour, where once we were lucky to travel at 6 miles per hour!

Though we all praise the Good Samaritan, few of us really want to be like him. Few of us care to take responsibility for strangers, thus few of us actually care to be just. We would, for example, rather throw money at the poor and call that justice than throw ourselves at the poor. Let us not deceive ourselves; doles are not a way to respond to the poor, they are merely a clever way to ignore the poor. The dole is merely avoidance disguised as a response. Avoidance can be so easily disguised as responsibility that we often rarely can recognize the distinction between justified and unjustified actions. If we ever justify our failure to respond, we do so by claiming that we have other responsibilities that supersede any responsibility we might have to those immediately present. The priest and the Levite reasoned that they had other responsibilities that superseded any immediate responsibility they had for some ritually unclean, beaten, half dead man lying on the side of the road, for they had to remain ritually clean so as to perform their duty as priests in God’s Temple. Surely their responsibility to ensure the salvation of the entire Jewish people outweighed their immediate responsibility to this one man. But what they thought to be reasonable was actually irresponsible. They justified the unjust and feigned responsibility for that which demanded a response.

But praise God that he is just! We have a God, who rather than unjustly throw his abundant power at the world so as to avoid the world, justly threw himself into the world so as to respond to his creation’s suffering. Though the world regards it as foolishness that God would suffer in response to the world’s pain, we regard it as evidence that we have a God whose justice is unsurpassed. 

Immigration: Whose Side is God on?

“If one attitude can be said to characterize America’s regard for immigration over the past two hundred years it is the belief that while immigration was unquestionably a wise and prescient thing in the case of one’s parents or grandparents, it really ought to stop now.  For two hundred years succeeding generations of Americans have persuaded themselves that the country faced imminent social dislocation, and eventual ruin, at the hands of the grasping foreign hordes pouring through her ports.”[1]

*******

The quote above, which comes from Bill Bryson’s book Made in America, highlights the mentality borne by natives of various countries and nationalities toward newcomers, foreigners, and all manner of strangers who arrive as immigrants to their land.  Whether it be Protestant immigrants fleeing to Switzerland in the 1600s to escape religious persecution, Calvinist Separatists fleeing England to begin life anew in the “New World,” or Catholic and Pentecostal immigrants fleeing harsh socio-economic environments south of the U.S. border, the native populations accepting these foreigners have always responded with xenophobia and hostility.  Meanwhile, those immigrating have often undertaken their journeys as though they were embarking on a religious “exodus” to a new land “flowing with milk and honey.”  In fact, for many undocumented immigrants the trek across America’s southern border is equitable to a Christian pilgrimage ordained by God, who offers aid to his devout followers attempting to sojourn from the south to a better life in the north. 

Are these immigrants right?  Does God help them to cross America’s southern border illegally?  Are they truly on a “pilgrimage” that God has ordained and set in motion?

According to Ben Daniel in his book Neighbor, we certainly cannot disregard the very real possibility that “God is walking alongside those who immigrate to the United States.”[2]  At the very least, we must recognize that such is the perception of those crossing the Rio Grande in search of better lives and opportunities in America.  As Daniel notes regarding the perspective of many immigrants:

“There is an overwhelming and growing sense among undocumented immigrants that their journeys are blessed by God…and the knowledge that they have arrived in the United States by the grace of God has helped to instill a particularly strong faith among many of America’s undocumented Christians.”[3]

These immigrants’ belief regarding their identity as sojourners and pilgrims who travel with God’s blessing can be further highlighted by some of the Scripture passages cited in common by numerous undocumented immigrants to offer them comfort and hope for their journey and the journeys of many others.  For example, Genesis 12:1-2: 

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.’” 

And also 1 Peter 2:11-12: 

“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.  Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.”

I think it hard to ignore how undocumented immigrants read themselves into these scripture passages.  Few native-born American Christians can readily assume an alien/exile mentality because, as citizens of one of the most prosperous empires in world history, the travails that accompany the experience of aliens and exiles are so far removed from our daily lives.  Yet, in the experience of immigrants who are making/have made their way to the U.S., the Christian walk (which is literally for them a walk) is intrinsic to their identity in Christ.  As states Daniel, “This distinctly immigrant spirituality is strongly dependent upon the Bible’s witness to a God with an affinity for those who live as sojourners in foreign lands.”[4]

I also find it particularly eye opening that in the 1 Peter passage, from the immigrant's perspective, we are the Gentiles.  We are those who malign the immigrant as an evildoer.  Moreover, as immigrants see it, God has directed their movement here, not only so that we might save some of them, but also so that they might save some of us.  It may strike us as absurd, but for many immigrants coming to America, their journey here is one of evangelism and revival that God has himself ordained.  M. Daniel Carroll R. asks in his book Christians at the Border:

“[C]ould what we are witnessing in this country be part of a divinely directed global phenomenon?  Is God bringing millions of Hispanics to the United States to revitalize the Christian churches here and to present to those who do not yet believe the opportunity to turn to Christ in their search for a new life?  Many Hispanics and pastors sincerely believe that God has led them here for a purpose:  to play an important role in the revival of the Christian faith in this country.”[5]

*******

As American Christians, we should not fail to recognize the immigrant roots of our faith; otherwise, we may only confirm Bryson’s observation regarding the double mentality held by all-too-many descendants of immigrants who view their parents’ and grandparents’ immigration as wise while simultaneously viewing all current immigration as a dangerous social ill.

We must further consider carefully what Ben Daniel has to say about the current situation befalling us today: 

“If God is walking with immigrants as they ford the Rio Grande, if God accompanies undocumented folks through the fiery heat of the desert, then perhaps American Christians need to walk with immigrants as well—not just to influence public policy, but to strengthen our faith and to deepen our spiritual connection to the Divine.”[6]

---

[1] Bill Bryson, Made in America, 176.

[2] Ben Daniel, Neighbor, 12.

[3] Ibid, 9.

[4] Ben Daniel, Neighbor, 9.

[5] M. Daniel Carroll R., Christians at the Border, 61.

[6] Ibid, 12.

Who are Christians?

Michael L. Budde notes that

[f]or the past five hundred years, political and economic leaders have worked to undermine Christian unity and fragment the Church in the interests of nationalism, capitalism, and individualism. At the same time, the now fragmented parts of Christianity—its ideas and institutions, liturgy and laity—have been enlisted as legitimation and cultural cement in service to radical political, economic, and cultural transformations of modernity.[1]

Budde makes a notably harsh, poignant, and “radical” claim here—one that must be carefully and critically considered before we take it as absolute truth. Of course, while we must remain critical of Budde's claims, we must further recognize that Budde raises an important concern that, if accurate, presents modern Christianity with a significant problem, an identity crisis of sorts, the effects of which may prove toxic and incriminating to the faith if not properly addressed. For as Budde also states:

The fallout for the existing subordination of Christianity to other allegiances, loyalties, and identities is widespread, scandalous, and lethal. That it is no longer noteworthy nor even noticed—when Christians kill one another in service to the claims of state, ethnicity, or ideology—itself is the most damning indictment of Christianity in the modern era. How can Christians be good news to the world, in what ways can they presume to be a foretaste of the peaceful recuperation of creation promised by God, when their slaughter of one another is so routine as to be beneath comment? World I is described as interstate rivalry run amok, not the industrial butchering by Christians of one another; Rwanda symbolizes the ugliness of ethnic conflict rather than Catholics massacring Catholics; the U.S. wars in Central America are charged to the Cold War account instead of Christians in the United States abetting the killing of Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan Christians by one another. That no one describes these events as scandal to the gospel, a cruel inversion of the unity of the body of Christ, is among the most embarrassing charges against contemporary Christianity.[2]

While it may be tempting to ignore Budde on grounds that his claims seem ideologically radical and oversimplified in reference to “reality,” let us avoid for a moment that temptation and rather humor Budde. After all, if Budde is correct that a slew of atrocious global, nationalistic, ideological, and ethnic conflicts could have been averted if Christians on both sides of these conflicts had pledged their allegiance to the Cross of Christ rather than to other sorts of allegiance-demanding entities, then we need to take very seriously, and approach very attentively, Budde’s admonition that Christians worldwide need to redefine their allegiances in solidarity to one another as brothers and sisters in the family of God.

What would it mean for Christians if, upon their baptism into the church, they left behind any and all old identities and allegiances in favor of finding their identity in the risen God and in a community wherein all “are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)? No doubt, if Christians did indeed take their baptismal vows seriously, they might just be formed into “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that [they] may declare the wondrous deeds of him who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

This radical sort of formation as a new nation, a new “race” of people, is certainly not a new concept in church history. According to Denise Kimber Buell, early Christians commonly saw themselves as a new ethnic group and race of people, distinguishable by way of their worship, lives, and concerns as different from Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews.[3]

As we consider the identity of early Christians in relation to other sorts of nationalistic and ideological identities, we should bear in mind that our modern conceptions of “race” and “ethnicity” (two varieties of social allegiance) are notably different from such conceptions in the ancient world. Whereas today we regard such categories as immutable and inextricably tied to genetics and physical features, ancients had a much more flexible and mutable conception of ethnicity and race. 

Having a more flexible understanding of these categories had a notable effect on how early Christians identified themselves. As Buell indicates:

First, race/ethnicity was often deemed to be produced and indicated by religious practices…Early Christians adopted existing understandings of what ethnicity and race are and how they relate to religiosity by reinterpreting the language of peoplehood readily available to them in the biblical texts they shared with…Jews, as well as political and civic language used broadly to speak about citizenship and peoplehood in the Roman Empire.[4]

Using the language and concepts afforded them, early Christians could view race as both fluid and “real” to the extent that “Christianness” could be thought of “as a distinct category in contrast to other peoples…and also as inclusive, since it is a category formed out of individuals from a range of different races.”[5] Thus, while Christianity was, on the one hand, a unique ethnic category, rigidly defined by its practices, it was, on the other hand, fluid and dynamic to the extent that one could “join” the Christian race by adopting its practices, desires, and goals. Christianity, therefore, despite the exclusivity that accompanies modern conceptions of race, was notably inclusive by way of conversion. To change one’s race or ethnicity from that of Roman, Jew, Greek, or Egyptian, one needed only to convert to Christianity.

This way of viewing ethnicity, as we should expect, came with definite consequences. As Buell notes, conversion to the Christian faith was not viewed as “a private matter of individual conscience resulting in an individual’s affiliation with a religious movement, but explicitly as becoming a member of a people, with collective and public consequences.”[6] And as Buell further states:

[I]t is not sufficient to state that Christians formed a “religion” in contrast to a “race” or “ethnicity.” Many early Christians described the consequence of belief in Christ (even though the kinds of belief varied widely) as acquiring membership in a people. When various believers in and followers of Christ (however understood) used ethnic reasoning, they were continuing a longstanding practice of viewing religious practices and beliefs as intertwined with collective identifications that overlap with our modern concepts of race and ethnicity, as well as nationality and civic identity.[7]

The extent to which early Christians took their Christian formation as a political act with public implications is highlighted by Joyce Salisbury.

Christians were perceived by their pagan neighbors to be antisocial in the deepest meaning of the word. They were creating their own society within the Roman one, and their loyalties were to each other rather than to the family structures that formed the backbone of conservative Roman society. Their faith led them to renounce parents, children, and spouses, and Romans believed this actively undermined the fabric of society. In fact, it did.[8]

Despite the romanticism and purity of the ecclesial solidarity ascribed to by early Christians, history is rife with instances where the church failed to maintain its sense of unity in the face of other claimants on political, ethnic, and ideological allegiance. Whether it be the co-option of Christianity by the Roman Empire, the fragmentation and subjugation of the church at the hands of emergent European nation-states during the early modern era, or the influence of Enlightenment and humanistic ideals on Christian thought and practice, what clearly befalls us, as describes Budde, is that “[t]he bonds of baptism [have been] spiritualized and sidelined in favor of the blood-and-iron ties of patriotism and ethnonational solidarity, the dollars-and-cents sinews of capitalism, and the idolatry of modern and postmodern selves.”[9] Budde, going futher, puts forth the following lament of the sort of “order of things” incurred by the currently muddied and domesticated view of Christianity adhered to by an unfortunate number of Christians:

In such a world it is unremarkable that Christian Hutus can slaughter Christian Tutsis the week after Easter;[10] that Christian interrogators can torture Christian prisoners with impunity;[11] that a Catholic military chaplain can bless the atomic bomb that destroyed the largest concentration of Catholics in Japan, including seven orders of nuns.[12]

If we take the above exposition seriously (and as we consider who Christians are, what they do, and what they should value), then we must further ask: “Are we Christians?” This question may strike us as a difficult question to answer, not because our answer need be complicated (though it could be), but because the answer may be a hard pill to swallow. How seriously do we take our ecclesial bonds with our fellow believers in Christ worldwide? Do we act in concern for and solidarity with our suffering brothers and sisters who live beyond the circumscribed boundaries of the state? To what extent have we allowed nationalistic identity to circumvent, subvert, and overrule our loyalty to the politics of the Kingdom of God? Whether we can answer these questions to an optimistic or pessimistic tune is a concern for another time; it is only important for the moment that we ask these questions seriously and honestly and contemplate them in a way that is far from superficial or guarded. Budde , of course, would argue that we have fallen short of our purpose as the church. As he notes:

My argument is that the revitalization and reform of Christianity now and in the future will be both incomplete and doomed to irrelevance until it reclaims the integrity and distinctiveness of the Church. Unless the borders of baptism become capable of defining a people that “seek first the Kingdom of God,” that sees itself as God’s imperfect prototype for reconciled human unity in diversity (with the Sermon on the Mount as its “Magna Carta,” in the words of Pope John Paul II), Christianity will continue its rapid descent into a parody of its calling and vocation.[13]

Should Budde be right, and should the church indeed be gravely lost and have strayed from the Way, then we the church must work hard to reestablish bonds of solidarity and allegiance that will allow us to become anew the people of God.

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[1] Michael L. Budde.  The Borders of Baptism.  p.5

[2] Ibid.  p.4

[3] Denise Kimber Buell.  Jesus and Community.  p.2

[4] Ibid.  pp.2-3

[5] Ibid.  p.3

[6] Ibid.  p.46

[7] Ibid.  p.166

[8] Joyce Salisbury.  Blood of the Martyrs.  p.16

[9] Budde.  The Borders of Baptism.  p.10

[10] Budde is speaking in reference to the Rwandan Genocide.

[11] Budde may be referring here to the “dirty war” conducted in Argentina between 1976-1983 by the dictatorship that was supported by the Argentine Catholic hierarchy. During this “war” priests would offer support and blessing to death squads tasked with the kidnapping, torture, and killing of various Argentinians.

[12] Ibid.  p.10

[13] Ibid.  p.11

Why What Christians Call Christian Marriage is Truly Not True Christian Marriage

When Christians work through the state apparatus to establish laws that enforce marriage as a legalized civil union between a man and a woman, what is most provocative is that Christians only destroy the sacrality of marriage as rooted in ecclesial allegiance.

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Among the various issues of social ethics that pervade and hold captive the church’s imaginative and contemplative theo-political activities, few issues have given the church so much grief as the issue of homosexuality.  Despite the fact that the majority of God’s Word is concerned with economic justice, and despite the fact that very little attention in God’s Word is given to homosexuality, which is but one manifestation of sexual immorality, the church seems to have magnified what is Scripturally a relatively small issue into an issue of grandiose dimensions whose effects threaten to destabilize the fabric of society.  Though the reasons for the church’s concern with this issue would certainly prove an interesting history to tell, what is of greater concern is what the overemphasis on homosexuality, especially in relation to marriage, reveals about the church’s relationship with the state, and its ignorance in relation to the true nature of Christian marriage.

Now, when I say “ignorance,” I do not use it in the same manner as social liberals, as a pejorative term meant to criticize social conservatives for “burying their heads in the sand.”  Much to the contrary, when I say “ignorance,” I mean to accuse specifically the church of not having a proper understanding of what marriage actually is.  Even more, I mean to accuse the church of not understanding homosexuality and the extent to which the Kingdom of God should be the political entity to which Christian loyalty is conformed.

The fact and manner by which the church preoccupies itself with homosexual behavior indicates that the church has an inaccurate understanding of what homosexuality represents as sin.  Contrary to the practice of many Christians today, the Apostle Paul, when he spoke of homosexual behavior, did not do so, on the one hand, to teach social conduct, or, on the other hand, to offer judgment.  Rather, Paul intended to offer a diagnosis.  As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.  Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done (Romans 1:24-28).

According to Richard B. Hays, Paul here offers a “diagnosis of the disordered human condition:  he adduces the fact of widespread homosexual behavior as evidence that human beings are indeed in rebellion against their Creator.”[1]  In this scenario, homosexuality is not that which provokes the wrath of God; rather, such behavior is a consequence of idolatry.  God “gives over” to their unnatural desires those who refuse to believe the Truth.  Homosexuality, then, does not constitute the fundamental sin of human rebellion.  To the contrary, as Hays indicates, “The fundamental human sin is the refusal to honor God and give God thanks.”[2]  Homosexuality is not in any way a degrading disease that afflicts “society,” but it is instead a symptom of a much more deeply rooted and fundamental condition of human brokenness. 

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Hay’s exposition of homosexuality must stir in us an important question:  If God gives people over to unnatural desire—homosexual desire being one among many such desires—does it seem likely that a ban on same-sex marriage would stop God giving over to homosexual desire those who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator?”  I think the answer must be:  No.

To think that coercive laws of the state, which can only affect the body, could ever change the heart is a mistaken assumption.  Though the intent behind the drive to enforce “biblical” marriage via the governing apparatus is doubtless a result of a desire for the good, such a desire is ultimately a disordered pursuit of the good. 

The desire to uphold "biblical" marriage—which may be put more accurately in this context as a civil contract legally binding the assets of a heterosexual pair enforceable as the sole prerogative of the state’s courts—represents a disordered desire on behalf of Christians for several reasons.

Firstly, by using the government as the chief apparatus for determining and defining marriage, marriage automatically ceases to be a sacrament of Christian worship and it instead becomes a sacrament of the state.  That the church has yielded the authority to define marriage to the state is indication that the church has already lost the “battle” for marriage. 

Secondly, that the church wishes to enforce marriage as a legal contract between a man and a woman, having to do with the unification of monetary and proprietary assets, is indication that the church does not know what marriage actually is meant to represent.  If marriage is only this sort of legal contract, then why not allow a pair of men, or a pair women, to partake in this sort of contract?  People can legally have sex outside of marriage (that fact we cannot deny), but God forbid that a same-sex couple have the same legal benefits afforded to a married heterosexual couple!  Imagine, for a moment, two women who might wish to be married.  Suppose also that these women have not and do not intend to engage in homosexual acts.  These two women only desire to have the benefits that come with marriage—i.e. shared finances, hospital visits, etc.  Why should these two not be married?  Marriage as defined by the state has nothing to do with sexual behavior, and yet the church mistakenly thinks that enforcing heterosexual marriage will enforce heterosexual sex.

Thirdly, while the church places an inordinate amount of attention on same-sex marriage, it neglects to deal with issues of infidelity between heterosexual couples, with pornography, with sex out of wedlock, with male promiscuity in relation to teen pregnancy, etc.  Let us consider with a hint of self-criticism the following question:  What does more to unhinge the stability of society, faithful gay couples who raise adopted children or unfaithful straight couples who cast their biological children to a roller-coaster ride of domestic disharmony?  If we want to preserve the sanctity of marriage, we need to first deal with the plank of rampant divorce in the church's eye before we turn to the world to remove the spec of same-sex marriage in its eye.

*******

In relation to the above three problems with the way Christians go about lobbying against homosexual marriage, there are a number ways that the church can begin setting itself aright.

In relation to the first, the church needs to stop viewing marriage through the lens of state authority.  The church needs to return to an ecclesial model of formative allegiance whereby our affections and our loyalty belong solely to Christ who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Marriage must be reasserted as a sacrament of Christian worship, on par with the sacraments of baptism and communion.  This means that the church must reclaim marriage for its own.  It further means that the church must stop viewing itself as the “conscience” of the state; for the church is rather its own polis with its own mission and God-ordained political role to play in the world.  In the words of Stanley Hauerwas:  “What it means to be the church is to be a group of people called out of the world, and back into the world, to embody the hope of the Kingdom of God.”[3]  Using the state to enforce heterosexual marriage is like using the state to enforce baptism as only constituted as full immersion or like using the state to regulate communion—in short it is a farcicality.

In relation to the second, the church needs to remember the proper signification of the holy sacrament of marriage.  Whether you are Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, you will doubtless resonate with the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding marriage:  That marriage is an expression of Christ’s unconditional and unbreakable relationship with His church.[4]  As the Apostle Paul directs:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.   He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”  This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.  However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband (Ephesians 5:22-33).

Marriage, thus, is a “divine mystery” whereby a man and a woman “become one flesh,” and this mystery is correlative with Christ’s uniting with his church.  

From this model we can glean a number of important components that are to comprise marriage:  1) Marriage is to be monogamous.  Just as the church has only one Christ, so does Christ have only one church.  In the same manner, so does a woman join herself to only one man, and so does a man join himself to only one woman.  2) Marriage is to be between a man and a woman.  The church is not Christ, nor is Christ the church, and yet both are unified.  In the same manner, the woman is not the man, nor is the man the woman, yet both become one.  This mystery of becoming “one flesh” where there were two cannot be properly signified through same-sex marriage, for as Paul states, in reference to Genesis 2:24:  “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’”  3) Marriage as “divine mystery” cannot be upheld by the law, at least not by the law in our modern age.  Let us ask ourselves:  Is a “divine mystery” legally definable?

 

There are, of course, other elements of Christian marriage that we must also consider:  4) Marriage is undertaken, not for the purpose of having biological children; rather it is undertaken to prevent the husband and wife from succumbing to sexual immorality by engaging in sex outside of love for, and thanksgiving to, God.  Paul commands in 1 Corinthians 7 that married men and women should not deprive each other of sex, but to the contrary, the man and the woman should yield their own bodies to the other so as to give Satan no opportunity to make them stumble.  Marriage, in the context of the church, is the making sacred of a natural desire, it is that which takes lustful bodily desire and turns this desire into a sacramental relationship reflective of the unbounded and vulnerable love between Christ and the church.  5) Marriage is not to be regarded as a covenant whereby human happiness and flourishing is made complete; the opposite is very much true.  Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 7:32-35:

I would like you to be free from concern.  An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord.  But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided.  An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs:  Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit.  But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband.  I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

But, as Paul further notes in verses 36-38:

If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants.  He is not sinning.  They should get married.  But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing.  So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.

In light of Paul’s words, it is not marriage that is the ultimate good in a life dedicated to service to God.  Singleness is the superior to marriage, for if one is single, one is always ready to serve the Lord.  Meanwhile, those who are married are limited in their ability to serve God.  Of course, marriage is not bad; Paul is not condemning marriage.  Nevertheless, even though marriage is good, singleness is best.  A proper understanding of Christian marriage cannot be had without this understanding that marriage is not to be treated as an expectation of all Christians.  As Hauerwas notes:  “If everybody has to marry, then marriage is a terrible burden.  But the church does not believe that everybody has to marry.”[5]  It has been the tradition of the church, rather, to uphold the sanctity of both marriage and virginity.  As it states in the Catholic Catechism:

Christ is the center of all Christian life.  The bond with him takes precedence over all other bonds, familial or social.  From the very beginning of the Church there have been men and women who have renounced the great good of marriage to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, to be intent on the things of the Lord, to seek to please him, and to go out to meet the Bridegroom who is coming.  Christ himself has invited certain persons to follow him in this way of life, of which he remains the model:

"For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.  He who is able to receive this, let him receive it."

Virginity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is an unfolding of baptismal grace, a powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent expectation of his return, a sign which also recalls that marriage is a reality of this present age which is passing away.

Both the sacrament of Matrimony and virginity for the Kingdom of God come from the Lord himself.  It is he who gives them meaning and grants them the grace which is indispensable for living them out in conformity with his will.  Esteem of virginity for the sake of the kingdom and the Christian understanding of marriage are inseparable, and they reinforce each other.[6]

Matrimony and virginity are both sacramental in their value, and they both are acts of worship.  The one functions as a living representation of Christ’s relationship with the church, and the other “a powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent expectation of his return.”  We cannot set aright our conception of marriage in the church, and we cannot begin to move away from pagan conceptions of the culmination of human flourishing as manifest in “finding the one,” until we have reclaimed the essence of both marriage and singleness as valid lifestyles, each with a holy signification and function in the worship of the Body.

Finally, in relation to the third problem with the current response of the church to same-sex marriage, the solution is rather straightforward though simultaneously difficult.  Same-sex marriage, in several respects, is easily highjack-able, and has been high jacked, by the media.  Same-sex marriage is such a visible issue that it is hard for the church to avoid the temptation of getting wrapped up in contentious dialogue.  Nevertheless, the church must avoid this temptation, for in the presence of more prescient and immediately at hand issues, the church has failed in its response as per the distraction of the issue of whether the state should permit same-sex couples to enter into a particular sort of legal contract.  Where is the church’s unified response to the plight of the homeless, the widows, the orphans, the unborn, and all others who are helpless to help themselves?  Moreover, where is the church in the fight against the fundamental sin of human rebellion against God?  This latter question relates directly to the root cause of what we see manifested as sexual immorality, infidelity, debauchery, and all other mistaken desires.  One cannot hope to successfully deal with homosexuality without first tackling the deeper issue of idolatry.

*******

Much of the information in this post will likely strike either a chord or a nerve in those reading it.  It will either resonate with or rub up against certain people’s preconceived notions of marriage and the debate surrounding same-sex marriage.  However, here at the end of this exploration and pursuit of a deeper understanding of Christian marriage as a sacrament of worship separate from the pagan variety enforced by the state, we still have many questions.  But the point of this exposition has not been to answer every possible question, but to help Christians to view this issue in a new way in order to facilitate new sorts of questions and a new space for dialogue.  One thing, however, is certain:  as Christians pursue a Christian response to the treatment of marriage by the non-Christian world, we must do so with a Christ-like love that welcomes the imago dei  in the sinner while concurrently disavowing the fundamental rebellion of fallen humanity.

---

[1] Hays.  The Moral Vision of the New Testament.  388. 

[2] Ibid.  388.

[3] Hauerwas.  “Abortion, Theologically Understood.”  Lifewatch.  <http://www.lifewatch.org/abortion.html>

[4] Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Part II:  The Celebration of the Christian Mystery.  Section II:  The Seven Sacraments of the Church.  Chapter III:  The Sacraments at the Service of Communion.  Article VII:  The Sacrament of Matrimony.  <http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm>

[5] Hauerwas.  “Abortion, Theologically Understood.”  Lifewatch.  <http://www.lifewatch.org/abortion.html>

[6] Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Part II:  The Celebration of the Christian Mystery.  Section II:  The Seven Sacraments of the Church.  Chapter III:  The Sacraments at the Service of Communion.  Article VII:  The Sacrament of Matrimony.  <http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm>

Abortion: Getting Mired in the Wrong Language

Stanley Hauerwas, professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, gave a lecture at the North Carolina Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church in 1990 entitled “Abortion, Theologically Understood.”[1]  In this lecture, Hauerwas discussed the issue of abortion in radical way that challenged those attending the conference to re-conceptualize the political and ethical debate surrounding abortion in the light of faith and the church.  So as to give full force to Hauerwas’s lecture, it seems appropriate to first provide the sermon that Hauerwas cited for his audience, which he then offered commentary upon.  The sermon was written by Presbyterian minister Reverend Terry Hamilton, who was a former student of Hauerwas’s.  In a manner similar to Hauerwas, I will first provide Hamilton’s sermon, after which we will consider in depth its implications.

The text for the sermon is Matthew 25:31-46.  I will be reading from the Revised Standard Version.  "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.  Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'  Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink?  And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee?  And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?'  And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'  Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'  Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?'  Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.'  And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.'" 

As a Christian and a woman, I find abortion a most difficult subject to address.  Even so, I believe that it is essential that the church face the issue of abortion in a distinctly Christian manner.  Because of that, I am hereby addressing not society in general, but those of us who call ourselves Christians.  I also want to be clear that I am not addressing abortion as a legal issue.  I believe the issue, for the church, must be framed not around the banners of 'pro-choice' or 'pro-life,' but around God's call to care for the least among us whom Jesus calls his sisters and brothers. 

So, in this sermon, I will make three points.  The first point is that the Gospel favors women and children.  The second point is that the customary framing of the abortion issue by both pro-choice and pro-life groups is unbiblical because it assumes that the woman is ultimately responsible for both herself and for any child she might carry.  The third point is that a Christian response must reframe the issue to focus on responsibility rather than rights. 

Point number one:  the Gospel favors women and children.  The Gospel is feminist.  In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus treats women as thinking people who are worthy of respect.  This was not, of course, the usual attitude of that time.  In addition, it is to the women among Jesus' followers, not to the men, that he entrusts the initial proclamation of his resurrection.  It isn't only Jesus himself who sees the Gospel making all people equal, for Saint Paul wrote, 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Galatians 3:28).

And yet, women have been oppressed through recorded history and continue to be oppressed today.  So when Jesus says, 'as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me' (Matthew 25:40), I have to believe that Jesus includes women among 'the least of these.'  Anything that helps women, therefore, helps Jesus.  When Jesus says, 'as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,' he is also talking about children, because children are literally 'the least of these.'  Children lack the three things the world values most—power, wealth, and influence.  If we concern ourselves with people who are powerless, then children should obviously be at the top of our list.  The irony of the abortion debate, as it now stands in our church and society, is that it frames these two groups, women and children, as enemies of one another. 

This brings me to my second point:  the issue as it is generally framed by both pro-choice and pro-life groups is unbiblical because it assumes that the woman is ultimately responsible both for herself and for any child she might carry.  Why is it that women have abortions?  Women I know, and those I know about, have had abortions for two basic reasons:  the fear that they cannot handle the financial and physical demands of the child, and the fear that having the child will destroy relationships that are important to them. 

An example of the first fear, the inability to handle the child financially or physically, is the divorced mother of two children, the younger of whom has Down's syndrome.  This woman recently discovered that she was pregnant.  She believed abortion was wrong.  However, the father of the child would not commit himself to help raise this child, and she was afraid she could not handle raising another child on her own. 

An example of the second fear, the fear of destroying relationships, is the woman who became pregnant and was told by her husband that he would leave her if she did not have an abortion.  She did not want to lose her husband, so she had the abortion.  Later, her husband left her anyway. 

In both of these cases, and in others I have known, the woman has had an abortion not because she was exercising her free choice but because she felt she had no choice.  In each case the responsibility for caring for the child, had she had the child, would have rested squarely and solely on the woman. 

Which brings me to my third point:  the Christian response to abortion must reframe the issue to focus on responsibility rather than rights.  The pro-choice/pro-life debate presently pits the right of the mother to choose against the right of the fetus to live.  The Christian response, on the other hand, centers on the responsibility of the whole Christian community to care for 'the least of these.' 

According to the Presbyterian Church's Book of Order, when a person is baptized, the congregation answers this question:  'Do you, the members of this congregation, in the name of the whole Church of Christ, undertake the responsibility for the continued Christian nurture of this person, promising to be an example of the new life in Christ and to pray for him or her in this new life?'  We make this promise because we know that no adult belongs to himself or herself, and that no child belongs to his or her parents, but that every person is a child of God.  Because of that, every young one is our child, the church's child to care for.  This is not an option.  It is a responsibility. 

Let me tell you two stories about what it is like when the church takes this responsibility seriously.  The first is a story that Will Willimon, the Dean of Duke University Chapel, tells about a black church.  In this church, when a teen-ager has a baby that she cannot care for, the church baptizes the baby and gives him/her to an older couple in the church that has the time and wisdom to raise the child.  That way, says the pastor, the couple can raise the teen-age mother along with the baby.  'That,' the pastor says, 'is how we do it.' 

The second story involves something that happened to Deborah Campbell.  A member of her church, a divorced woman, became pregnant, and the father dropped out of the picture.  The woman decided to keep the child.  But as the pregnancy progressed and began to show, she became upset because she felt she could not go to church anymore.  After all, here she was, a Sunday School teacher, unmarried and pregnant.  So she called Deborah.  Deborah told her to come to church and sit in the pew with the Campbell family, and, no matter how the church reacted, the family would support her.  Well, the church rallied around when the woman's doctor told her at her six-month checkup that she owed him the remaining balance of fifteen hundred dollars by the next month; otherwise, he would not deliver the baby.  The church held a baby shower and raised the money.  When the time came for her to deliver, Deborah was her labor coach.  When the woman's mother refused to come and help after the baby was born, the church brought food and helped clean her house while she recovered from the birth.  Now the woman's little girl is the child of the parish. 

This is what the church looks like when it takes seriously its call to care for 'the least of these.'  These two churches differ in certain ways: one is Methodist, the other Roman Catholic; one has a carefully planned strategy for supporting women and babies, the other simply reacted spontaneously to a particular woman and her baby.  But in each case the church acted with creativity and compassion to live out the Gospel. 

In our scripture lesson today, Jesus gives a preview of the Last Judgment.  ' Then the King will say to those at his right hand, "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me."  Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink?  And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee?  And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?"  And the King will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:34-40).  

We cannot simply throw the issue of abortion in the faces of women and say, 'You decide and you bear the consequences of your decision.'  As the church, our response to the abortion issue must be to shoulder the responsibility to care for women and children.  We cannot do otherwise and still be the church.  If we close our doors in the faces of women and children, then we close our doors in the face of Christ.[2]

It is uncommon to hear a sermon preached on a political issue, much less on an issue as inflammatory as abortion.  Hamilton’s words speak a refreshing word of truth in the debate surrounding abortion, which is a conflict steeped in polemical rhetoric by those, on the one hand, who call themselves “pro-life,” and those, on the other hand, who call themselves “pro-choice.”  In the face of this dichotomy, televised for us courtesy of the media, Hamilton offers us a new perspective.  In more ways than one, Hamilton’s sermon uproots both the pro-life and pro-choice proponents, because Hamilton argues that abortion is not fundamentally an issue of “rights,” as so many assume.  The issue, rather, is a question of “responsibility.”  More importantly, it is a question of responsibility to both the mother and the child.

It does indeed seem bazaar that, as the world has pitted the mother against the child in this debate, as if they were mortal enemies of one another, the church has participated, willingly in fact, with this absurdity.  Christ has called his church to care for the least among us, women and children included; he has not pitted the needy against one another that we should choose to help one and forsake the other.  Yet, in our society, we have managed to work ourselves through all sorts of complicated loops that permit us to make adversaries of foreign poor and native poor, women and fetuses, whites and non-whites.  The manner whereby society weaves a tale of dichotomies never ceases to astound.  The knot that we find ourselves in at the moment, the tangled mess we call a debate between “pro-lifers” and “pro-choicers,” must be unraveled, and Hauerwas offers us a good deal of help:

We must remember that the first question is not, "Is abortion right or wrong?," or, "Is this abortion right or wrong?"  Rather, the first question is,"Why do Christians call abortion abortion?"  And with the first question goes a second, "Why do Christians think that abortion is a morally problematic term?"  To call abortion by that name is already a moral achievement.  The reason why people are “Pro-choice” rather than “Pro-abortion” is that nobody really wants to be pro-abortion.  The use of choice rather than abortion is an attempt at a linguistic transformation that tries to avoid the reality of abortion, because most people do not want to use that description.  So, instead of abortion, another term is used, something like termination of pregnancy.  Now, the church can live more easily in a world with "terminated pregnancies," because in that world the church no longer claims power, even linguistic power, over that medically described part of life; instead, doctors do.[3]

And as Hauerwas notes a few paragraphs later:

You must remember that, morally speaking, the first issue is never what we are to do, but what we should see.  Here is the way it works:  you can only act in the world that you can see, and you must be taught to see by learning to say.  Again, you can only act in the world that you can see, and you must be taught to see by learning to say.  Therefore, using the language of abortion is one way of training ourselves as Christians to see and to practice its opposite—hospitality, and particularly hospitality to children and the vulnerable.  Therefore, abortion is a word that reminds us of how Christians are to speak about, to envision, and to live life—and that is to be a baptizing people which is ready to welcome new life into our communities.[4]

Christians must learn to live in a new world, with a new language.  According to Hauerwas, in this new world, parents are not just made biologically, but baptismally.  All adults, whether they have biological children of their own, whether they are married, or whether they are single, are parents for all children in the church via baptism into Christ.  Entrance into the Body of Christ remodels our world and reshapes our language.  Those whom we call family are not necessarily next of kin in a genetic sense.  To the contrary, every last member of God’s church is a close relative:  All the elderly are our grandparents, all the young adults are our parents, all our children are our sons and daughters, and all our contemporaries are our brothers and sisters.  The “nuclear” family is a misnomer in light of ecclesial allegiance.  The concept of leaving to begin a new family is a societal expectation that misdirects us from the act of coming to join an old family that has existed ever since God made a covenant with Abraham.

The church, however, does not seem to bear its responsibility to family values, true biblical family values, as it once did.  Hauerwas says he would read the following letter to students in a marriage course at Duke:

Our son had done well.  He had gone to good schools, had gone through the military, had gotten out, had looked like he had a very promising career ahead.  Unfortunately, he has joined some eastern religious sect.  Now he does not want to have anything to do with us because we are people of 'the world.'  He is never going to marry because now his true family is this funny group of people he associates with.  We are heartsick.  We don't know what to do about this.[5]

Most who hear this letter read aloud assume that this letter was written by parents whose son had joined some radical religious cult of eastern mysticism.  However, this letter was in fact written by a Roman senatorial family in the 300s AD regarding their son who had become a Christian.  And the concerns that these parents had were striking:  their son no longer associated with them, but had come to see his family as the church; their son forsook a successful career to follow Christ; their son refused to marry because his conception of family had become colored by his faith, a faith that upheld the Apostle Paul’s teaching that singleness is just as valid as, if not preferable to, marriage.  This Roman family’s son understood very clearly what Hauerwas has written contemporarily:

What it means to be the church is to be a group of people called out of the world, and back into the world, to embody the hope of the Kingdom of God.  Children are not necessary for the growth of the Kingdom, because the church can call the stranger into her midst.  That makes both singleness and marriage possible vocations.  If everybody has to marry, then marriage is a terrible burden.  But the church does not believe that everybody has to marry.  Even so, those who do not marry are also parents within the church, because the church is now the true family.  The church is a family into which children are brought and received.  It is only within that context that it makes sense for the church to say, "We are always ready to receive children. ."  The people of God know no enemy when it comes to children.[6]

*******

Yet, in the face of all this talk of family and accepting children, we have yet to contend, even briefly, with current arguments currently being waged in the “public” sphere.  It would behoove us, then, to consider a pro-choice argument that is among the most well-known and oft cited.  Judith Jarvis Thomson, who is a well-known voice in the abortion debate due to her philosophically powerful essay entitled "A Defense of Abortion," argues in a manner that is disturbingly compelling for the right of the mother to abort her child.[7]

Thomson’s pro-abortion argument hinges upon a reconsideration of the fifth premise in the following pro-life argument:  (1) the fetus is a person, (2) persons have a right to life, (3) therefore fetuses have a right to life, (4) a woman has the right to autonomy over her body, (5) the right to life always outweighs the right to bodily autonomy, (6) therefore the fetus may not be aborted. 

There are three primary circumstances wherein Thomson argues that premise (5) is invalid and thus that abortion ought to be considered a viable and acceptable option:  (1) abortion ought to be an acceptable option if the mother’s life is endangered by the pregnancy, (2) abortion also ought to be an acceptable option in the case of rape, (3) abortion further ought to be an acceptable option if, despite having taken the appropriate contraceptive measures, the woman in question becomes pregnant. 

Regarding (1), Thomson argues that “a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by the unborn child, even if doing so involves its death.”  Regarding (2), she argues that forcing a woman to endure a pregnancy that resulted from rape would mean that we are requiring her by law to be a “Good Samaritan.”  We are requiring her to go above and beyond her legal duties, which do not entail that she, or any citizen, must go out of her way to indiscriminately, or even discriminately, endure sacrifice for the sake of any other citizen.  While the law certainly does not force anyone to be a “Good Samaritan,” it further does not even dictate that anyone should be a “Minimally Decent Samaritan” either.  As Thomson argues, given the current nature of U.S. law, forcing women to endure an unwanted pregnancy would be tantamount to a “gross injustice” should those working towards making abortion unconstitutional not also be taking measures to have US law amended to force all citizens to be “Good Samaritans” in all situations generally.  Thomson’s argument for (3) runs similarly to that of (2).  If a woman has taken all necessary precautions to prevent pregnancy, it would be unconstitutional to force her to endure an unwanted pregnancy, even if consensual sex is what led to the pregnancy.

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As Christians, our response to Thomson’s pro-abortion argument need not entail a preoccupation with the language of “right to life” up and against the “right to bodily autonomy.”  We believe that life, and our bodies, are a gift from God; not things for which we have an arbitrary prerogative.  The notion that all human beings have a right to life is premised on the notion that all humans have a right to flee death.  As Christians, however, we have not been called to flee from death.  Rather, we are called to carry our cross and follow Christ.  Given that Christ’s cross led to his death, it seems only reasonable to assume that we too are marching toward our own death.  The Christian has no right to flee from death because the Christian has no “right to life.”  As Christ tells his disciples, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.” (Luke 9:24).

Hauerwas asserts:

To say that life is an overriding good is to underwrite the modern sentimentality that there is absolutely nothing in this world worth dying for.  Christians know that Christianity is simply extended training in dying early.  That is what we have always been about.  Listen to the Gospel!  I know that today we use the church primarily as a means of safety, but life in the church actually involves extended training in learning to die early…

…Christians do not believe that life is a right or that we have inherent dignity.  Instead we believe that life is the gift of a gracious God.  That is our primary Christian language regarding abortion:  life is the gift of a gracious God.  As part of the giftedness of life, we believe that we ought to live in a profound awe of the other's existence, knowing in the other we find God.  So abortion is a description maintained by Christians to remind us of the kind of community we must be to sustain the practice of hospitality to life.  That is related to everything else that we do and believe.[8]

Though Thomson rightly indicates that there are no laws in this country that force anyone to be a “Good Samaritan,” we as Christians are subject to a different standard than that enforced by “civil society.”  In the Kingdom of God, each and all have been given the responsibility to live as “Good Samaritans.”  We especially have a responsibility to take care of the least among us.  The church is meant to be a self-giving, self-expending community; it is not meant to be an amalgam of isolated individuals who each have rights to life and autonomy.  The church must recognize that the national and state-level debate regarding abortion is spoken in the language used by Thomson:  the language, and thus the world, of rights, constitutionality, and law.  By the principles of this language, the standard anti-abortion position cannot, I think, maintain its ground for long.  Thomson’s argument is compelling, and, given the current nature of US law, her argument seems superior to the argument that abortion is unconstitutional. 

The church, however, does not have to concern itself with “constitutionality” or the infringement of “rights,” which supposedly belong to autonomous individuals.  Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, as indicates Hauerwas, the issue for the church has nothing to do with “when” life begins but rather the “hope that life has begun.”  The question of “when,” according to Hauerwas, is an issue for “legalists,” who incidentally enough must wrestle with the question of how to avoid doing something wrong.  This legalistic concern contrasts sharply with the decidedly Christian concern regarding how to do right.

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As we consider Hauerwas’s lecture on abortion, we must not fail to recognize an important element of his argument:  that the issue of abortion cannot be placed truly in the right context until we have moved away from making abortion a female issue only and have made it an issue of male promiscuity and responsibility as well.  In regard to teen pregnancy in particular, Hauerwas notes:

Until we speak clearly on male promiscuity, we will simply continue to make the problems of teen-age pregnancy and abortion female problems.  Males have to be put in their place.  There is no way we as a church can have an authentic voice without this clear witness.[9]

Compassion, too, is a notion that the church cannot fail to wrestle with.  Those who support pro-choice often do so in the name of “compassion” for the mother, but such a concern is based upon a misguided sense of what compassion really entails. 

Too often we assume compassion means preventing suffering and think that we ought to prevent suffering even if it means eliminating the sufferer.  In the abortion debate, the church's fundamental challenge is to challenge this ethics of compassion.  There is no more fundamental issue than that.  People who defend abortion defend it in the name of compassion.  "We do not want any unwanted children born into the world," they say.  But Christians are people who believe that any compassion that is not formed by the truthful worship of the true God cannot help but be accursed.  That is the fundamental challenge that Christians must make to this world.[10]

Concern for compassion, too, can lead to other sorts of misguided understandings of “want.”  Hauerwas indicates a common response from his students regarding the question:  Why have children?

[His students] would say, "We want to have children in order to make the world a better place."  And by that, they think that they ought to have a perfect child.  And then you get into the notion that you can have a child only if you have everything set—that is, if you are in a good "relationship," if you have your finances in good shape, the house, and so on.  As a result, of course, we absolutely destroy our children, so to speak, because we do not know how to appreciate their differences.

Now who knows what we could possibly want when we "want a child"?  The idea of want in that context is about as silly as the idea that we can marry the right person.  That just does not happen.  Wanting a child is particularly troubling as it finally results in a deep distrust of mentally and physically handicapped children.  The crucial question for us as Christians is what kind of people we need to be to be capable of welcoming children into this world, some of whom may be born disabled and even die.[11]

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When it comes to abortion, all manner of tangled knots have served to bind the Christian imagination.  Talk of “right to life” versus the “right to bodily autonomy,” talk of “compassion,” and talk of “want” are nothing but Red Herrings.  To truly respond to this issue, the church must re-conceptualize its world and language to the tune of ecclesial solidarity and, in the process, learn to separate itself from the world and language of “secular” society.  An appeal to Christian allegiances must necessarily guide Christians as they consider how to behave as members of the Christian polis in political space in response to abortion.

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[1] Hauerwas.  “Abortion, Theologically Understood.”  Lifewatch.  <http://www.lifewatch.org/abortion.html>

[2] Hamilton qtd. in Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971).  (Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.