Is The Abortion Debate A Microcosm Of The Incivility Of Our Society?

The new Alabama law on abortion has made the issue of abortion a very hot topic now. On the pro-choice side, we have memes showing a vast hypocrisy of many, not all, of those who oppose the legalization of elective abortion. Those memes describe how hypocritical it is for opponents of elective abortion when they do not also demonstrate the same care for children who are born as they do for the unborn. And those memes speak an inconvenient truth about many opponents of elective abortion who also show little to no concern for the children of asylum seekers who are locked up in cages. That inconvenient truth is that these opponents of elective abortion are unable to credibly claim that they care about children.

But if we take the converse of those memes, isn't another hypocrisy revealed? For how can one claim that they care about children regardless of their sincere concern for children of immigrants when they allow for the killing of those in the womb. After all, it isn't the children of immigrants who might infringe on the freedom of a woman to pursue a career or who could cause great distress in the taking care of the child if born, it is those in the womb.

The combination of the memes with their converses give a modern illustration of Jesus's parable of the two men praying (click here for the source):

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

It seems that both sides have forever been mirror grumbling at each other as the Pharisee grumbled about the tax collector. And that grumbling serves the purpose of causing onlookers to regard the issue as not worth their interest and effort. Thus we have what seems like a forever stalemate. And it is the political parties that use their respective groups on this issue who truly benefit from the stalemate. For each political party knows that for as long as they can portray themselves as either supporting or opposing the legalization of elective abortion, they can slide on so many other issues.

But if we looked at those in the abortion debate who keep accusing their opponents of hypocrisy as the only ones to whom Jesus's parable applies, then we have leaped without looking into the role of the Pharisee in the parable. For whenever we speak against some injustice without remembering the times where we have been unjust to others, we have passionately embraced the role of the Pharisee. For the point of Jesus's parable is that because we are all sinners, we can't afford to look down on others.

There is a solution to enabling fruitful discussions about the abortion issue. That solution is to be an advocate for either the pro-choice side or the anti-elective abortion side as the tax collector from the parable. So instead of touting our own moral superiority because we have chosen the right side of that issue, we become more and more connected with our failures and sins. That is because the more we are connected with our failures and sins, the more tolerant we will be with those with whom we disagree. And the more tolerant we are with those with whom we disagree, the more we will listen to them even if listening to them never changes anyone's mind.







 

The Clash Of Ironies

What America is plagued with today is war between the Immoral Right vs the Intolerant Left. This is the clash of ironies.

Btw, I hasten to add that my use of the term 'Left' is breaking one of my cardinal rules here. For I have always distinguished between Liberals and Leftists. But in the context of this discussion, the distinction does not necessarily hold.

Why is the battle between the Immoral Right and the Intolerant Left a class of ironies. It is simply because the conservatives have for a long time portrayed themselves as champions of moral values whereas the Left has portrayed itself as champions of tolerance--especially tolerance of the marginalized. And what do we see today? We see that because many conservatives have reduced the pro-life label to that of opposing abortion, it has embraced the breaking of other moral values such as the murder and theft that occurs in our wars and interventions as well as in our domestic policies that favor the wealthy over all others. And when Christians do this, they show a flagrant disregard for Church history. For in the past, when Christians, especially Christian leaders, align themselves with wealth and power, as they did just prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, they brought unnecessary persecution on the Church and greatly damaged the reputation of the Gospel.

Likewise, as the Left has often portrayed itself as champions of tolerance, quite lately it has shown itself to be highly intolerant of  free speech for conservatives. Here we should note that conservatives do have a significant amount to contribute to our nation's discussions on issues. However, the Left has used specific points of conservative hypocrisy and bad history to portray conservatives as a monolithic group. 

The American Left has no excuse for the above behavior because one of its past champions is Martin Luther King Jr. And painting an opposing group as a monolith and then not allowing them to say their peace in public is not something that King would do. But then again, today's Left, is, for the most part, devoid of any disciplined study of King. And with that, the Left has joined conservatives in making any remembrance of King merely superficial, symbolic, and self-serving.

Unfortunately because the Left is correct in accusing the Right of immorality and the Right is correct in accusing the Left of intolerance, they both have an extra reason for ignoring the charges being brought against them besides the plague of tribalism. That those legitimate charges against the other has destroyed the ability of the members of each group from engaging in self-criticism.

Neither group can win this clash. For in fighting each other while denying the truth about themselves, it is the rest of us who turn out to be losers. That is because such fighting turns too many of us off from even wanting to learn about the issues promoted by each group. And because each group also has valid concerns, when we ignore the concerns of one or both group, we only ensure that we will be ignorant of our own demise until it is too late.

Of course there is one more irony. That in the land of the free and the home of the brave, that we seem to stuck in our ways to adapt to an ever changing future.





 

The Pro-Life Hypocrisy Of The GOP

Being pressed for time because of a busy schedule, it is useful to write this review on an article that is a must read and needs little to no further explanation. John Pavlovitz (click here for his short self description) on how the GOP is political party that is not really interested in being pro-life. Rather, that political party's concern for human life outside of the womb shows the duplicity of its claim to be pro-life.

If the GOP is not pro-life, then what is it? Pavlovitz describes it perfectly in the following sentence (click here for the article):

The unborn are easy to advocate for because you can idealize them into something palatable to you, something benign and comfortable, something in your own image.

Pavlovitz concisely and correctly points out the inconsistencies between the GOP's pro-life claims, which, btw, are based solely on its stand against abortion, with its lack of concern for the lives of others, especially those of non-whites. This selective approach of choosing which victims to defend is an age-old undertaking. It consists of helping only those one can canonize as being guiltless. Perhaps that is one reason why groups from the poor to immigrants to Black Lives Matter to Palestinians and others do not merit any sympathy from the GOP. For faults can be found in each of those groups. And for as long as the GOP can be associated with protecting little angels, they have a lock on the votes of many a ignorant religiously conservative  Christian voter. 

Because faults can be found in most other groups of victims, there remains not compelling reason to do what requires the most energy of any human task: to change. Thus, doing something to save the lives of those other than unborn children is not necessary for many a religiously conservative Christian. That is because changing might mean abandoning materialistic riches or admitting sins. So being able to find faults in victims excuses many of these Christians from changing.

I won't say anything else about the article. There are a couple of minor points he makes with which I could disagree. But Pavlovitz's article is one of the best articles I've read and I prefer people reading his article instead reading whatever insights I could offer.


 

Powers And Merritt Got It Right But Could Have Said More

In an article (click here) that put the panties of many of us Conservative Christians in a bunch, Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt got it right regarding Christian businesspeople who refuse to provide public services for same-sex weddings. How did they get it right? They got it right by pointing out that businesses that provide services for same-sex weddings are not necessarily "affirming" those weddings and they got it right when they showed the hypocrisy of Christian businesspeople who refuse to provide public services for same-sex weddings but provide the same services for other unbiblical weddings. 

But why did they have to address this subject in the first place? This blog has pointed out that Christians have been waging war against gays (click here). In addition, Christians, in trying to point out the seriousness of the sin of homosexuality, have exaggerated the differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals (click here) and this fuels Christian animosity toward gays. At the same time, Christians are rather silent about larger sins such as our nation's wars and interventions, the wealth disparity and exploitation that comes from our economic system and classism, and America's part in destroying the environment and condemning  future generations to much suffering. 

So, why are the Christians who so vociferously oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriages so silent about past and present actions that either take, threaten, or harm millions of lives in this country and around the world? There are multiple answers, some of which are complex, and one of which says it is because they benefit from that which they should protest.

There is another point to be made here about the Conservative Christian reaction to the article written by Powers and Merritt. The way these Conservative Christians are approaching this issue shows that they are suffering from a Mr. Magoo degree of myopia (click here). They can only see themselves; they cannot see the effects of their decisions on others. They are blind to the ramifications of denying public services to a specified group. These consequences, when applied outside of weddings as consistency would demand and which are pointed out by Powers and Merritt, would lead to another Jim Crow and we have enough of them already (click here).

The cause for this spiritual myopia so often found in Conservative Christians is the emphasis they put on their own personal holiness. What follows this attention is a hyper-vigilance on one's own spiritual state. At the same time how one's actions affects others is hardly noticed. In addition, social sins, which are sins committed by groups, barely receive any attention. We could liken all of the self-focus on one's own personal holiness to a mirror at which one constantly stares to check for flaws. The more one focuses on one's own holiness and purity or zeros in on one's own spiritual flaws, the bigger the mirror becomes. But as the mirror grows, the more it obstructs one's view of the world around them. Thus, eventually, one cannot even see one's neighbor let alone love them. This is why Christians misinterpret the expected push back from gays as either persecution or attempts at control. This is also partially why Christians can have such strong reactions to the sexual sins of their neighbors while maintaining a laissez-faire attitude to the sins of one's own nation, political party, economic class, race, or even religion. For the Conservative Christian, it is all about one's own spiritual state. 

Some of the reactions of Conservative Christians to homosexuals and same-sex marriages serve as further confirmation to the suspicion of some that Conservative Christians are backwards thinking people. Those, who harbor this suspicion, add that part of the puzzle to how some of us insist that the world is merely a few thousand years old to our belief that our consumerism and lifestyle could never possibly harm the environment in order to take a snapshot of us. And that picture is not only repulsive, it shows that we have the potential of posing a threat to others. 

It is time for us to realize that many of the criticisms we receive are not instances of persecution or rejection of the Gospel. Rather, they are the world's way of trying to hold a non-magical mirror in front of us so we can see what we really look like. Powers and Merritt are doing just that by taking on the refusal of Christian businesspeople to provide services for same-sex weddings while demonstrating no qualms over providing the same services for other unbiblical weddings.