Life, Death, and Dominion – Part II: Hypocrisy, Hypnotism, & Hyperbole

February 26, 2009 | Posted by Steve

NOTE:  This has been sitting in the “Draft” bin for a long, long time.  I had forgotten it until just today.  This is the conclusion of a multi-part series begun during the presidential election cycle of 2008.  I hope you find it useful even though it is somewhat less timely.)

(This is Part III of a multi-part series on the emotionally-charged topic of abortion.  Please read “Part I:  The Journey Begins”, and “Part II: ”…But for the Grace of God…” for important background material.)

Working in the world of advertising and marketing for 14 years taught me a few things about the power of persuasaion.  Tell a story long enough, loud enough, and frequently enough and eventually people will start to believe your message.

The battle over abortion rights is about “choice.”

The battle over abortion rights is about “life.”

Somehow I think it is ultimately about neither.

Somehow I think the abortion debate is really about something more sinister and cynical.  Our fixations on “choice” or “life” play right into the hands of people for whom abortion is about something altogether more greedy.

Power.

For many, the fleshly football that is the unborn child has become more symbol than symbiot.  It represents more a point to score and a power position to be won than a real life with long-term responsibility attached.

To be sure, there are some on both sides of the debate who fall into the category of “true believer,” unwilling to dialog and unwilling to step into the shoes of the person sitting across the table from them. Over time they have become the lightening rods for their strident followers. You know who these people are; they bomb clinics.  They find ways to shuttle pregnant women into a clinic that is under seige more to make a point (they could go elsewhere) than to provide critical “care.”

It is the notion that the true believers are more narcissistically manipulative than genuine that leaves me feeling as if there is something creepily seditious hidden in the cracks and crevices of the raging abortion debate.  Something about the polarization between “life” and “choice” feels as if it is the quintessential red herring, drawing us away from an even more emotionally charged and ponderously difficult reality.  Every day I consider the events going on in the world around us I see evil forces at work, and not just on the side of those who are ostensibly the “murderers” in the equation.

We in the Christian community unconsciously free ourselves from a broader reality of moral accountability.  We pat ourselves on our collective back about the good we are doing fighting against abortion (or homosexuality, for that matter), ignoring our imperative to practice a much broader, more socially engaged form of morality that includes outreach to the homeless, the infirm, and the disenfranchised.

Fixating on the words “life” frees us in the pro-life lobby to ignore a whole host of more difficult spiritual matters that must be considered an intertwined part of the Christian walk.  Fixating on the word “choice” frees those in the pro-abortion lobby from the moral weight of the frequently immoral choices that pushed a woman to the point of needing to exercise her “choice.”

For we Christians, lost in the battle over abortion is the reality that Christ spent more time clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and caring for widows and orphans than eradicating murder.

This is not to say that Jesus wouldn’t care about abortion.  I am sure He does. I am certain Jesus would do his best to eradicate abortion if he were walking this earth today in the temporal form.

Jesus would do it differently, though, compared to the tactics employed by many of the picketers at today’s murder-for-hire emporiums and Planned Parenthood depots of death.  Jesus would be the lone soul sitting behind a table draped with the banner, “There is a better way, please let me help.”  Picketers with photos of dead, mangled babies spray painted with the words “murderer” or “baby killer” across them would swirl venomously as the lone Christ set the example for a more peaceful, spiritually powerful way out for the woman or girl in crisis.

I am convinced that, for Jesus, abortion would be but one of many moral issues with which he would force us to reckon.  I am equally convinced that Christ would have spent more time sitting with the abortionists and reasoning with them them than picketing them and pipe-bombing them.

As I ponder the fallout of this cycle of political pandering to the “base” of either party, I am drawn yet again to the conclusion that we are the puppets and we are letting others pull our strings.  If we were truly the Christians we say we are, would we not walk up to the front door of the abortion clinic and ask a simple question…?

“What can we do together to cut down on this sad waste of life?”

Yes, some aspects of Barack Obama’s platform scare me.  I see through the charade that is “releasing funds” to organizations that provide abortion counseling in other countries.  But I know what I am getting with Obama.  He is not the friendliest candidate in the field when it comes to anti-abortion sentiment.  Knowing that about him, though, gives me the equipment I need to fight him through the political process should that time come.

For now I will choose to look beyond the inflammatory rhetoric to accept my responsibility to change each life I encounter, one life at a time.  I will choose to give myself a healthy distance from the spin-meisters in both political parties and wrestle through not just the moral weight of abortion, homosexuality, and other hot-potato litmus test topics, but the full moral weight of caring for the less fortunate.

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