Can the good people of the earth agree that life matters? Can that be a value we agree on?
If we don’t, does that mean we can identify those who are
not the good people of the earth and who are? Maybe so. Then the question
is, is that a permanent designation?
We had both Holocaust Remembrance Day and the annual March
for Life this past week. I’m looking at both today.
Tyranny Devalues Human Life
image from Sen. Ted Cruz, found here
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whenever there’s a
tyrannical power setting up a “utopia,” where they rule and you of course don’t,
but where you’re nevertheless supposed to be grateful, because they’re
promising free stuff and no worries, that regime favors depopulation.
China is a textbook example, with its Maoist cultural
revolution, murdering the educated or troublesome. Then add to that their
longtime one-child policy, to keep the population down. But Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and others also seem to have had no qualms about the death of their own citizens.
They act as if it is self-evident that taking care of fewer
people makes more sense.
They fail to notice that wealth is created when people are
free and civilized—and that “the earth is the Lord’s and fullness thereof,”[i]
so wealth is essentially unlimited. Instead, they claim, “All resources are scarce,
and more won’t be found or created, so we must decide who is most deserving.”
And of course, those they deem to be deserving are those who are subservient to
them and support their regime.
Central planners supposedly know everything—except what is
best for individuals, and how to make society better for any other than the
elites. They want workers to produce what they order, but not to cost them
upkeep. Too much bother.
Since we disagree with them, and since we are not among the
elites, we are slated for elimination. At first it’s ideological—silencing.
Then it’s preventing the dissidents (us) from basic ways of self-sustaining: earning,
buying, selling. Then it’s withholding life necessities: medical care, food,
shelter.
If we die, all the better for those who remain. They’ll be
more compliant, and there will be fewer of them to divide those limited
resources among. All the better for the tyrants.
This is the playbook of every socialist/communist regime so far: murder their own people; overtake other nations to enslave them.
 |
| Hendrik Jakobs, executed in 1945 for hiding Jews in his home, great-grandfather of wildlife artist Carel Brest van Kempen. Image from here. |
On January 27th, for Holocaust Remembrance Day, a
Facebook friend shared a photo of his great-grandfather, Hendrik Jakobs, who
was executed in 1945, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, for hiding
Jews in his home. My friend reminds us of:
The most important lesson of the Holocaust: that it was not
perpetrated by monsters, but by normal people who loved their country and their
families and believed that they were working in their interest. Never again!
In the 20th Century, we said, “Never again.” But
the socialists of the 21st Century step up and say, “Hold my beer.”
They aren’t different. They aren’t better informed or more
qualified than the controlling elites who caused the holocaust and the other
atrocities of the past century; they are identical, but have added technology
to their toolkit.
I’d really like to know why less human life is their goal,
and yet people buy into that. It ought to be self-evident that more human life
is something the human species ought to want. It was at our nation’s founding:
WE hold
these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men [all humans] are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.—Declaration of
Independence
Life is mentioned first. The others stem from life. If
someone takes your liberty, that is depriving you of living your life as you
choose. If they steal your property, that is depriving you of the fruits of
your labors—which was how you spent your life, so it is theft of the portion of
your life that it took to accrue that property.
Evil Devalues Unborn Life
I think it is a basic identifier between good and evil, to
see whether someone values life, particularly innocent life.
If you don’t value human life, then you do not qualify as a
good person.
However, among those on the wrong side are people who have been blinded and deceived, people who would choose to be on the side of good, if they knew where to find it. That’s why God is the ultimate judge, not us.
 |
| Stephanie Gray Connors, author of Love Unleashes Life screenshot from ProlifeCon Digital Action Summit 2021 |
January 29th was the annual (and this year
virtual) March for Life. I was listening to the ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit 2021 online last weekend
and heard a conversation with Stephanie Gray Connors, author of Love
Unleashes Life. Connors says she noticed, while teaching the science behind
the pro-life side, that a lot of students weren’t accepting it. She wondered
why there was resistance to basic facts:
I started asking questions like, “How did you come to your
viewpoint?” or “Where does your passion come from?” or “Do you know anyone who’s
had an abortion?” And what I discovered is, these students started revealing to
me their personal life experiences that involved profound pain, deep suffering,
great woundedness. You know, living in poverty, growing up getting food on food
stamps. Victims of abuse. Victims of rape and so on and so forth. And I started
to see that often there was resistance to the logic of the pro-life perspective
if there was an emotional wall up because of personal suffering or pain.
So that helped me see that, as logical as I needed to be, I
also needed to have a heart for the person that I was encountering, and really
needed to convey that I loved them as much as I loved pre-born children. And
the viewpoint I held is not just for the good of the pre-born child, but is
also for their good—that they will flourish in a world where all humans are respected.
And so, the more I focused on meeting that person in their
pain, hearing their story, and really listening to their needs and concerns,
that, if they sensed I truly cared for them, they became more receptive to
embracing the pro-life perspective.
She offers a couple of examples, one of a single mom,
struggling financially. Once Connors stopped to listen, the woman opened up, and
once they connected, she was more receptive. Another was a young man raised by
a single mother in poverty who admitted he supported abortion to keep others
from suffering what he had gone through. Their use of abortion as the answer is
wrong. But understanding where they’re coming from helps when you offer an
alternative.
According to Emily Berning of the nonprofit Let Them Live, 73% of women have
abortions because of financial reasons; they’re pregnant and unmarried and don’t
have the resources to raise a child. This nonprofit takes donations to help
women through the crisis so that they feel free to choose life. They’re trying
to give the message, “Yes, we care about you every bit as much as we care about
the life of that unborn child.”
On the other side, what is the message? As Obama said, you
shouldn’t be “punished with a baby.” There’s so much wrong with that. What did
the baby do to become a punishment? Nothing. What did the young woman do to
cause the pregnancy? Outside the small number related to rape, she had sex
voluntarily with someone who wasn’t permanently committed to her or to any
resulting children. A mistake? Yes. But it’s not a little oops, like stepping
on someone’s shoe or bumping an elbow. It doesn’t happen inadvertently. Why,
then, do so many make that mistake? Because of another message from the
non-life side, that sex is both a right and something you can’t or shouldn’t
deny yourself, and therefore it should not come with consequences attached.
This message denies both human biology and psychology.
What if the message was a very clear, “Sex is for after marriage,
after the permanent commitment is already made, so that you and the father of
any child can work together to take care of the child, and also help take care
of you during pregnancy and the raising of the child”? What if a young girl
understood that she was worth respecting? That using her for sex was not an
expression of love unless the commitment was already given? Without commitment,
it’s only selfish lust. She deserves better.
But to receive better, she has to understand her worth and
protect her value. In a healthy society, she gets that understanding from her
family, her church, her friends, and societal institutions—school, entertainment,
businesses. But this is not a healthy society.
The world has been failing her by lying to her, making her
feel she could never be loved if she didn’t give sex to a potential partner. She
shouldn’t want what is natural and right for a woman to want—permanent partnership
with a caring man who will be a good husband and father.
If she’s already in the crisis, helping her get through it
so she can choose life is the first concern. Then, beyond that, it is
recovering her sense of worth, so she can go ahead with life, making a new path
in which she chooses only what will actually bring her permanent familial love.
It takes a shift in society’s way of thinking. There is no
either/or between (a) getting rid of the consequences to get rid of the crisis,
or (b) saying, “You should have known better,” and failing to help. The actual
alternative is to offer real loving kindness and a better path forward.
Are the two parts of today’s post really separate? I think
this approach to understanding those on the anti-life side—learning what is
causing their emotional pain that is getting in the way of reason—is worth
trying related to abortion. That is, if you can get the opportunity for a rational
conversation.
But can it also work to understand the anti-life side who
favor tyranny? I don’t know if it can work on those who seek the power for
themselves—the actual tyrants. But it might work for those who are falling for
the tyrants’ lies about life getting better if you just submit to them. Again, getting
the opportunity for rational conversation is another challenge altogether.
What troubles me is the responsibility this approach seems
to put on those on the side of civilization to be greater than we know how to
be. The only way we can do that is daily religious practice, allowing God’s
spirit to guide us with the right words and actions in the moments we need
them.[ii]
But, then, that’s how we do any good that we do. So let’s keep praying for some
miraculous help.
Extra Reading
· “’Unborn Lives Matter': N.C.'s 1st Black Lt.
Gov. Compares Abortion to Slavery” by Michael Foust for Christian Headlines,
Jan. 26, 2021.
· “Honduras Makes Its Abortion Ban Permanent: ‘All Human Beings Have a Right to Life’” by Micaiah Bilger for Life News,
Feb. 1, 2021.
No comments:
Post a Comment