MINISTERIAL MUSINGS: “Choose Life”
This piece is much more controversial than what I usually write in this column, but I feel the need to get these thoughts out on paper.
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). This is one of the verses that the Pro-Life movement employs; it was one of the verses that an evangelist recently recited to me as he distributed anti-abortion literature (which included graphic images of aborted fetuses) in downtown Cleveland.
Before the steam rises from your ears, nota bene: if you are Pro-Life, fine; if you are Pro-Choice, fine. This article does not seek to engage in that debate; that is not my intention.
After thumbing through the salvation salesman’s pamphlet, I asked him what his position was on the death penalty. He said, “The Bible says ‘an eye for an eye’ so I am for it.” I then asked him to share his views on war. “If you mean the War in Iraq,” he said, “I am definitely in favor of it. This war is helping us spread the Christian message and our way of life around the world!”
I expected that he would respond that way.
Many (though certainly not all) of the Pro-Life people I have encountered are also in favor of capital punishment and war, especially when the latter is advanced under the banner of the American flag, which they equate with the cross of Christ. Call it Constantinianism or Manifest Destiny gone amok. Either way, you get my point.
Are religious doctrines that are used to advocate for the sanctity of life reserved strictly to a woman’s uterus? Are not the lives of the young men and women called to bear arms — not to mention the civilian casualties that inevitably lie in the wake of combat — also sacred? And why do we continually quote the three “eye for an eye” commandments in the Torah, but turn a blind eye to the clemency-laden teachings of Jesus, such as “I desire mercy not sacrifice,” “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” and dare we forget Christ’s response to the mob who wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Jesus valued life…all life.
Is this not an ethic for us all to endorse?
I do not know a single Pro-Choice advocate who is Pro-Abortion. The issue for them is about a woman’s right to chose and to not allow the government to interfere with an individual’s reproductive rights. Believe it or not, you can chose not to have an abortion yourself, but feel as if this delicate and complex decision needs to be determined by each person in a country that advocates freedom for all.
What baffles me is the itinerant preacher I met, who claims that abortion is the killing of human life, but that the life of the individual on death row or on the battlefield is not as sacred. I do not understand this quandary at all.
As God spoke to the Israelites through Moses and Aaron, so God is still speaking to us. We are called to choose life by honoring the dignity and the sanctity of all people, not just some.
The Rev. John Tamilio III is the Religion Columnist for The Lakewood Observer and the Senior Pastor of Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ in Tremont. He can be reached at johnt@pilgrimalive.org. JT3 lives in Lakewood with his wife and their three children.