Is the Problem Planned Parenthood, or You?

This Topic...

Generally speaking I keep this blog politics free. However I don't consider abortion to be a political issue but a moral and spiritual one which plays out symptomatically on the political field due to its nature. It's a huge problem here in Taiwan as well, where even a higher percentage of babies are aborted than in the U.S.

I'm seeing a lot of disputed figures being thrown around regarding the Planned Parenthood debacle, of which I'm sure most people reading this will be aware. "The facts" in this case seem to differ depending on who is citing them, to an even greater extent than usual, and everyone from Congressmen on the Right to FB friends on the Left seem to stumble as they pick their information based on ideologically friendly sources which are focused on polemic over accuracy.

But while anyone with a functioning conscience rightly recoils in horror at what was going on with what they call "tissue donation" (like calling what the Nazis did "mortality research"), to me the most troubling aspect is that what they are doing is apparently legal. Regardless of whether Planned Parenthood is federally defunded or not, that must change. One of the sickest aspects of the whole affair is that Planned Parenthood defended themselves not by explaining that of course they weren't carving up living babies in the womb for their parts, but by clarifying how they were handling the funds involved in doing so. Yet as obvious as it seems to me and many of you that such things should be considered unspeakable atrocities, let alone very illegal, many people rise up bristling in anger when one suggests it. Why is that?

1. The Underlying Issue

The philosophical flashpoint around which the whole issue revolves is the question of personhood. Even a lot of abortion advocates believe human life begins at conception. They don't consider it murder to end that life, however, because they consider it human life in merely an abstract sense, not a person deserving of rights and protection in our society. To them, tending also to be involved in women's movements, a woman is a person, in fact a person of a social class that has been previously mistreated and deserves special protection, and the "fetus" is not. Therefore subjugating a woman's rights to that of an unborn lump of tissue is wrong in several ways at the same time, in their eyes, and they react to that prospect with rage and indignation which they consider righteous.

Now if you believe living people have souls, as all Christians do, and that life begins at conception, then you must logically believe that either there is a human soul united to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception, or that there is a human life with genetic information already supplied by both parents to which a soul is united at some unknown point in the womb. (Scripture does not offer specifics, though logic suggests conception as the most plausible option)

In either case, there is not some kind of benchmark for the progress of physical and mental formation that can serve as a definitive precursor to personhood. I personally believe the human soul exists from the outset, as the physical person and mind designed to match perfectly with it develop in the womb and beyond (Psalm 139:13-16). And if the soul exists from conception, then we must call it a person from that point, even if the fullness of personhood has not yet manifested itself. It has not yet done so in a toddler or teenager either, for that matter, but is a continual process from conception to death and beyond. We are people from the very beginning, and becoming more human all along. (Indeed, the fullness of our humanity as God intended it will not be known until we taste life after death. Only Jesus is truly, fully human, the Firstborn from among the dead.)

If, however, you do not believe living people have souls, and thus consider personhood to require having attained a certain level of physical development with a certain level of brain function, etc., you will be open to persuasion regarding exactly what point personhood is achieved. Certainly an unaware, tiny mote of tissue is not going to seem like a person yet. Even an embryo which is aware of outside stimuli, has taken on human appearance, and recognizes the voices of its parents might not make the cut. Some people, like the infamous Peter Singer and others, take this even farther and suggest birth should not necessarily confer personhood either, since new babies are not fully sentient, brains still rapidly developing, and aren't really people yet according to their stricter definition. (Since most people think emotionally more than rationally, they consider this "horrible" without ever stopping to realize it's just an extension of their own definition of personhood. Where do you draw the line? If nothing is sacred, why should the mere act of passing through the birth canal be so special that it suddenly confers full personhood that did not exist two minutes earlier? Because we adults can see the baby now? Because the amniotic fluid is now replaced by the thinner fluid of our breathable atmosphere?That seems quite arbitrary with regards to the child itself.)

A soul waits as its body and mind develop

2. The Great Impasse

So we have a conundrum. People who believe in the human soul and people who reject that concept are going to have a deep and fundamental disagreement on abortion, which is exactly what we see. It's easy to point to the more strident and offensive members of both sides (though you'll note the millions of deaths are all on one side), and claim that's who you are fighting against. It's easy to throw out various scientific data as well. But the issue at heart is not of science, but of philosophy and faith, because questions like "When is a human a person?" "Do humans have souls?" cannot be answered by scientific inquiry.

Since people do have souls, abortion in most cases should be outlawed as murder, as the developing embryo is a person. Indeed, if human life begins at conception, as a plurality on both sides of the controversy acknowledge, and if the soul is present from that point, then even emergency contraception, the so-called "morning after pills," etc., may represent the forcible separation of both parents' genetic information from the soul, which counts as ending a life. (It has been pointed out that many fertilized eggs fail to implant on their own. Well yes... in our world today, all souls experience physical death via natural causes at some point. But acting intentionally to ensure that this takes place sooner rather than later is called... murder)

However, you are probably not going to convince many people who believe neither in God nor the human soul that the developing human is a person at such an early stage of development. Not necessarily because it conflicts with their own interests, though this is often the case, but also because the very nature of the question of the existence of a soul makes it a foundational aspect of one's worldview. In other words, both believers in and doubters of the soul would be required to destroy and then rebuild most of their ideas about humanity to admit they are wrong.

So you will have, and do have, the Church grieving an ongoing, legal, mass infanticide while Humanist groups deny anything of the sort is taking place, or that it would be wrong if it were (because if there is no God, human society collectively figures out what is good for humanity).

3. What Can Be Done?

Currently, it appears there are only two options for stopping this generational slaughter:

1) You manage to be loud enough and insistent enough to get it banned despite many people not agreeing with your basic logic behind the ban. We do live in a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease democracy now, for better or worse (mostly worse), so that approach can work if enough people get stirred up. That's exactly what has happened with some Republican congressmen on this issue just recently; enough of their base were fired up enough about the horrible, true revelations regarding some of Planned Parenthood's activities that they felt the pressure to take action on it and vote against the spending bill on that issue alone.

So this approach has been tried, does work to some extent, and as abortion becomes more and more emotionally distasteful with new technology that allows people to see just how human preborn humans look and act (and are), there may be some traction. Also, many political approaches have foolishly taken an "all or nothing" approach in the past. It doesn't make any sense to reject bans that make exceptions for rape, etc., as "compromised" when what you have now is nothing. Saving some babies now would be an excellent first step towards saving the rest.

However, this kind of ban is a shaky victory, which usually doesn't last. It's achieved with the aid of public sentiment, which can just as easily swing back in the other direction years later, and the Church is not nearly as good at being loud and insistent as many secular advocacy groups. We are about Christ's business, or should be, and while the people of any free nation should be concerned with its right governance, that is not the primary responsibility of the Church. Which leads me to the second method...

2) You convince the majority of people, or an influential enough plurality, that people really do have souls. Then, convinced that preborn humans are people too, a ban on killing pre-born people would logically follow. Most people aren't trained to think logically, but they're pretty good at being uncomfortable when something seems morally iffy. If they even strongly suspect an unborn baby is a soul waiting to be born, abortion is going to sound alarmingly like what it actually is.

This talk of the soul would have been more difficult in the age of Modernism, but with Post-Modernism we have found that as our understanding of the universe increases, some things we were sure about before become less certain. We used to "know" there can't be an immortal soul because we couldn't ping it with any scientific instruments and get a measurable response back (actually even that may not be strictly true); now people are much more open to things being out there that are accessible in ways which present difficulties for the scientific method. (not to speak of the current prevailing deterministic materialism in the world of scientific academia which they stubbornly conflate with science itself--an unwitting tribute to philosophy)

So though many gallons of Church ink have been spilled bewailing generations educated to believe there is no absolute truth, at the same time post-modernist ideas have actually removed some significant barriers to evangelism. The Church could be making great headway if we began to engage our culture from our real position of richness in Truth and epistemological strength in Christ and the Scriptures, instead of turning it on its head and trying somehow to be of the world but not in it.

This, as it turns out, is the approach Christ has already commanded us to be working on. Christians should start sharing the gospel and truths of Scripture with their non-believing friends and neighbors (not simply trying to get them to visit the church and then relying on their pastor to explain these things), and with passion and positivity, speaking the clear truth with love, explain our belief in the human soul, of our creation in the Imago Dei, the Image of God, and how every life is precious in His sight, and should be in ours too. And our actions had better line up with our words.

4. Redefining Pro-Choice

Is it difficult to have those kinds of conversations? Usually yes. There is no clear segue from "So did you catch the game last night?..." to "...and that's why human life is intrinsically valuable," but even in the few years I spent as an engineer in the work force before venturing forth on long term cross-cultural missions, we managed to end up having conversations like that around the water cooler quite a few times. (It helps if you pray specifically that God will allow you opportunities to share, and are intentional about it)

But honestly... with our brothers and sisters being martyred in the Middle East and elsewhere (even in this latest Oregon shooting, it looks like), and legal induced abortions in the U.S. having passed the 50,000,000 mark since Roe v. Wade, can you really explain to God that you are too busy, aren't adequately prepared, or are too fearful of other people's opinions to even make the attempt to communicate His truth to a declining culture, one person at a time?

If so, then stop complaining about Planned Parenthood, because the problem is you.

Evil will always be around until final judgment, but being "the good man who did nothing" is your own choice. Don't be that person, choose life, and life abundantly. That's what could turn things around; Christians choosing action over inaction; choosing not to retreat from an increasingly insane culture but to engage the people around them with the love of God and truth of the Word in the context of their own daily lives. Choosing to recognize we are all called to live for God and not to merely fit Him into the reasonable and appropriate crevices in our status-and-comfort-chasing lives.

Planned Parenthood and their advocates believe that with no God, human society determines what is right and wrong, and who is necessary and who is expendable. They provide the services which take this decision and enact it by means of a whole range of options, from smiling early prevention to gruesome live dismemberment.

They are busy acting on those beliefs.
Are you busy acting on yours?

The "Courage" of Bruce Jenner

Pain on Display

I have noticed something about what people post on Facebook. Every so often, some people will post a status that is basically a cry for help: "I can't handle this situation." "Please pray for me, today was really horrible." "I don't know what to do."

This kind of status is not all that common (compared to say, pictures of food) not because people don't have problems all the time, but because most people have to arrive at a place of particular pain, emotional discomfort, or desperation, before they are willing to "go public" in this way. Some people might be dealing with even greater problems, but feel they have enough resources to handle it, or simply have the kind of personality that hides the pain instead of seeking the comfort of others. They don't want to announce it to hundreds or thousands of people on a social media site.

I neither condemn nor approve of this practice; I did it pretty often in darker, younger days, and tend not to share so much now. It's not that millennials aren't tough enough to be the strong, silent type, it's that the social conditions which produced strong silent types are much less in play in 2015. We share our lives online, and that means sometimes sharing the pain too. Being strong is great, even in a time when weakness has never been more celebrated, but being silent just means you are not participating in what has become an integral part of life for developed-world internet generation kids. (Every age has its benefits and drawbacks. One day the value of silence will be rediscovered too.)

So the sharing itself is not the problem; it's a method or channel for communicating the pain someone is dealing with, a kind of pressure valve. But the more the pain, the longer it hurts, the more desperation creeps in, the less anyone cares what other people think. The pain longs to be expressed. It can't be held inside forever. It breaks out and becomes obvious to everyone.

What Courage is Not

Bruce Jenner's very public act of doctor-assisted self-mutilation (regardless of what you think about his "true identity," physically speaking that is what occurred), is being presented, even awarded, as an act of great courage. Not caring what anyone thinks, the story goes, he (My pronouns are chosen in light of genetic realities) was willing to do something still considered extremely outre, making a spectacle of himself and being held up in many cases to derision and the ogling of the general public, in order to be "true to himself/herself," and in doing so is held up as an example. I imagine some parallels to the courage required to "come out" as homosexual (into a society where lgbtetc people currently enjoy most-favored status and can shut down businesses for not recognizing that) are in play here.

The most consistent online reaction to this idea, and to the idea of his being presented with an ESPN courage award, was the sarcastic comparison of his act with soldiers of the US military, many displaying the wounds and disfigurements they have received in the line of duty. The implication is that this, by contrast, is what true courage looks like. My Facebook feed was half-filled with this kind of post for a few days.

I want to suggest this is not a very effective reply (not addressing the real issue, anyway). We all know, I think, that there are different kinds of courage. Yes, our soldiers are an excellent example of one kind, really a collection of different kinds of courage. But there are other kinds of courage, of course: a Muslim daughter's willingness to face her parents' wrath for accepting Christ; a young pianist getting up in front of everyone for a recital; someone suffering deep and damaging depression just deciding to get up and live another day. Robin Williams not killing himself; that would have been courage. To live would have been an awfully great adventure.

We do know this. And personally I don't doubt that what Jenner did involves some level of courage, though as I'll explain below I don't think that was the primary issue here. Courage is not a trait which bestows goodness or evil on those who exhibit it, it's simply a positive trait which we admire. However, if the person is clearly using their good courage to do evil, we no longer admire that in them. We may be tempted to say it's not courage at all, but give it other names, like madness. We call our friends "full of desperate courage" and our enemies "frenzied." They themselves would call it courage, of course, we just don't want to honor their motives by recognizing they too partake in common grace and can exhibit positive character traits, even while serving a cause we find repulsive.
(tl;dr- Some of the Nazis were brave too. Doesn't mean bravery is bad or they were good.)
 
So following the analogy C.S.Lewis uses at the beginning of Mere Christianity, courage is like a note on the piano, and our sense of morality tells us when to play it. To continue his analogy: we are tempted to call it the wrong note when we don't like the song, but in reality it was the same G we liked in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, just serving another purpose.

What people are really saying, when they post those contrastive examples of soldiers, is that they feel the cause for which the soldiers exhibit courage and risk the consequences of physical mutilation (or even death) is Right and Just, and the cause for which Jenner exhibited courage (if it was courage, more on this below) and risked the consequences of his physical mutilation is wrong, weird, and sad. I think it would be more honest and courageous to just say this, rather than

It's not a question of courage. It's a question of what ideals courage should serve.

Despair and the Blade

That being said, I believe what motivated Jenner was not primarily courage. Going back the first section of this post, I believe the identity crisis and moral confusion raging inside him for years, and tendencies of which people around him were apparently aware, finally reached a head, and in despair he no longer cared what society's verdict might be. (Perhaps some interpret this as bravery because, lacking any received truth, what society's verdict might be is the final authority for them) That's not what courage is. Despair is not courage, it's the opposite of courage. Acting with courage is doing something despite the consequences; it's brave because you do actually care very much about those consequences and are willing to suffer them for a higher purpose. Acting in despair is doing something because you no longer care about those consequences.

There are those who would say I'm being too generous, and that the media circus and worldwide attention showered on Jenner is one of the reasons he did it. Maybe it's true; maybe the real battle was fought and lost many years ago, and this was a calculated decision to profit off the resulting debacle. It's impossible to know for sure. Whatever the case now, there must have been years of mental self-torment and deep delusion to even consider doing this. And the torment and the delusion have not been "resolved" with this act, but exacerbated. Letting the inner unwellness out only increases the totality of its bondage in the end; the chains of the mind are now engraved in the flesh.

Self-mutilating in an effort to force physical reality to reflect inner brokenness comes in many forms. Cutting, for example, is an epidemic which with nearly any Millennial is all too familiar. When it hurts too bad inside, many students are driven to hurt themselves on the outside too. Now imagine if, instead of trying to help those who cut and get them to stop, to bring healing to that brokenness, we glorified it. We celebrated it. We put scarred and bloodied wrists on the front page of newspapers, on the morning news, and proclaimed it a beautiful act of courage which should be praised and awarded. Wouldn't that be sick and twisted?

But that's exactly what is happening with Bruce Jenner. This is Cutting, taken from the wrists and extended as broad as the whole body and as deep as one's sexual identity. Slice it up to make the outside match the messed-up inside. But it won't stay feeling like that. There's a reason for the sky-high suicide rates after this kind of surgery. Yet we see that many of those with the authority and ability to do so are promoting this to the world's youth. Woe to them.

Sin is not a Choice

As distracting as the controversy him has become, Bruce Jenner is a symptom of a deeper problem. There is much we don't know about his motives, but the gender confusion with which he struggled would not even have to be his own choice to still be wrong; we live in a fallen and corrupted world. Flesh-eating bacteria don't ask permission to exist and wreak deadly havoc in your body, mental disorders don't ask permission to exist and corrupt your mind or psyche. Sin certainly doesn't ask permission to corrupt your soul, that's already the default state of mankind.

A particular sinful decision is a choice, but sin overall is no more a choice than being human is a choice; an unregenerated person can't refrain from sinning. That's what it means to be in bondage to sin. Sin is not freedom, it's an inescapable prison. The new life Jesus Christ offers is freedom from that prison, and friendship with Him. And who the Son has made free will be free indeed.

Bruce Jenner is not free, he is in total bondage to sin. He cannot escape by any effort of his own. That the expression of his sinful bondage is abnormal is itself not that strange. Sin breeds more sin, deeper corruption. We have simply arrived at the point in our culture where particularly unsettling forms of sin aren't being kept out of sight anymore.

It was inevitable that this would occur. Every nation, America at every point in history, every earthly culture, is entirely composed of sinful people. All cultures, all nations, eventually decline, decay, and fail. Nothing but the Kingdom of God, a kingdom not of this world, endures and remains unstained.

So if these damaged individuals were regarded as examples of unhealthy people especially needing love and patience and reinforcement of a Biblical idea of selfhood and identity in Christ, that would be the Church acting as it should. What we see in our society today, however, is a rush to exalt this deviance and praise the people who practice it. Let us not take our cues from them and think we need to fight over this issue with hopes of "retaking our culture." We never actually had it. It's pointless to try to fight a battle with society, since: 1) Society defines its values by common accord, so you will automatically lose by definition. 2) According to scripture this is the wrong battlefield. Society was a lost cause when Adam accepted the fruit from Eve. Christ will make all things new. Our job is not to make them look like that now, but to proclaim that fact. (And in doing so, some things will start to show signs of their future glorification even now)

So How Should We React?

 

One thing the Church must do, and only the Church can do, is to speak the revealed truth of God with the indwelling love of God. That means we very firmly reject the idea that what is wretchedly wrong can be called right, and that one man's confused self-nihilism should be put on display and celebrated as a model for others. At the same time, we must show sacrificial love, as Christ did. That means caring more and doing more for damaged souls than seems safe or prudent, while never legitimizing the damage itself.

If any condemnation is deserved -and indeed, the uncomfortable, twisted wrongness that is so obviously present in this situation does deserve and demand condemnation- let it be directed toward and fall on those who approve of this sin, promote it, and lead others into similar deception:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
Who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
(Isaiah 5:20)

The deceived will sin and certainly receive their due punishment, but it is the deceivers for whom scripture reserves special condemnation. It is from them that a love of deviance spreads through our society. We all have a sinful nature, but there are those who go further, who are described by Paul in Romans 1 as "those who invent new ways of doing evil," or those Jesus speaks of as leading children astray and for whom drowning is too soft a punishment. These people are not the misled sheep, but the misleading shepherds, themselves misled by their father, the Father of Lies.

A culture cannot be saved, only individual human souls. But if a reaction is proper, let us push back against those who are actively seeking to deceive, rather than giving in to kneejerk reactions against those who have been deceived by them. In recent years this is a typical trap set for the Church, and we have a bad habit of falling right into it. Make sure you are not simultaneously condemning those who are themselves partially victims and unwittingly supporting those who promote and push for acceptance of the lies in which an entire generation of youth are being daily saturated.

Instead, pray for those youth, disciple them and model Christ to them. (You yourself may be a youth, you can still do all of those things) Pray that God would give you wisdom in how to love sacrificially while also speaking truth and not condoning sin. And pray for Bruce Jenner. He is a soul God created, one that is wrong, confused, exploited, and statistically speaking may be on suicide watch soon. But imagine the witness he would have if he was delivered from his bondage to sin into the freedom of Christ and the light of truth.

It's time for the Church to once again fearlessly proclaim the grace and freedom and power of Christ into a world burdened with disorder, violence, and falsehood.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch... like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see