God is interested in life. Therefore, the Church community is interested in life. It turns out that the protection of human life and the ensuring of each life’s quality is a rather complex and comprehensive business. The reason the Church cares so much about abortion or euthanasia, for example, is because it cares about life. For this same reason, it cares about war, poverty, human trafficking, the environment, violence, domestic abuse, prison reform, elderly care, and injustice. All these directly impact human lives. It is quite impossible to disentangle social policies and politics from people’s beliefs about the world.
One gets the impression from the increasingly secular society that Christians should stay out of politics and social issues. After all, what right have they to impose their rigid moralism on the rest of us? But honestly...who’s the one imposing rigid moralism? If we didn’t have the moralism that came with Christianity, we wouldn’t have the legal framework that secures the life and liberty of every individual. It turns out religious traditions are acceptable until they possess those pesky things called “opinions” that infringe upon the opinions other people are trying to infringe on us.
There’s no shame in the honorable motivation of protecting life and liberty, especially for the voiceless and disenfranchised. The Church should continue to labor in our communities to build a culture of life. There are many non-political theaters of influence that shape life. Does that mean the Church should stay out of those public spaces as well? No! Healthy church communities are invested in practically every direction, supporting people and institutions that reduce suffering, calamity, injustice, and sin. Healthy family structures, communities, and relationships, environments that foster spiritual and emotional maturity, education and the development of knowledge and truth, the dispensing of practical resources to meet financial needs, and care for the marginalized, distressed, or grieving. All of these are of concern to God’s kingdom and therefore are of concern to us, God’s people building his kingdom.
The further the United States moves away from the Judeo-Christian tradition and the founding morality that built our legal framework, the more difficulty our communities have in holding off the advancement of social policies, medicine, and science that harms human life as well as helps human life. We have been chipping it away one degree at a time. One exception at a time. One label at a time. One person or people group at a time. The fetus is beautiful unless it is not wanted. The perinatal are worthy of protection only if they were not unwanted in the womb. The handicapped are worth preserving until they are a drain on the collective resources of the people (we’re not quite there yet). The elderly and suffering have the right to end their suffering. That’s related to maintaining the right to terminate someone else’s suffering or terminate someone else who is causing you suffering. Those born to an over-crowded planet are worth protecting until they endanger the species as a whole (We are hearing this opinion now from the European Globalists imposing harsh climate change policies).
Maybe you think I’m being an alarmist. I’m merely explaining the pathway that has been followed dozens of times by other nations and peoples similar to ourselves. This precious thing we call liberty in the West, this fragile tradition of “individual rights,” lasts only as long as every human life is considered exceptional and valuable. Once any immovable principle of human value is removed, laws are mere courtesies. And if we begin justifying the mistreatment of any, who can stop the maltreatment of everyone that stands in the way of "the will of the people?”
If we want to be a culture of life, then we must slow down for the least among us, every one of them. The worthless. The wanderers. The unproductive. The unlovable. The useless. And yes, even as Jesus taught, our enemies. This isn’t prejudice or religious oppression. This is the self-sacrifice of a people willing to be a noble and just society. The more unhinged from God’s life-preserving laws the state becomes, the more the Church will rise to be both prophets as well as servants.
I’m not advocating for the re-establishment of some Christian Theocracy. I simply want to see the preservation of a liberal democracy that protects the life and liberty of its people. I just don’t know how to produce such a democracy without the Judeo-Christian ethic, and neither did America’s founding fathers. Benjamin Franklin himself, hardly the Bible-thumping moralist, warned, “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom... as nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of a master.” The Church should not be intimidated into inaction but continue to labor in every capacity to build a kingdom that honors life.
Tags: abortion, life, protection, politics, liberty, care, rights, euthanasia, laws, human trafficking
