Dan Indulges in Dark Theological Humor

The Dutch did not bring their kleats to the slippery slope. (See the Groningen Protocol if you don't believe me.)

But it's not like anyone else wants onto this slippery slope. Oh, wait...

Well, at least it hasn't made its way to the United States yet. Crap, I guess we lost that one. And where I live, too. Darn.

What's left now but to run out the clock on being European and see just how horrific things get before someone in the public arena stands up for life?

Apparently, more horrific than they have.

All aboard for the train of tenderness, folks! Next stop is the slippery slope! Hope you brought some good climbing gear.

Christ Jesus, and Mary and all the other Saints in heaven, pray for our world today.

Sacred Laws in a Secular World

While I'm on a roll tonight, I figured I would bring up another sore point that has been on my mind recently. I think that most Christians have this view of law and society that doesn't really work. A very notable case to me is the idea of pornography being legal.
This was brought up to me by a friend--he said that he was in church, and the pastor said he wished that pornography was illegal. My friend does not use pornography, but he told me that he is glad pornography is not illegal because it reflects the citizens having rights to free speech.
Where does a Christian realistically draw the line between trying to make laws that fit their desired moral structure and trying to make laws that really represent the opinion and the desires of the populace? It's easy to argue that fornication is not the best idea ever. However, is it right to stop members of society from fornicating if they don't prescribe to the same world view as I do?
Let's move into two larger issues here. Abortion is a huge topic today. Most Christians I know would agree with me: I hate it. It diminishes the value of birth, the value of the human construction, the sacred protection of a baby within the womb, and a lot of other things. But as we know, not enough people in this country have a problem with it for us to make it illegal. I have a huge issue with abortion because it also involves murder, so that makes this particular topic a little bit more straightforward for me.
Here's the second larger issue: gay marriage. I don't think it's right, but I am also, for the sake of society, willing to accept the possibility of it becoming legal. I have a couple of gay friends, and I love them--but I would never wish that they would get married. I feel that strongly about it. However, if I were in the position to pass law regarding it, I would probably end up making it legal because that is what represents the desires of the populace best.
It seems like as Christians, we have a couple of hard things to remember when it comes to our country. First off, it's not my country, nor is it your country, nor is it the gay couple's country, nor is it anyone else's country. It is, collectively, OUR country. That means that our own impressions of morality and ethics (which, through the Word, are often correct) cannot be forced upon members of society just because we think it's better for them. That sort of law only creates division, hatred, and more lawbreakers.
In addition, it means that if we want to actually do something about the country we share, we can't simply go around trying to get laws passed. It's worthless. You have to change the minds of the people using love and truth, hand-in-hand. It's a lot less simple, but it's the only way I could see going about it.

A link to CMR for an Interesting Story (Update: Day 2)

Creative Minority Report has asked that people who follow them, and have blogs of their own, take some posts to follow the story of baby Gianna. I decided I'd do so. I know about as much as you do about the way the story ends (that is, none) but you can read part one here. It's tagged as "theology in story," so it should be noted that the story is true, not something written just for the sake of ideas. And I do know this for a fact after a quick Google search, but if you care about reading the story as a story I suggest not searching Google as it will probably result in you knowing, as I do, how it ends.

Decided to redate the post so it'll show up again each day, each day with an update to a little table of contents:

Part 1
Part 2

Week of Christian Unity, BONUS: Kevin Johnston

Kevin Johnston was one of the people I had bugged about writing a guest post or a post I could link to, for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. From Kevin's blog Sola Nobilitas Virtus comes this post about unity of values that differ from the world's across organizational lines. Kevin offers some good insights about the things that ought to be uniting, rather than dividing us, especially with the state of the world as it is, but one of his off-hand observations is the one I will quote here:

Not that I am an overtly negative person, I simply am more of a fighter than a lover in many areas. That is why a topic of Christian Unity is such a foreign concept to me. Christianities come in all shapes and size, and many greatly despise others. Fitting them into one theme is not as easy as it might sound.

Hooray for bonus posts.

Defying the World's Categories: The Culture of Life

Who are the least of these? I'm going to take the tack of the persons least able to defend themselves: first physically, then economically. The abortion issue is obviously a piece of what we're dealing with here. That must be taken care of with some priority. The most defenseless human beings among us are the ones who've only entered the womb, not the outside world, and it seems clear that they do need defending. I would love to pontificate about America's wonderful progress, how much of a pro-life nation we actually are. But I can't, because we're not. A quick check at the number of Downs Syndrome abortions should clear up that perception.

I don't think we pro-lifers are going far enough in our pursuit of justice. Many of our most common arguments rely on the notion of the human fetus is a human being. The focus on the abortion issue is then justified by saying that those in the womb are the least among is, in the sense of being the most defenseless, the most open to attack and marginalization. This is fine to my mind, but it needs to be taken a step further. A pro-life stance that truly respects Christianity and its instructions for how we treat each other must take the next step and defend all stages of life, from womb to tomb, or as a high school teacher of mine memorably put it, sperm to worm. In many Catholic circles this is known as the 'consistent ethic of life,' and in some of these circles it's been misused as an excuse for downplaying the ethical gravity of abortion. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.

Clearly, the right to life begins with the right to survive. But if we allow it to end there, we are not carrying the examples of our Lord and of the traditions of our great faith to their fulfillment. Certain things that happen in church history, even that which is seen in the New Testament, are clearly motivated by concerns for social justice. Why else does it seem that the main community discussed in Acts is one in which persons sell their possessions to give to the poor? Why else would it be that in the Gospels, Jesus instructs us that, essentially, a substantially higher burden is placed on the rich in entering the Kingdom of Heaven, than on the poor? The passage in which Jesus discusses 'the least of these' makes no reference to persons in the womb, but it does talk about visiting the sick and prisoners and addressing other concerns of social justice. It is clear that the Christian church has been opposed to abortion from the beginning, if only by the early church's interpretation of the Scriptures. But it is also clear that the church has been concerned with social justice from the start.

So where does this leave us? With the inescapable conclusion that as Christians striving to take our tradition seriously, we must care about justice inside and outside of the womb, about quality-of-life justice as well as survival. Abortion does seem pretty clearly to be the most wrong of the injustices perpetrated in America today. That's a pretty inescapable conclusion to my mind. But it is not the only injustice by far.

I give nothing but kudos to all the pro-lifers (and there are many) who are seriously striving to life out a consistent ethic of life. However, we need to take it further. It may be that there are a few people whose God-given mission is to focus on the issue of abortion and not to worry so much about economic justice issues. There might also be a few people whose mission is to the poor, and who aren't supposed to be doing so much directly on the abortion issue. To risk a smiting from God, however, it is nobody's God-given mission to ignore any facet of justice and avoid its implication for their lives. If we really want to give people a solid and inescapable picture of what a converted world could look like, it means we've got to go further. We've got to seek justice in everything we do, including the perhaps-uncomfortable economic justice of giving not only to the church but to charitable organizations. Abortion is bad, but we need to be pro-life, not merely anti-abortion; it's time we defied the world to define us. We need to show our current culture of injustice what the world could look like if we chose to care about each other, sperm to worm.

Pursuit of a Good God means nothing less.