UNITED STATES
Rhymes with Religion
Boz Tchividjian | Jan 23, 2015
I am very grateful for this thought provoking guest post and hope it challenges each of us to re-examine how we approach the value of life. Robert Peters is both my student and my friend, and he gives me much hope for the next generation. – Boz
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I will never forget the first ultrasound of my unborn child. Expecting an idle smudge on a grainy screen, my wife and I were greeted by a hyperactive baby, all four flailing limbs foiling the doctor’s attempt at accurate measurement. Our child was beautiful, and very much alive.
This week marks the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and across the country pro-lifers gather to profess the humanity of unborn children. However, as Brennan Manning noted in The Ragamuffin Gospel, “the danger of the pro-life position… is that it can be frighteningly selective.” Recent events provide repeated and disturbing evidence of this selectivity.
For example, the Internet is littered with conservatives decrying the abortion of children conceived through rape, yet many of these same conservatives minimize, ignore, and otherwise dehumanize the rape survivors themselves.
We see this in the popular conservative blogger who glibly dismisses the prevalence of sexual assault with an unrelated hyperlink and the question, “Does any rational person really believe that the numbers are this high?” We see this in the perverse portrayal of those who condemn Cosby as “liberals” who, of course, whole-heartedly endorse Clinton’s sexual conduct. We see this in the many Christian institutions that publicly proclaim a pro-life ethic, while actively marginalizing abuse survivors and concealing predators. We see this in repeated incredulity towards abuse allegations, shackling victims in the shadows. We see this in the calloused right-wing pundits who dismiss rape survivors as little girls in need of attention. We see this in the culture warrior who only mentions child abuse if a homosexual is involved.
There is a common thread: a dehumanizing prioritization of partisanship over people, of political platforms over Biblical principles. Mark 12 lists the two greatest commandments: love God and love people. That’s it. No partisan talking points: just the simple command to love others as we love ourselves. How we treat “the least of these” is how we treat Christ (Matthew 25:40). God created man in His image (Genesis 1:27). Life is sacred, precious, and beautiful. If you ignore or exploit rape allegations to score political points, you demean the image of God. You’re not pro-life.
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