Hope, Grudge, and Prayer

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more,

And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want. [Proverbs 11:24 (NASB).]

1. Coming out of hopelessness.

For many years I thought that God had rejected me forever. I could not go to church. I could not read the Bible. When I tried to pray, I felt like I was trespassing.

This was the sin of hopelessness.

Things have changed. I go to church, and I read the Bible, and I pray. I do not share the modern American certainty of salvation, but I have a hope of Heaven.

The subject of this piece is prayer.

I pray several times a day. I regret the wasted years when I did not pray. But even before my years of alienation from God, I did not pray near enough.

2. Puzzling history.

When I was a young man, my mom confided in me that she had always prayed for me every day. This has been a lifelong blessing, even though she died long ago when she was about the age that I am now.

So why, when I practiced religion, didn’t I pray for my parents? That’s the merest thing that a son or daughter can do. I pray for them now, even though they are long dead. People always need prayers of the living, and, I think, always benefit from it.

3. The world’s wisdom and the foolishness of Christians.

The wisdom of the world says that prayer is an empty act. Claudius in Hamlet despaired that his prayers did not rise to Heaven, but clung flightlessly to Earth. Smart folk think that about all prayer. They think that prayers affect the world only as the flecks of spit from fervent supplicants moisten the air.

That is not the Christian concept. In The Book of Revelation, chapter 5, Jesus took a sealed scroll from the hand of God that only he could open. When he took the scroll, "the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people." (NIV.) The prayers of God’s people are incense in Heaven, saved by God for the right time.

4. Prayer evolution.

When I started to pray for people again, I prayed for my friends, for my family, for my church, and for my president. It wasn’t that long ago that I started to do that.

But now I pray for more people.

Here’s a secret about me. I hold grudges. Just yesterday, I was driving home from work and I remembered a judge who pounded me long ago. A prosecutor had subpoenaed my client’s medical records for a manslaughter/drunk driving case I was defending. She wanted me to agree that the jury could see those records, and she wanted me to agree to that before she unsealed the records.

I’m many things, but I don’t think that I’m stupid. I won’t agree to let records go to the jury before I actually look at those records and know what’s in them. There might be something in those records that hurts my client, and I might be able to keep that harmful stuff from the jury with a timely objection. But I won’t know that until I see what’s in the records. What the prosecutor wanted was ridiculous.

But when I refused, the prosecutor complained to the judge. And the judge was so angry at me that I thought that steam was going to geyser out of his ears. And in his anger he ruled against me on a pending motion on a silly technicality. He made it clear that he did this because of my lack of ethics in refusing to agree to let the jury see these records that I had in fact not looked at. He made it clear that he was teaching me a lesson.

As I remembered this incident, I invented a speech that I would have liked to have made to that judge. It would have lasted several minutes, and it would lacerated him with sarcasm. But slowly I realized that I was wrong to relish this speech that fortunately I had never made.

So instead I prayed for him. I prayed that he would have real wisdom as he performed his office. I hope that God answers that prayer, and I think that he will.

I hold a lot of grudges. That’s how I am. But now, as often as a grudge comes to mind, I use it as prompt to pray for God to bless the object of my grudge. Sometimes there’s a tug-of-war in my mind between fanning my grudge and praying it away.

And it’s not only these people that I pray for. As I said, I was blessed with a mom that prayed for me every day. But I know that some people have never been prayed for. So I’ve started to try to think of people who might never have had someone to pray for them, and I step up.

5. Scattering and increase.

Make no mistake. I pray more than I did, but I am far far away from praying without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5.)

But I’m grateful for the time I spend in prayer. That brings me back to the quotation at the start of this piece, Proverbs 11:24:

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more,

And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.

I scatter my prayers; I hope that these scattered prayers will increase the spirit of God in me.

The Meaning of Rodney King

Don't we gladly judge others? Don't we think it's weak to try to understand why someone has fallen? Don't we mock compassion?

Isn't it out of step with our times to say, "To understand all is to forgive all" – or, more famously, "You can’t understand someone unless you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins"?

1. Rodney King is dead.

Rodney King is dead. He was found submerged in his swimming pool in Rialto. He has been in and out of jail for drugs. I suspect that drugs played a role in his death.

2. Judging Rodney King.

And for that he will be scorned as a loser and as a drag on the gene pool. And people will judge him harshly when they remember that he blew through the slight fortune that he gained in a verdict against the City of Los Angeles after four officers of the L.A.P.D. beat him on videotape. He died jobless and pennyless.

3. How Rodney King’s beating changed his life.

Knowing what the present would be if the past were different is like trying to tell the future. It can’t be done. But it’s fair to predict that if a videographer hadn’t taped the police beating of Rodney King, his life would have been different in two important ways.

First, he would have been convicted of resisting arrest. The officers who beat him wrote reports that claimed that he had charged them, as I recall, even though that wasn’t true. They wrote that to justify beating him.

The officers could not justify the beating merely because Rodney King had fled from them in his car. But almost certainly that was the reason for the beating. As a former prosecutor and as a private attorney, I have many times seen that arc from flight to beating.

And when police officers write false police reports to cover up wrongfully beating a suspect, their victim is almost always prosecuted with false evidence based on those false police reports. Without some objective proof that the officers are lying, jurors want to believe the officers.

The second difference is that Rodney King almost certainly would have lived and died unknown to the world.

 2. How Rodney King’s beating changed the world.

But whatever might have been, Rodney King’s beating changed the world.

Before the videotape of the Rodney King beating played over and over on the news, people in general had no idea that the police could be so punitive and brutal.

I should correct what I just said. Before the videotape of the Rodney King beating played over and over on the news, middle-class White people in general had no idea that the police could be so punitive and brutal. In minority and poor communities, that was not news.

Also, the acquittal of the officers in a Simi Valley jury trial led to riots. Sixty persons died. The greater Los Angeles area suffered one-billion dollars of property damages. Buildings were burned down.

And the acquittal affected, for a while, the criminal justice system. Most immediately, during the riots, my workplace the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office was evacuated. The courts were shut down.

And some African American jurors for a time would not vote to convict a defendant; the amount and quality of the evidence made no difference. It was a form of protest. As a prosecutor in that time, I dreaded African American jurors, for that reason. But there was nothing ethically that I could do. I am proud of our justice system that it forbids rejection of a prospective juror because of his race. But under the influence of the Rodney King acquittals, my enthusiasm for this high principle waned. After the officer-defendants were convicted by a later federal jury, things more-or-less got back to normal.

I now do not begrudge the African American jurors their protest. In fact, the rule against rejecting jurors for their race exists for the sake of justice among races. And, certainly, those protesting jurors saw a White Simi Valley jury’s acquittal of officers who beat an African American man on videotape as a denial of justice among races.

Ultimately, justice was served, even if a number of criminals in the time between the two Rodney King jury trials gained an undeserved benefit.

5. Rodney King’s character.

But – to get back to understanding Rodney King. In his life, he did wrong. He probably did wrong up to the day that he died. But, like all of us, he was not all good nor all bad. You rarely err to expect complexity in another person.

His flight from L.A.P.D. officers began a chain of event that led to riot and death. Lives were ruined. He seemed genuinely tormented by that. He seemed in real turmoil when he said in front of television cameras, "I just want to say: Can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids? " He had a conscience.

6. Thinking about Rodney King.

I never knew Rodney King. So I don’t know why he made the life choices that he made. But we would do well to think of him and remember the saying, "There but for the grace of God go I."

Of course, we are all under the eyes of an all-seeing God who knows our own failures as vividly as he knows Rodney King’s. And who knows if God judges Rodney King more harshly than he judges us? God is inscrutable. So maybe we would do better to think of Rodney King an say, "There I go."

7. "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls".

A John Donne poem comes to mind:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

This poem from 1624 reflects a very old idea. Compared to 1624, our modern technology is vastly superior. But our modern ideas about humanity do not surpass this poem.

The Strength of a Conqueror

On Friday, a daredevil crossed over Niagara falls on a cable. As he crossed, he could not step to the right or the left. He had to keep the moving cable beneath his feet. He wore a safety harness.

When Jesus walked the Earth, he also could not step out of place, out of the will of God. The devil was vigilant for a mistake. Jesus wore no safety harness.

Before his ministry began, Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days. Then, the devil tempted him. The devil tempted him with his immediate need, hunger. And the devil tempted him to doubt who he was.

And the devil took Jesus up on a very high mountain and showed him all of the kingdoms of the world. He told Jesus that Jesus could have these. But first Jesus had to fall down and worship him.

1. Great temptation.

Let’s be clear. The devil offered Jesus all of the riches and the honor and the power and the pleasures of the world. No kingdom of Earth has ever been as great as the kingdom that the devil offered Jesus. Jesus could have lived in any way he wanted. Jesus, who grew up with a poor carpenter as his father, would have had greater scope and power than any king who has ever lived. He could have spent his life adding pleasure to pleasure. Or he could have spent his life making the world just.

2. Temptation and me.

I once wrote that if the devil showed me or my friends the kingdoms of the world and offered them to us, we would at least think about it. That might be the dumbest thing I ever wrote. I soon changed my post.

Because we would not think about it. At least, I would not. I would be awed. I would instantly fling myself on the offer.

I am certain of this. I am certain because I know that the devil doesn’t have to offer me the world. I’m far far easier to bribe.

I have done wrong by God for ambition. For the sake of a career that is floating garbage compared to all of the kingdoms of the world, I have sinned.

I have done wrong for women. For the sake women who were attractive and charming but not the wondrous women that the ruler of the world could have, I have fallen down.

I have done wrong for money. Not the virtually unlimited money of all of the kingdoms of the Earth, but for a comparatively paltry amount.

Come to think of it, I have done wrong to save myself a minute in the grocery check-out line.

Come to think of it, I have fallen down for no reason at all.

3. Temptation and a man like myself.

I don’t think I’m alone. I met a man at a campground. He was a good man in the eyes of the world. He was an upstanding citizen and a churchgoer. But he fell short, like me. His sons were addicted to alcohol. That might be why his conscience told him not to drink. I didn’t ask why, but he was clear: his conscience counseled against his drinking. And he drank.

Alcohol is not a sin in itself. But if your conscience tells you not to drink, and you drink, you err. (Romans 14.) This man resisted God for an evening glass of wine.

4. Temptation and an American hero.

John McCain has lived an amazing life. I used to admire his straight talk. I admire his heroism in Vietnam. I admire his brilliant career. I admire his toughness.

But to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, he said that South Carolina had every right to fly the confederate flag over its capitol. He later admitted that it was wrong for him to endorse a symbol under which men fought for the right to keep slaves. McCain did not stumble over all of the kingdoms of the world. He stumbled over the chance to win the highest office in America, an office that he could keep for no more than eight years.

He divorced his first wife, the one who was faithful to him during his captivity. He divorced her to marry a rich young beauty.

In McCain’s recent re-election for his Senate seat, he was challenged in the Republican primary by a Tea Party candidate. He hewed to the right to beat back his challenger. To safeguard his nomination, he even claimed that he would not vote for an immigration bill that he himself had introduced in the Senate.

I can’t criticize John McCain from on high. I freely admit: John McCain is a better man than I am. He was tortured and lived under inhuman conditions as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. And as the son of a high American admiral, he was offered his freedom.

He refused.

That was courage. That was honor. That was dignity. That was patriotism. That was love of country. That was something that I would not have done, except in my dreams.

But this brave, honorable, dignified, patriotic man has stumbled over far far less than Jesus overcame. And I am not worthy to carry McCain’s briefcase. And McCain is not worthy to hold the robe of John the Baptist. And John the Baptist was not worthy to untie the sandal of Jesus.

5. The point.

The point is two-fold.

It gives glory to God to know how profound it was for Jesus to overcome the wiliest temptations of the devil. And the temptation in the wilderness was after forty days of fasting. After forty days with no food, I would have given in for a bowl of fruit.

And we must remember to be humble. Humility doesn’t come easily to me. For all I have just said about myself, I am sure that I think of myself more highly than I ought.

So I pray for humility. Only by being humble can we know how strong and wise and good Jesus is. Knowing the truth about our strong and wise and good god is a boon and benefit to ourselves.

Redefining "Tyranny": Worms in Democracy's Roots

"Tyranny" is the vogue word for political and judicial outcomes that certain politicians and pundits oppose. We need to take a deep breath.

1. The pedigree of "tyranny".

"Sic semper tyrannis." ("So always to tyrants.") John Wilkes Booth shouted this as he leaped from the balcony in Ford's Theater after murdering probably the greatest man to occupy the office of the presidency.

"Tyrant" is a dangerous word. It can lodge in a fanatical mind and manifest itself in an explosion. In the recesses of our minds, we know what tyrants deserve and how to deal with them. From Caesar to Hitler, tyrants have been removed by blood and violence. But the fanatic cannot distinguish between the real tyrant and the tyrant of the imagination.

I don't know that Timothy McVeigh specifically spoke of "tyranny". But his thoughts walked in that way before he murdered 168 people, including 19 children, in Oklahoma City. A psychiatrist visited McVeigh on death row and described him as a decent person who had allowed rage to build up inside him to the point that he had lashed out in one terrible, violent act. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1321244.stm

I question the "decent person" part of that, but certainly the part about rage building up rings true.

This is the immediate risk of talk of "tyranny".

2. The purpose of "tyranny".

I doubt that the persons who have in our time re-inserted "tyranny" into political vocabulary intend to incite violence, however much that might be the risk. Instead, I believe they intend to whip up white-hot fervor to drive their base to the polls, to gain political power. But the fact that the polling places of America are the solution to this "tyranny" strongly suggests that it is no tyranny at all.

"Tyranny" strongly connotes illegitimacy. That's why it is used -- to delegitimize a political outcome or judicial decision. So, passing healthcare legislation -- so that sick people don't die just because they are poor, so that the unisnured don't get free treatment that drives up insurance costs for the insured -- this is "tyranny". A judge striking down Proposition 8 -- the California proposition that outlawed gay marriage -- that is "tyranny". That is, these are not just outcomes that one can disagree with or even strongly oppose. They, being "tyranny", are entirely illegitimate.

3. The operation of democracy is not "tyranny".

But these are not tyranny. These are our political and judicial systems operating as intended. Obama won the presidency and Democrats won Congress. That permitted enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This happened after eight years of perceived Republican mis-rule. And elections have consequences. So healthcare reform became law. Also financial reform. And repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. It is the political process doing what it was designed to do.

The Proposition 8 decision is the progeny of Marbury v Madison. Marbury is the two-hundred-year-old Supreme Court decision that declared that federal courts have authority to declare laws unconstitutional. Agree or disagree with Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Walker's authority to make this ruling is rock solid. Judge Walker was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Now, the Supreme Court will have the last word.

At any time in the last two-hundred years, Marbury v Madison could have been repealed by amending the Constitution. But that hasn't happened, because most people think it is appropriately the law of the land. Which means that, right or wrong, Judge Walker was just doing his job, calling Constitutional balls and strikes.

And all of these political and judicial outcomes have a political solution. After passage of health-care reform, Republicans took  back the House of Representatives. In the next election, they might take back the presidency and the Senate. If this is tyranny, it is a peculiar kind of tyranny.

4. The dictionary definition of "tyranny".

The politicians and pundits who have laid claim to "tyranny" are like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass. Humpty Dumpty defined words as he pleased: "When I use a word, . . . it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less." "The question is which is to be master – that's all." Lest we be Humpty Dumpty, here is the dictionary definition of "tyranny". (Skip this if definitions bore you.)

"[T]yranny ... n. ... 1. A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. 2. The office, authority, or jurisdiction of an absolute ruler. 3. Absolute power, especially when exercised unjustly or cruelly. 4a. Use of absolute power.... b. A tyrannical act. 5. Extreme harshness or severity; rigor." (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition.)

Or: "2. Cruel or oppressive government or rule." (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th Edition.)

Russia under Putin has enacted a law that allows the state to impose fines on protesters that are equal to the yearly income of the ordinary Russian. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has rigorously undermined the economic independence of his opponents. These are tyranny. These fit the definitions. When politicians and pundits equate American political outcomes to these genuine examples of tyranny, they are like the princess who was unable to  sleep on high-piled matresses, because of a pea underneath the matresses.

5. "Tyranny" claims are selective.

Claims of tyranny are selective. In Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court struck down the law that prohibited unlimited corporate spending to influence political campaigns. Americans overwhelmingly supported the stricken law. Sixty-five percent of Americans strongly supported it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html

There were no cries of "tyranny" after Citizens United.

Nor were there cries of "tyranny" after America turned on the Iraq war, but still had to pay taxes to support it. Dick Cheney's one-word response to a question about America's opposition to the Iraq war was "So?"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SypeZjeOrY4

These seem no less "tyrannical" than passing healthcare reform and Wall Street reform, or striking down Proposition 8.

6. "Tyranny" claims are toxic to democracy.

Democracy has a doubtful future if citizens come to believe that any political outcome that they disapprove is evidence of tyranny. People who say that say, in effect, that their political sensibilities are entitled to prevail not only when they win elections, but also when they lose elections. This is a fundamental refusal to acknowledge the democratic process and the importance of electoral outcomes. This attitude is fundamentally un-democratic.

I do not take for granted that democracy in America will survive. History shows times in our history of democracy at risk. President Wilson prosecuted and imprisoned labor leader Eugene V Debs for speaking against the draft during World War I. Huey Long ran Louisiana like a dictator; Franklin D Roosevelt feared that America would lose patience with the New Deal and turn to Long, who would rule America like he ruled Louisiana. Whether that would have happened is unknowable, because Long was assassinated.

Widespread belief in the "tyranny" of the outcomes of ordinary democratic and judicial processes produces fissures in our political bedrock. These fissures risk to crumble this bedrock in case of great crisis, collapsing the house that the Constitution built.

7. The solution: take a deep breath.

The solution is to stop. Just stop. But not only to stop, but to go the opposite direction. Nelson Mandela united a fractured South Africa by his extraordinary decency to the White minority.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman
We can use a little Nelson Mandela in American politics. And any American politician who acts in that way deserves our strong support and admiration.

Because we have heard it said from when we were toddlers: "United we stand, divided we fall." And, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." We don't have to agree on all issues. We won't. No vibrant democracy has perfect consensus. But we can agree that it is illegitimate to delegitimize. We can agree that the political processes and judicial processes working the way they were meant to work is not "tyranny".

8. Democracy eats itself.

But let me carve out an exception to what I have said. Government is legitimate because it operates with the consent of the governed. When democratic processes are used to undermined that core principle of democracy, democracy undermines democracy.

In the name of eliminating a problem that largely does not exist -- voter fraud -- states are deliberately shrinking the voter pool. In the name of democracy, this bludgeoning of democracy must stop.

Gains Under Barack Obama

Barack Obama has a competent record that he can run on. Here are some examples.

1. Economics.

Europe doubled down on austerity as a way out of the on-going recession. Great Britain, under conservative Prime Minister Cameron, made itself a living laboratory for fiscal austerity. Great Britain u-turned into recession, and several European economies are now on the brink.

Contrast America. America, under Obama, spent money to prime the economy. Our economy improved. This meant people continued to work that would have lost their jobs. Many, many people.

We didn’t crash, which had been our trajectory and would have been our fate if we had followed Europe. The economy is slowing down, now. This coincides with the tapering off of the stimulus spending. But that’s the fault of Republicans in Congress, not Obama.

2. Health.

Babies born with serious illnesses were once un-insurable. Before the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors) parents of unhealthy babies had to watch their babies die; or (more likely) they had to take on a debt that drove them into bankruptcy. This deprived them of the small prosperity that they might have built for themselves in their young lives.

And who doesn’t know someone who has a pre-existing medical condition, if they don’t have one themselves? The Affordable Care Act makes insurance companies sell medical insurance to persons with pre-existing condition. This is the triumph of the Affordable Care Act.

And it is the reason for the insurance mandate that makes everyone have health insurance. Without the mandate, if anyone could get insurance, even with a pre-existing condition, people would wait until they got sick to buy insurance, knowing that they could not be turned down. Then insurance would be so expensive that it wouldn’t be insurance. The mandate keeps people from gaming the system to everybody's detriment.

So the insurance mandate is necessary, but it is unpopular. Without it, sick people would be un-insurable. Treatable illnesses would kill or bankrupt them. The Affordable Care Act compassionately ends that hard choice between insolvency and death.

3. Terrorism.

Osama bin Laden loathed America. He continued to scheme to murder Americans until the time of his death. Under the previous president, interest in finding him had fallen off. But under Obama, America actively sought the bloody-minded enabler of the terrifying crushing of three-thousand innocent American lives. Bin Laden doesn’t scheme any more.

The decision to send special forces into Abbottabad was hard. In America, among citizens of a certain age, the memories of the catastrophic Iranian hostage-rescue and Black Hawk Down are still green. And it was not clear that the occupant of the compound in Abbottabad was even bin Laden.

Defense Secretary Gates, a hold-over from the Bush administration, opposed the special-forces mission to take bin Laden. But Obama overruled his own defense secretary, and he ended the sinister schemes of an evil man.

America continues to incinerate our enemies with drone strikes, and at a much greater pace than under the former administration.

4. War.

Wars are costly, and when we go to war our brave young men and women, bless them, suffer and die. In Iraq, we lost almost 5,000 of our young people and a trillion dollars. In contrast, Obama removed a brutal dictator in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, with zero loss of American lives, and at a cost of one-billion dollars. This was infinitely fewer deaths, and one one-thousandth of the cost, compared to Iraq.

5. Diplomacy.

Nations engage in diplomacy so that they don’t have to go to war. In contrast to the go-it-alone, screw-the-world attitude of the previous administration, the Obama administration has re-engaged with the world. America has engaged the world with a considerable skill last seen in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration. Our standing in the world rises.

6. Energy.

Under Obama, domestic crude-oil and natural-gas production have increased, and oil imports have decreased. There has been substantial government encouragement of alternate, sustainable energy. This is important, because the kingdom of King Oil is shrinking and will one day end.

7. Education.

Obama’s program Race to the Top encourages and funds improvement in education. Contrast this with the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind had an inspiring name, but it put burdens on local school districts and never helped them with those burdens.

8. Fiscal responsibility.

Compare two programs: one from the Bush administration, one from the Obama administration. The Bush administration pushed the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act. It pays for prescriptions for seniors under Medicaid. But it provides no funding for this benefit. It blows a huge hole in future budgets.

But the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act is paid for. In fact, the act, if fully implemented, will draw down federal red ink. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, it would save over one-hundred billion dollars between 2010 and 2019. Between 2020 and 2029, it would save over one-trillion dollars.

9. American auto-industry rescue.

And at comparatively little cost to taxpayers, Obama rescued the American automobile industry. This saved a huge number of jobs, both in the companies that directly were assisted, and in companies that supplied those companies. America would be gasping if Obama had not shown leadership in this.

Obama’s present opponent for the presidency opposed the government rescue. He wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times against it. But it worked. And America is better off for that.

10. Conclusion.

We often overlook the good that Barack Obama and his administration have done. My Democratic friends, it is easy to be disappointed with getting over the last three years a perceived half-a-loaf. Sure. But things could be far, far worse. And, in fact, Obama has done well.

Let’s work to give a competent president four more years.

Four more years is not assured. The race is close now, and this is before the Citizens-United-funded swift boating has begun in earnest. What we will soon see will make the original swift-boating seem like a toy ship in a sudsy bathtub.

We have a lot to lose. I’m giving. I hope you do, too.

Mercy and Abortion

I think that the far sides of the abortion debate both get it wrong. Here’s why.

1. Pro-abortion: a failure of mercy.

A womb is the sacred place where life is created. Abortion makes a womb a waiting-room next to the grave. (Though burial in any sacramental sense rarely if ever follows an abortion.) Through abortion, death enters this place for the creation of life.

And a mother who ends her pregnancy early isn’t merciful to her unborn, over whom she has care.  (I wonder whether this is true of the unborn who have such illnesses that their lives would be only suffering.)

A New York Times guest-columnist recently defended abortion-rights. The writer supported her decision to end a long-ago pregnancy. The column was articulate and thoughtful and chilling. The writer explained that she did what she did because she "didn’t want" another child.

I was unsettled because she spoke of ending a pregnancy with a phrase that a person might use toward a brand or model of car. The column unsettled a friend of mine with whom I shared it, too. I wonder if it unsettled many who read it who are on both sides of the abortion debate. I recently saw a poll in which 48 percent of Democrats believe that abortion is not moral.

The hard cases are rape, incest, and severe disability. But in cases where the burden on the mother is greatest, the mercy also is greatest. A woman who chooses to bear a child when that child will be a burden, or a great burden, is a saint.

Calling the early-term unborn mere "tissue", or whatever term de-humanizes them, only emphasizes their helplessness. They are so helpless that they do not even yet resemble what they almost inevitably will become if allowed to prosper in the womb and pass through birth. I think that too much of the debate about abortion has been unproductive combat over labels. I will speak of that more when I speak of the anti-choice side.

2. Anti-choice: a failure of mercy.

Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens that they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them." (Luke 11 (NIV).)

That, in 33 words, is how I perceive anti-choice partisans. They tend to be conservative. That usually means that when a child is born, their protectiveness dissolves. They surrender the child to the Darwinist, every-family-to-itself philosophy that largely prevails in modern conservative thought, unlike liberal thought, which believes that government should provide a social safety-net. I’m not defending or denying the rightness of the social-safety net. I’m just pointing out the change of attitude of the anti-choice partisans before and after a birth. It makes the anti-choice partisans like the experts in the law that Jesus spoke of.

The anti-choice partisans make no distinction between a person, like the New York Times guest-columnist, who simply didn’t want another child, and a woman who, by bringing an unborn to term, will suffer overwhelming financial burden, risk of death or infirmity, or profound shame.

And they judge. That’s something that Christians are commanded not to do. (Matthew 7; Luke 6; Romans 2.) I’m not saying that only observant Christians don’t judge (or aren’t supposed to). Members of other religions might or might not be faithful to this principle, just as Christians might or might not be faithful to it. But it’s a core part of the New Testament. (I admit that I might be judging here. (Romans 2).)

This urge to judge adds to wrangling over when "life" begins, and whether the unborn is "human". The debate could be about the strength or the mercy or the capacity for burden of the woman who considers an abortion. But there seems to be an eagerness to condemn. And the harshest label in the anti-choice dictionary is "murderer". So they choose that harsh label for a woman who chooses to end a pregnancy. Arguing that "life" begins at conception and that the unborn are "human" is a conduit to this condemnation.

I don’t doubt that the belief that abortion is murder is sincere. Buts it’s judgmental in the extreme and it doesn’t move us to a solution.

What I’m about to say might seem like a diversion, but it isn’t. Historians have considered why slavery in England was ended without the rancor with which it was ended in America. ("Rancor", of course, falls short of describing the up-to-the-bridle blood of the American conflict.) There were many reasons for the relative ease with which England ended slavery. One was the language of the anti-slavery partisans in England. They tended not to use language of moral condemnation against their opponents, unlike abolitionists in America. The American abolitionists harshly condemned the pro-slavery partisans in America, leading to bitterness, anger, resentment, and resistance. In contrast, in England, the anti-slavery partisans tended to be like Abraham Lincoln: they did not condemn the morals of those that took the position opposite of theirs. England’s slavery was ended by law. America’s was ended by war.

3. Conclusion.

This history provides a path to start to resolve a controversy that has embittered partisans on both sides. The harsh rhetoric hurts more than it helps, however much it thrills pride to condemn another.

And both sides need more mercy: pro-abortion partisans need more mercy toward the unborn; anti-choice partisans need more mercy toward travelers who must make a particular choice of direction in their passage between life and death.