A Christian Defense of Roe v. Wade

I walk more in ignorance than in knowledge. When I don’t feel this way, I take it on faith.

I try to live my life as if the Bible were the inspired word of God; I believe that it is. I read it faithfully. I read it to learn how to live. I read it to know God better.

But I wrestle with it. If it’s inspired by the Holy Spirit, as I believe it is, I have no simple answer about why this inspired book has two different descriptions of the death of Judas Iscariot, one in Matthew and one in Acts. I have no simple answer about why Paul, John, and Luke can’t agree about who was the first person to see Christ risen from the dead. I have no simple answer about why the man of God Paul thinks that women are innately more sinful than men, as he suggests in his first letter to Timothy; yet with all the men that lived in Judea in the time described by the Book of Acts, God chose to speak to the daughters of Phillip the Evangelist, who were prophets. And with all the men in ancient Israel, he raised up Deborah in her time, who was both a wartime leader and a prophet. (I consider not accidental Paul's attitude toward women and his assertion that Peter was the first to meet the risen Christ. John says it was Mary Magdalene.)

Once when I was young and well-traveled in the Bible, I explained to my brother Peter that I felt that I could answer any theological question. He promptly asked me a question that I could not answer.

It’s a good working hypothesis that I’m prone to error.

So I hope that I approach with due humility an area of much controversy. There is a rough divide between Republicans and Democrats over the issue of right-to-life versus freedom-of-choice. It’s a controversy that some right-leaning Republicans use to paint Democrats as innately un-godly. When a Democrat prevails in the contest for the White House, I imagine conservative Christians crying out, "Why, O God, and how long?"

Bless their piety, and bless their yearning for God’s will on Earth. May I be blessed in the penumbra of their faith.

I make here a Christian case for Roe v. Wade.

1. A fundamental concept: the image of God.

 This is my core concept to assay the rightness or wrongness of abortion: that mankind is created in the image of God.

This concept appears in the first chapter of the Bible:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:27 (NIV).]
More pertinently, Genesis chapter 9:
"Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind." [Genesis 9:6 (NIV).]
The question is: at what point does the unborn acquire the image of God, such that destruction of the unborn is murder?

2. "Created in the image of God": what does this mean?

The meaning "image of God" is not self-evident. Certainly, Genesis speaks of God as walking in the Garden of Eden as a man would, so that in some sense it can be taken literally – we physically resemble God, and he physically resembles us. This is true at least when he chooses a corporeal form.

The concept of created in the image of God might also foreshadow the incarnation of God as a man. Jesus was one with God, and he looked, fundamentally, like we do.

So there is a literal way in which humankind bears the image of God.

But mere physical resemblance doesn’t satisfy. There must be a mystical way in which humankind bears God’s image; but what is that mystical way isn’t clear. It’s not necessarily the capacity for moral judgment, because God created humankind in his image before humankind ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Nor is it moral purity, the state of innocense before the fall. This is true because God proclaimed humankind to be made in his image as he spoke to Noah, and that was after the fall of humankind. (Genesis chapter 9.)

This condition of bearing God’s image has persisted through history. Jesus was asked whether it was right to pay taxes. Jesus asked who's image was on a coin. He was told that Caesar's image was on a coin. So Jesus said to give to Caesar what was Caesar's, and to God what was God's. The kicker to that story is that while Caesar's image was stamped on the coin, we ourselves bear the image of God.

And then we crucified Christ.

Maybe there is a good and precise and satisfying answer to the question of the full meaning of "created the image of God." I don’t have it.

3. "Created in the image of God": what it doesn’t mean.

But I doubt that the meaning of "created in the image of God" reposes in a genetic sequence of DNA. And at the time of fertilization, that is the zygotes’s sole claim to being human. It doesn’t look human; it doesn’t have a mind. It isn’t aware of itself or its surroundings, and in that way it is less human-like than any variety of fully-formed mammal.

Being uncertain of the precise meaning of "created in the image of God", I lack a clear idea of when in the chain of existence between a human zygote and an infant that breathes air – I have no clear idea of when in that chain of existence a fertilized human egg becomes the "image of God". I do trust that there is a time between these states that a fertilized egg – a zygote – ceases to be mere tissue. I do not believe that that moment necessarily comes at the moment that the father’s DNA mixes with the mother’s.

4. Roe v. Wade and emerging human-ness.

Roe v. Wade acknowledges this. Roe v. Wade is clear: government's interest in forbidding the artificial ending of a pregnancy expands as the pregnancy proceeds. I find this analysis to be intuitively and morally defensible.

 Therefore, the mother has greatest freedom of choice to end a pregnancy at the beginning of it. The government has the greatest freedom to protect the unborn at the end of the pregnancy. In between lies judicial and legislative line-drawing.

5. The reason for this piece.

These words appear near the beginning of the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade, written by Justice Harry Blackmun. They acknowledge strong feelings against abortion and suggest the legitimacy of those feelings.
We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion. That was true then; it’s true now.

This piece isn’t designed to stir up anger or hard feelings. But I have a friend who as a young man got his girlfriend pregnant. He helped her get an abortion. For this, he considers himself literally to be a murderer. I hope that this piece is balm to him and to others like him.

Some pregnant women have been poor, ill, crushed by shame, or all three of those. They were financially or emotionally or physically unable of bringing the unborn to term. I hope that this piece is balm to women like them who have made a hard choice and now feel guilty.

I write this so that my conservative friends might consider that Roe v. Wade was not defiance of the will of God but a reflection of it. I hope that some who are mystified by the moral blindness of persons who support a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy might see that there are godly arguments on the side of choice, so that they don’t judge others harshly.

I acknowledge that there are arguments that persons who oppose Roe v. Wade can make, and that those arguments have moral force. Certainly, abortion would not exist in a perfect world. But rightly or wrongly I believe that abortion has a place in this imperfect world, within some of the limits outlined by Justice Blackmun and his majority four decades ago

Bloody Hand: the Sacrifice that God did not Stop

You could say that Jephthah’s daughter was wronged by the world, by her father, and by God. But her death has meaning across the millennia.

1. The story of Jephthah’s daughter’s death.

Jephthah was a judge – a leader – of ancient Israel. Surprisingly for a man who rose to that position, he was the son of a prostitute. His story is told in the biblical Book of Judges, starting at chapter 11. One part of his story is the death of his daughter, his only child.

Jephthah and Israel warred with the Ammonites. Jephthah vowed to God that if God gave him victory over the Ammonites, whatever emerged from his door on his return from battle he would sacrifice as a burnt offering. God gave him victory. His daughter emerged from his door to greet him. She emerged dancing.

Jephthah wanted to renege on his vow; his daughter would not let him. Instead, she asked that she be permitted to go up into the mountains for two months with her friends, who mourned with her that she would never marry. Then she returned and submitted to her father’s knife. She became smoke from an alter.

This gave rise to a tradition in Israel. At a certain season, daughters of Israel left for four days to commemorate Jephthah’s daughter.

This was right. These daughters had much to commemorate, much to mourn, for Jephthah’s daughter and themselves.

2. Much to mourn: proxies.

They could mourn because of the Ammonites. The Ammonites are a proxy for all wars, wars that devoured the loved ones of women and devoured women themselves. Maybe the Ammonites, a proxy for war, are also a proxy for all violence against women by strangers. They are a proxy for all such rapes, beatings, and robberies. They are a proxy for the recent attempted assassination of Malala Yousufzai by the Taliban, men who were incensed that a girl such as she should speak out to an international audience against their ban on the education of girls like herself. Malala Yousufzai and Jephthah’s daughter might have been the same age.

The Ammonites, like the Taliban, were an outside force. But Jephthah was no outsider; he was his daughter’s father. So the daughters of Israel could also mourn because of Jephthah. Jephthah’s rash vow led to his daughter’s death. In this way, he is a proxy for all violence against women by the hands of a near person. He is a proxy for incest, intimate rape, beating by a husband or brother. He is a proxy for honor killings, practiced today in some parts of the world.

The daughters of Israel could mourn because of God. Jephthah’s daughter is like Isaac, but also unlike. God told Abraham, Isaac's father, to sacrifice Isaac. But at the last moment, God stopped Abraham’s knife-hand from slicing into the flesh of Isaac. But at the last moment, God did not release Jephthah from his rash vow.

3. Much to mourn: the virtue of Jephthah’s daughter.

The daughters of Israel could mourn because of the death of someone as good as Jephthah’s daughter. Jephthah’s daughter is a Job-like figure. She was virtuous. She did not complain: she plainly saw that Jephthah had to fulfill his vow. She accepted death resolutely.

She had the virtue of Job. In fact, she suffered more deeply than Job. Job’s family, wealth, and health were taken from him. But Job was permitted to live; Jephthah's daughter was not. In this way, everything that was taken from Job was taken from Jephthah’s daughter. She lost her family, she lost the comforts of life. She lost everything that she cherished when she gave herself to her father’s knife.

And calamity fell upon Job. Suddenly it was there. But Jephthah’s daughter submitted to it. She went up into the mountains to mourn with her friends. After two months, the agreed time, she came down from the mountains.

4. Much to mourn: the love of Jephthah’s daughter.

And see who Jephthah’s daughter loved and feared. She loved her father. She accepted death for his sake, so that he would not go back on his vow to God.

She loved her nation. She accepted death for its sake, so that the leader of her nation would not incur guilt on its behalf by going back on a vow to God.

She loved her friends. She chose to prepare to die by going with them up into the mountains for two months to mourn. In a way, this foreshadows the Last Supper, where Jesus had fellowship with his disciples on the night that he knew he would be taken captive to be crucified.

She feared God. She realized that a vow to God had to be respected, had to be fulfilled. God was large to her, larger even than her love of life.

5. The meaning of Jephthah’s daughter: eternity.

There’s more to the story of Jephthah’s daughter than sorrow and love.

The Bible does not say the season when this story took place. But it appears that in Old Testament times there were fighting seasons, as there are in Afghanistan today. In the biblical book of 2 Samuel, the story of King David and Bathsheba is introduced with the phrase, "In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war . . ..." (NIV.) This story took place after that fighting season, when Jephthah returned from war.

Summer is suggested by other circumstances aside from fighting seasons. Jephthah’s daughter and her friends retreated to the mountains for two months. It's likely that the mountains teemed with food; certainly Jephthah's daughter and her friends would not have carried two months worth of food into the mountains.

This meant that Jephthah’s daughter was in the wilderness in the season of nature’s aliveness. On the edge of death, in that two months, maybe she contemplated the seasons, the yearly cycle of life and death in nature. Maybe she saw in this eternal cycle a hope of the renewal of her own life, like the renewal of life in the growing seasons. The succinct biblical narrative does not say.

Jephthah’s daughter is not known by name. I don’t know why. It might be that by the time that the story was written down, her name had been consumed in the forgetfulness of years.

But one thing is certain: she is known to God. And he is the God of the living, not the dead.

Arrogance and Humility and America and the President

A friend of mine said that people today don't value humility, at least not in themselves. I wonder if she isn’t right. Yet clearly arrogant is in our ammunition-case of insults, and we are glad to hurl it at people whom we hate. Maybe humility is a quality we value in others, but we don’t value it in ourselves, as if we were saying: "Why should I be humble if I’m perfect?"

In a Facebook discussion-thread, I offered one of my blog posts. A conservative participant in the discussion called it arrogant. That surprised me, because I thought that my post was meek and self-critical. I regret that I did not ask this conservative to point to something arrogant in the post; maybe that would have caused him to read it.

What quality in a person permits him to judge a writing without reading it?

1. Arrogance, Accusation, and Barack Obama.

Arrogant is an insult often flung at President Barack Obama. Here’s a link to a video of Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie accusing the president of arrogance.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/10/22/Chris-Christie-Unloads-On-Arrogant-Obama-If-He-Cant-Change-Washington-What-The-Hell-Is-He-Doing

Christie said:
If you don’t think you can change Washington from inside the White House, then let’s give you the plane ticket back to Chicago you have earned. I mean that is a scary thing for the President of the United States to say, isn’t it? It shows his arrogance. If he really believes that, if he believes that, then what the hell is he doing asking for another four years?"
This is the episode in which Christie said that Obama is like a man in a dark room groping for the light-switch of leadership and not finding it. But now Christie has famously praised Obama for his, um, leadership and for his outstanding service to the people of Christie’s state who were overwhelmed by Hurricane Sandy.

A Google search of the words arrogant and Obama yields 14,400,000 results. That of course is a very loose metric, and naturally I can’t describe the content of the 12,301,404^th result. But even if those numbers are a very loose metric, they might be a good metaphor for some people’s ideas about Obama. Christie’s accusation that Obama is arrogant was well received because it is widely believed.

And here’s the thing: it is widely believed by people who know Barack Obama less well than Governor Christie knew Barack Obama before Hurricane Sandy put them in each other’s admiration. It is widely believed by people who know Barack Obama no better than my conservative accuser knew my blog post before he called it arrogant.

What quality in a person permits him to judge another person without knowing him?

2. Barack Obama and arrogance.

And yet, without knowing Barack Obama, I worry that the accusation might be right.

This worry is not based on any particular action. But I look upon the presidency, and I wonder how any person can hold that office and not be arrogant. It is an office with great power. And the president appears before huge crowds of cheering people. On a whim, a Marine helicopter and an Air Force jet take him wherever he wants to go. Many people look upon him with awe. World leaders crave a visit from him.

Yet I think of Abraham Lincoln as a man who occupied the presidency and remained humble. But Lincoln was an amazing man. And he had known hardship and sorrow, and these imprint humility upon a soul.

Lincoln knew hardship and sorrow before he came to the White House, and he knew hardship and sorrow in the White House. His young son died there. And he was commander-in-chief of a powerful army that bled and failed in battle time after time. I doubt that Lincoln shared the hubris of many Northern citizens who believed at the start of the Civil War that the South would be subdued quickly and easily. But if he had that delusion, events stripped it from him.

Barack Obama has not known the sorrows of Lincoln, nor his hardships. But he must bear the insults and hatred of many people, including a massive right-wing opinion-generating machine, which he has little influence over. Even the liberal press insults him; I think that I have heard few conservative pundits abuse Obama much more than liberal pundit Keith Olbermann did.

And in his first term Obama found himself opposed in almost all things by unified Congressional Republicans who, if you believe Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, made their first priority Obama’s defeat in the 2012 election. Obama was not helpless against their opposition, but strong opposition itself, that you have to struggle against, can teach humility because it makes you to know the limits of your power.

As a lawyer who has been crushed in court, I know this.

And the authority of American citizens to turn Obama out of office must give some humility to a president. And Mitt Romney’s triumph over the president in the first 2012 general-election debate must have humbled the president who came out of it damaged, with his reelection in doubt.

3. And yet.

The humbling experiences of the reelection campaign aside, it must be a heady thing to win reelection. With triumph hubris can come. In that way lies danger.

King David was a king of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Israel. He had been anointed for kingship by the prophet Samuel, and the kingdom was taken away from King Saul and given to David. For many years, David lived under threat of death from Saul, until Saul died in battle and David took control of Israel. In this time he knew that he survived by God’s power. But David forgot to be humble after he came into his kingship.

In addition to being handsome, powerful, rich, and blessed, David was a great writer of psalms to God. I wonder if he had just finished writing a particularly excellent psalm before he committed the moral blunder that gave him great grief and great turmoil in his kingdom for the rest of his reign. This episode is described in the biblical book of 2 Samuel, starting at chapter 11.

David had a romantic relationship with beautiful Bathsheba while her husband Uriah was off at war. She conceived. Adultery was punished by death in that time and place. So David worked to fix the crisis that his hubris had brought about.

He called Uriah back from war on a pretext, and then he encouraged Uriah to refresh himself with his wife’s company. The idea was to attribute Batshsheba’s child to Uriah. Loyal Uriah refused to enjoy himself while others were at war, so David’s scheme failed. So David arranged to have Uriah killed in battle; then he hastily married Bathsheba.

David’s crime was discovered. Hubris became humility. Psalm 51 is David’s plea to God for forgiveness for his crime. It is a model of contrition and hope for we who fall.

I don’t know Obama. He might be humble, not given to ego. Maybe his wife sees and undermines any uprising of hubris in her husband. I don’t know. I know people with opinions about Obama’s hubris or his lack of it, but I don’t personally know anybody with real knowledge on that subject.

But I don’t want the president to have a David-and-Bathsheba moment, in whatever shape it might come.

4. Against arrogance.

So I am thankful for the opposition that Obama faces. It curtails any sense of omnipotence that he might have.

I am thankful that he has opposition in Congress. When the final electoral count is in, the Republican Party stands to lose seats in the House of Representatives, but they will keep majority-control of it. As a Democrat, I regretted this electoral outcome, but I see in it a moral boon for our president.

I am thankful that we have an independent judiciary. In the next four years, the president will be subject to it. One of the president’s controversial plans will likely come before the Supreme Court. Obamacare calls for all employers, including secular institutions run by religious bodies, to furnish, through insurance, birth control to their employees who are women. Some churches that run hospitals and universities cry against this as an invasion of religious freedom.

I support the president’s policy, but I see the boon to his character in the humility of being subject to the last word from the courts. I would regret it if the law were struck down. But were that to happen, it might be blessing to the president to be curtailed in this way, if un-checked power made him think more highly of himself than he ought to.

I am thankful for international opposition. To be sure, I don’t think America is always right and good, but compared to countries that jail and starve their political opponents, rape with their armies, and ignore or curtail democracy, I consider America to be a bright light. For example, I am proud of the anti-Aids program started under President Bush. It was good, it was generous, it was benevolent, and it will always stand as a credit to him.

As a country, we have done wrong, and we have done right. But the point here is that international opposition, right or wrong, helps to keep us and our president humble.

5. Prayer.

So for the sake of his soul and for the sake of America, I grudgingly welcome hardships for the president.

I also pray for the president. I pray for his family. I pray for his wisdom and his humility, and for other blessings. I would have prayed these things for Mitt Romney if he had won, but Obama won, so I pray these things for him. (I still pray for Romney.)

I hope that my friends and even my conservative friends will join me in that. If we join in prayer for the president to be wise and humble, how can that possibly lead to evil? And much good might come of it.

Journey

1. Remembering a journey.

One summer over two decades ago, I journeyed to the summit of Mount Whitney. It’s 14,505 feet above sea level. As I climbed I exhaled all of my strength into the thin air. The long last effort to the summit was painful. It was hard to keep going. I wanted to quit.

My face was a mask of agony. Except that a mask conceals what is beneath it. But the mask of agony that I wore exactly showed what I felt in every square inch of my body and psyche.

Then I got to the top. It was a joy to be there. I felt grand and happy.

On the journey down from the summit, I met people going up with faces that were, like mine before, masks of agony. That was everybody that I met.

I said what I could to encourage them. I wanted them to succeed. I wanted them to know that the joy of the destination made the agony of the journey completely worthwhile.

2. Journeys of the Bible.

The Bible is a book of journeys.

Adam and Eve journey from Eden to exile with a cherubim with a flaming sword behind them barring the way to the tree of life. The patriarch Abraham journeys from his home to the wilderness to make a pact with God. His grandson Jacob flees from his other grandson, angry Esau. Jacob flees rather than stay to be cut down. After many years, he journeys back to a joyful reunion with Esau. Along the way, he wrestles with God.

He and his children journey to Egypt to escape a famine. His son Joseph journeys there first, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. The rest of the family follows after.

After four hundred years, Moses murders an Egyptian and flees to Midian. Then God reveals himself to Moses in a bush that burns but is not consumed. Moses journeys back to Egypt to lead his enslaved people out of Egypt.

The children of Israel journey in the Sinai for forty years. When it's time for that wandering to end, God stops the waters of the Jordan River, and they cross over dry river-bottom into their inheritance.

The Israelites stay in one place for hundreds of years. In that time, they fall away from God. Then the Israelites go on a new journey – into exile and captivity. After seven decades, a remnant journeys back to the land of their ancestors.

Jesus was itinerant. His story begins with his mother Mary, with child by the Holy Spirit, journeying to visit her elderly kinswoman Elizabeth, who is pregnant with the child who will become John the Baptist. Jesus is born after his parents journey to Bethlehem. The spirit of God tells Jesus’s earthly father Joseph to take his family and flee to Egypt. After the death of King Herod, they journey from Egypt to Nazareth.

Jesus in his time of ministry does not stay in one place. He journeys from city to city, from town to town, and into the wilderness. He journeys to Jerusalem to die.

Mary Magdalene journeys to Jesus’s tombs with spices to make fragrant his corpse. There Jesus, risen from the dead, greets her. He tells her to go and tell the others. A number of disciples journey to see the empty tomb.

The Book of Acts is a book of journeys. It largely chronicles the journeys of Paul to spread the good news of Christianity. It ends with Paul’s journey to Rome, where by tradition his journey ends in martyrdom.

3. The journey to the golden city.

Some Christians believe that heaven comes to them. But Christianity is a journey, a journey like the journeys described in the Bible. It’s a journey to God.

It’s a journey that begins with the decision to make the journey.

On the journey, most pilgrims meet up with other people also making the journey. Such a caravan of pilgrims is called a church.

On the journey, the pilgrim gains skills for the journey. The pilgrim learns about the journeys of others by reading the Bible and in other ways. The pilgrim learns things useful for his or her own journey.

On the journey, the pilgrim learns to pray. Prayer enlists the help of God in the journey; it can help others, too. It may lead to the pilgrim being consciously guided on the journey by God.

Some pilgrims end their journeys too soon. Some stop believing in the heavenly city that lies at the end of the journey. Some think that the journey is a waste of time – they think that God will be along for them with no effort of their own. And that might or might not be true, but that doesn’t mean that God wants his pilgrims to stop advancing on heaven. (But there are seasons of rest.)

Some of us journey in the wrong direction. Some of us journey in circles. Some of us give up or get distracted or grow complacent. I have known giving up.

When we finally give up the ghost, if God finds us along the way where he wants us to be, that is an act of his grace – grace in guidance, grace in strength, grace in faith, and just plain grace.

For each of us, our life, if it is lived well, is lived in movement. That journey might at times be uphill and hard. Mine has been. Life has been like that for many of my friends. But there’s joy at the summit.