Church News

Posted on

A few thoughts on Roe v. Wade and Dobbs v. Jackson

On June 24, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court ruling in Thomas Dobbs et al. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (which was infamously leaked), written by justice Samuel Alito, came out that:

“We hold that Roe and [Planned Parenthood v. Casey] must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision”

Roe v. Wade (1973) was, of course, one of the most polarizing Supreme Court cases in US history. Given the embattled nature of Roe v. Wade, it is sensible to expect that Dobbs v. Jackson will raise further bitterness. There will be no shortage of outrage, protest, and legislative activity. There are bound to be more Federal (and probably Supreme) Court cases on issues of abortion as a patchwork of laws across the nation come into play. In the meantime, how do we as Christians think about and talk about such a polarizing issue in our daily lives? Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind so that we are ready to think with charity, compassion, and hopefully some biblical framework on the issue of abortion.

As Christians we should…

Be realistic

First, all sides should stop and catch their breath for a minute. Dobbs v. Jackson is not that sweeping of a ruling. Neither the pro-life nor the pro-choice movement finds much substantive victory or defeat here. Dobbs v. Jackson is a ruling on a legal technicality: the constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion and the legal reasoning used in the Roe and Casey cases was underwhelming.

Consider what that ruling actually means. The constitution does not guarantee the right to tax-advantaged retirement plans. But we have them. Why? Because we have tons of state and federal laws describing how they work and making them legal. All that Dobbs v. Jackson does is say that the current federal laws created in the Roe v. Wade ruling can’t stand by themselves.

Consider what this ruling does not do. It does not say anything about whether abortion is good, right, or moral. It does not say that abortion is illegal in the US. It does not even say that there can’t be federal laws guaranteeing abortion across the country. It simply says that the law which the Supreme Court de facto passed in its 1973 ruling is not valid.

While in some ways Dobbs v. Jackson is a major win for the pro-life movement, it really is a weak win at best. It is good practice—both generally and in this case—for we as Christians to be realistic in what we talk about.

Be compassionate

This ruling is disorienting to many people. Anyone born after 1973 has never lived in a US where abortion has not been enshrined in federal law…until now. That means that for over half of the US population, this is uncharted territory. Most of the people in the US have grown up with the assumption that—good or bad—abortion was part of US law. In a context where so much in society is shifting and debated, this ruling brings instability to yet another area of society where things seemed generally secure.

To put things into an idiom relatable around here, imagine the Supreme Court ruled tomorrow that the “right to bear arms” in the 2nd Amendment only allows ownership of guns of comparable type to those the Founders knew in the late 1700s. That would rock a lot of peoples’ worlds around here. That would lead to a lot of emotion, anger, frustration, and uncertainty.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade rocks a lot of peoples’ worlds. We should be prepared to be compassionate towards those whose worlds have been rocked. Gloating is not compassionate.

Be sensitive

While it is hard to get exact numbers, realize that approximately 1 of every 4 women of childbearing age in the US will have an abortion at some point in her life. In any gathering of more than 4 women, statistics tell us that one either has had or will have an abortion. While the rate of abortions is not spread equally across demographic groups, in all likelihood you know several women who have had abortions (or will before menopause).

When we think and talk about abortion, this should give us pause. Before waxing eloquent on the stupidity and moral degeneracy of women who get abortions, consider that you know some of them (even if you don’t know that you know them). Being sensitive does not mean not talking about abortion as a wrong, tragic, and ugly thing, but it should temper how we talk.

We can easily substitute a message of condemnation in place of the gospel of grace by the way that we talk to and about other people.

Be helpful

This is an opportunity like hasn’t existed since 1973 for those who speak loudly against abortion to act as loudly as they speak. The situation on the ground differs from place to place. In many states, nothing has changed since the ruling. In some states, abortion rights are set to be expanded. In some states, abortion has been (or will shortly be) banned. Especially in those states where abortion is now illegal, a great burden of responsibility falls on the shoulders of those who have argued and fought for the fall of abortion.

It is easy to yell loudly against something we don’t like; it is far harder to live for what is good and right. The ruling provides opportunity for those who have yelled loudest about the need to do away with abortion on demand to yell equally as loud with actions in helping deal with the repercussions of no more legal abortion in many states.

How can we deal with helping those in crisis? Abortion data tracks pretty strongly along socio-economic lines: the poorer the woman, the more likely an abortion. Obviously, there are other factors in play, but that is a strong correlation. Will pro-lifers turn out to be committed to dealing with the difficulties of life many women face that make abortion a sensible choice to them? Only time will tell that. But ending legal abortion will certainly not end abortion.

As Christians, this ruling invites many of us around the country to consider what sort of social causes are worthy of devoting time, energy, and money towards beyond just overthrowing abortion laws. The underlying logic of abortion grows from many strands of brokenness and sinfulness. Outlawing abortion by itself doesn’t deal with any of these root problems.

Keep striving to change the conversation

There is much more to say on this issue. Abortion is a complicated and tragic part of our culture. The Dobbs v. Jackson ruling does not end the complication and tragedy. If anything, it will probably inflame them further.

There will be lots of legal debates still to come. Elections and laws have consequences, and they will continue to have them going forward.

As we make our way in this post-Roe world, we still need to work to change the conversation regarding abortion. Few people actually like the idea of abortion. We disguise it under talk of choice and rights, but most people don’t like the idea of killing the baby/fetus. For women getting an abortion, it tends to be a cost-benefit analysis type decision. How do we change the conversation from talking about rights and laws to talking about the tragedy that is abortion?

Abortion is a tragedy. How can we work to minimize this tragedy in peoples’ lives?

That question throws us back on the need for the gospel, the need for loving people who are living broken lives, and all those other needs that Jesus presses so forcefully for us to recognize. After all, salvation does not come through passing laws. The wholeness for which all of us were made is not found in defeating abortion laws, but in union with Christ. I hope that many Christians who have fought—and continue to fight—for pro-life legislation will remember that.

Posted on

A Strange Ride: LGBTQ+ Pride Month and Redemption

Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826) wrote a variety of poems and humorous fables. Here I share one with you, called “A Strange Ride.”[1]

A man was riding home on his donkey. He had his son run along beside. A traveler came by and said, “It is not right, sir, that you ride and have your son run. You are stronger than he is.” So, the father dismounted and let his son ride. Another traveler came and said, “Young fellow, it is not right that you ride and let your father go by foot. You have younger legs.” So, both mounted together and rode for a while. A third traveler came and said, “What sort of nonsense is this! Two blokes sitting on one weak animal? Someone oughta’ take a stick and chase the two of ya’ off the poor beast.” So, both climbed off the donkey and the three walked abreast along the road, with the donkey in the middle. A fourth traveler came and said, “You are three curious companions. Isn’t it sufficient for two to go on foot? Doesn’t the trip go easier when one of you rides?” So, the father tied the donkey’s front legs together and the son tied his back legs together. Then they ran a strong pole through and carried the donkey on their shoulders.

This is how far things can go if you try to please everybody.

Humorous, yes? And yet also touching a central nerve in life: you can’t please everybody. Trying to please everyone ends up doing ridiculous things that don’t necessarily help anyone involved. Or, read a little differently, the parable illustrates that not everyone can be right.

This message is especially relevant for our culture right now where we have decided that everyone gets to be right.

June is—if you’ve missed it—considered LGBTQ+ Pride month. As a culture, trying to follow everybody’s different demands leads to inconsistent nonsense winning the day. In the recent past we have seen the increasing complexity and oddity of living in a culture where sex and gender are viewed as endlessly plastic, subject only to the whims of the sovereign self.

Here are just two areas of tragic irony in the move to “carry the donkey” instead of ride it like usual.

When a man is a “woman” is a “something”

As usual in American culture, sports have led the way in grabbing headlines.

Recently, one headline brought to a head something which pundits have long been talking about. A former-male now transgendered swimmer—who had competed for 3 years in collegiate swimming as a male—started breaking women’s swimming records in collegiate swimming, even winning the 500-meter freestyle at nationals. Naturally, this athlete is competing against biological females

The athlete in question, Lia Thomas, has said this about their relationship to swimming:

“(Swimming) is a huge part of my life and who I am. I’ve been a swimmer since I was 5 years old,” Thomas said. “The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that’s usually really solid. Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?

“Being trans has not affected my ability to do this sport and being able to continue is very rewarding.”

I have no doubt that personally wrestling with issues of uncertainty about sex/gender is immensely complicated. That being said, consider how Lia Thomas frames the issue as one of personal identity and personal reward: I am someone who likes to swim (competitively at college) and so I should be able to keep doing that because that is my identity; the rest of the world needs to make space for me to do this as trans, because that is my identity. While this is picking one line from one news article, it is telling that there is no wrestling with the question of whether this former man turned woman competing against women is a fair way to treat the biological women whose identity has also centered on competitive swimming, but who don’t have the advantages of having a biological male body.[2]

Women’s sports has turned out to be a galvanizing issue. Having biological males participating in women’s sports kind of goes against the point of women’s sports to begin with. International swimming has banned people like Lia Thomas from competing in international events. We’ll see how long that common-sense approach holds up.

The prominence of “pregnant people”

On a related front, if you listen to political debates and talking points, you may have caught something recently. National politicians have largely stopped talking about “pregnant women.” They talk about “pregnant people” instead. This goes hand in hand with the highly publicized confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson where she pleaded unable to answer the question, “What is a woman?” As has been pointed out, this inability to define “woman” has not stopped her from using the word in her legal rulings, leading one to wonder what exactly she is ruling about. And the necessity of ruling about cases of sexual discrimination raises problems with this lack of certainty of what exactly makes a woman a woman, but I digress.

Back to “pregnant people.” A simple biological fact is that only human females can become pregnant. Until scientists develop artificial wombs, this will continue to be true. That is a bridge we will probably have to cross at some point, but not yet. In the meantime, consider this statement from Louise Melling, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, about why we should talk about “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women”:

First of all, if we’re talking about “pregnant people,” that language says to people—to transgender men and to nonbinary people—“we see you.” It should do a fair amount of work to help address discrimination.

The question which emerges in my mind is this: why should we efface the identity of the vast majority of “pregnant people” (cough, cough, “pregnant women”) in an effort to assuage the difficult feelings of a minute minority of biological women who have decided—for whatever array of personal reasons—to live as a man yet keep their uterus and female hormones largely intact?

Again, I don’t in anyway want to minimize the personal difficulties of individuals who are struggling with their sex/gender identity. I want us to learn how to be compassionate in helping people as best as able. But I question the wisdom of trying to reshape the experience and labels—the identities, really—of the majority (the vast majority, at that) of people to help a few people whose experience is biologically aberrant. One wonders, why should we efface the identity of most women in order to give a few people a sense that their identity as a “pregnant-former-woman-now-living-as-a-man-but-not-really-because-men-can’t-get-pregnant” is right?

The category of redemption

These are just two of many points where the advancing LGBTQ+ agenda is creating a strange situation in our culture—the travelers are carrying the donkey, as it were. In insisting that each individual’s felt identity is sacrosanct (so long as that identity is LGBTQ+), we have created a situation where the majority must be effaced to protect the fragile feelings of the minority.

As Christians, we have something to offer to this strange situation. Namely, an important concept lacking in our culture’s vocabulary and view of self: redemption. Redemption insists two things at the same time: (1) each person is broken and (2) each person is redeemable. When the LGBTQ+ movement declares certain identities as inherently right, they have removed the need for redemption. In fact, they find the idea that LGBTQ+ people need redemption (like anybody else) as offensive.

But one of the beautiful advantages of redemption is it helps us hold together the ability to be loving to other people who are different from us (since we need redemption to) and to insist that not everything is right, good, and desirable. Rather than trying to please everyone and ending up in chaos, redemption insists that we all have aspects of our identities which need to be redeemed by God.

Insisting on LGBTQ+ identities as the standard for the good life leads a culture along the strange ride of the opening parable. Something wrong can be found with every version of the ride. Insisting on redemption as the baseline for human identity and society allows space for people to be different while always insisting that each one of our identities needs some amount of overhaul.

And God is able and willing to redeem any identity through Jesus.

[1] This is a mix between a personal translation of the original German and a bit of retelling on my part.

[2] And lest any consider this point sexist, I merely note that at every level of advanced sports with athletes of comparative skill and experience, the issues is with men going to compete in women’s sports, not vice-versa. There are very few sports where female athletes of comparable level can competitively participate against male athletes in a consistent manner.

Posted on

Needing something bigger

In a recent piece in Christianity Today, Russell Moore took up the topic of “tribalization” in the culture and the church.[1] From politics to economics to religion to entertainment, there are no shortages of tribes in which we are sorted and voluntarily sort ourselves. The reasons behind this are legion, ranging from natural human tendencies to the micro-advertising policies of giant tech companies which allow us to live in ideological bubbles. Echo-chambers, after all, do not produce novel sounds.

This is no doubt a multi-faceted problem and a great difficulty of our times—how do you live together yet completely separate lives and worlds and sets of “facts”? Within the church, unfortunately, much is the same. The racial activism and then the Covid pandemic have highlighted in graphic terms how deeply divided churches are across the nation. Many movements forged around shared theological consensus have found group identity splinter into tribes over political and social issues. And what church hasn’t had its woes around the existential question of the last two years: “to mask or not to mask”?

Moore touches on an important part of the difficulties when he writes:

“Maybe the reason we as Christians find our loyalties in tribal factions and ideologies is because we’ve lost that sense of worshipful awe before a God who is not a set of doctrines or a motivation for institutional survival or a national deity or a political mascot. Maybe our clamoring for those sorts of hive minds is because we’ve become bored—unsurprised by joy, un-amazed by grace.”

There is certainly something to ponder here. If our eyes are enamored by smaller deities, then the bigger God Who Is will no longer command our attention and our loyalty. Perhaps it is easier to subscribe to various versions of the “hive mind” and find our meaning and purpose and hope in that then it is to sit before an awesome and holy God in recognition that he is both terrible and compelling, heart-destroying and love-giving.

[1] Russell Moore, “Tribalism’s Awful Antidote: We’re Made to Have a Herd. Made to Transcend It, Too,” Christianity Today, June 2022.

Posted on

Searching for…something

box robot yearning for true love

We’re searching for something else,

searching for something more,

we’re searching for something else,

what it is we’re not really sure,

but certainly something more.

Every now and again, a song hits a nerve. It seems to capture in a concise way the mood of a movement, or a group, or a generation. The song “Igendwas” by Yvonne Catterfeld hits a sweet spot in describing this cultural moment (at least for my generation). Yes, the title is funny; that’s because the song is in German. Here is a general-purpose English translation that is good enough to see what it is about (it’s a pretty song, even if you don’t understand German).

Above I have translated the chorus into poetic English. The chorus captures clearly the indecisive yearning which runs throughout the song. A yearning for something or someone that rises beyond the trivial, the temporary, and the cliches of modern life. Catterfeld muses on how we are able to explain the position of the earth, make monuments, take pictures, yet it all fades away. Our pictures don’t give us memory; our monuments don’t make us last; we can explain the rotation of the earth but in our pursuit of explaining ourselves we just keep trashing the world around us. It turns out, doing things and making stuff doesn’t assuage the yearning in our hearts. There must be something more.

In the second verse (sung by another German artist, Bengio), the song moves into reflections of endless indeterminacy. He sings of our longing to find someone who is real, solid, lasting, and who shows us who we are. But even if we found someone who might be able to do that, we can’t stay and learn because staying and learning means we could miss out on something else happening somewhere else. There is always a something else and always a somewhere else and the endless chasing for something leaves us endlessly spinning, finding nothing. Always more and different with the hope that the novel will turn out not just to be novel but categorically different. That in the next novel thing we will actually find the thing which explains ourselves to us. We are dedicated to getting somewhere, finding something, achieving something, but no one knows what that is and no one has the answer to guide us.

A song of our hearts

This song is a song of the human heart. We know, each one of us, that there is something more than what we have. That we were intended for greater than, deeper than, higher than. But in each ascent to the heavens, we find that the beeswax which holds our wings together can’t lift us high enough, and we plunge again into the seas below. As the Christian band The Gray Havens puts it in their song “High Enough:”

'Cause we fly, to the mountain top 
We climb, to the skies above 
We sail, to the stars and up 
But we can't get high, high enough

All around us—and, if we are honest, far too often inside of us—is a world full of people looking to find something. Something else. Something that lasts. Something that shows we are right. Something that shows we have reached as high as there is to reach. Something that shows we have become God.

There is no something we will ever find, though. Not by just following our longings to the next shiny thing.

There is no someone we will ever find, though. Not by trying out someone while endlessly looking for the next someone who might be better.

As much as our hearts were made for delight—and that pursuit of delight stands behind the pursuit of “something”—they were also made for devotion. Devotion is the breeding ground for delight.

The lesser and greater delights

Many delights in life can be found through devotion to a craft. Rejecting the endless pursuit of something else and rooting down here (rather than looking for another “there” to go to) opens up the possibility of delight. Devotion to a place, a people, a project, provides the time and space it takes for delight to grow in our hearts. These lesser delights of life are beautiful and worthy to be savored. We were made for these delights. Yet they are lesser. While worthy, even devotion to these lesser delights will never pull us outside of the endless pursuit of something else. Our hearts are made for something more profound than we can achieve by ourselves.

The greater delight is what we are really seeking for in each throw-away delight, each new relationship, each new experience. But no experience resumé of lesser delights ever adds up to the greater delight. The greater delight is not, in an ultimate sense, something—someone really—to be found by us in our pursuit. The Greater Delight demands instead that he finds us. Until we are worn out on the endless pursuit of some greater lesser delight that might bring contentment, the Greater Delight is unexperienceable.

A master of our hearts

The song Irgendwas colors in the contours of modern life, but can’t make sense of why the picture is always blurry and never resolves. There is a need, in the end, to give up on the pursuit. Not to give up on the pursuit of delight, but to give up believing (hoping against hope) that enough lesser delights will ever equal the Greater Delight.

The great lie of today is that we can both be master of self and enjoy the delight for which we were made.

What our hearts really need, really crave for, is a Master who can guide us into delight. Indeed, who is Greater Delight. As St. Augustine said long ago:

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it resets in you.”

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash

Posted on

Love is loyal

Princess bride wuv twue wuv

“Love is…” Fill in the blank. There are lots of different ways we could describe love. Our culture offers an entire palette of them to choose from. “Love” seems to me to refer mainly to heavily subjective feelings and states of mind. That is, love is seen first and foremost as a feeling experienced within a person. While I don’t want to downplay or denigrate the reality of a feeling or an array of feelings which we unobjectionably call “love,” the biblical witness requires us to dig deeper. A key reality often lost in contemporary notions is this: love is loyal.

Translation troubles: Hesed

Working through the book of Ruth, we encounter an important Hebrew word at three junctures: Ruth 1.8, 2.20, and 3.10. This word is hesed. In general, I try to avoid talking about Hebrew and Greek in non-academic contexts. I find them very interesting and have devoted a great deal of time and effort to understanding them. However, the role of talking about Hebrew and Greek is primarily the role of a scholar. Scholars have done great labor in the languages, culture, and history, so that we can read the Bible and study it in English without having to learn the original languages. That is a blessing of immense proportions!

There is nothing spiritual or esoteric about using this Hebrew word hesed. It just happens to be the case that there is no consistently good way to translate the word into English. It is complex word. Regular translations include “love,” “kindness”, “loving-kindness,” “mercy,” “loyal love,” and so forth.

The fundamental difficulty with rendering hesed into English is that it traffics in a different understanding of “love” and “kindness” than we usually use. Consider these verses from Psalm 136 (the repeated refrain throughout the psalm uses this word hesed):

1 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever.

This one is easy. We can square enduring love with goodness. But as the Psalm continues, we run into problems with using “love.” Consider a few different acts of God which are also attributed as examples of “his hesed endures forever”:

10 to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt—His love endures forever.
15 [he] swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea—His love endures forever.
18 [he] killed mighty kings—His love endures forever.

These are a little harder to fit into our idea of love and mercy. How does God killing people fit into his “loving-kindness”?

Love is…loyal

Throughout this entire Pslam it is God’s hesed that is under view. It quickly becomes clear that hesed is concerned with something which goes beyond our normal usage of the terms “love” and “mercy.” One scholar puts it this way:

“Hesed, however, describes a mutual relationship between man and man or between man and God. Translating it as “mercy,” “compassion,” or “love” destroys the concept of mutuality.”

Harold Kamsler, “Hesed – Mercy or Loyalty?”

This scholar highlights a tendency in our cultural context of understanding love and mercy as one-way actions: I love, she shows mercy, he is full of loving-kindness. Hesed, by contrast, has a strong notion of inter-connectedness. A strong notion of loyalty. A strong notion of relational obligations.

 Here is an expansive definition:

“Hesed expresses, essentially, faithfulness and loyal conduct within the context of a relationship; it is an inward commitment and disposition of goodwill together with its outward expression in dutiful and compassionate action. The precise nature of that action depends upon the context, the relationship and also upon the relative positions and abilities of parties within that relationship.”

Robin Routledge, “Hesed as Obligation: A Re-Examination”

That’s a mouthful. But helpful.

My personal favorite quick and easy way to try to represent this is “loyal love,” but even that is not entirely satisfying.

The duty of love

What does duty have to do with love?

We might put it this way: love (in this hesed sense) is bounded within certain limits. This is not a bad thing. I love my family, for instance. I don’t love anyone in Kazakhstan. Not that I am opposed to anyone in Kazakhstan. I’m sure there are many nice people there who I could learn to love. But I have no connection, no commitment to anyone there. I can love them only in a very abstract sense of general benevolence. But I go home and sit with my wife and kids and we eat together, play together, fight together, laugh together, and all those things. We have a commitment to one another and within the boundaries of the commitment, love of a deep and profound kind flows.

The difference is that there is no relational commitment in my general benevolence towards people in Kazakhstan, but there is commitment undergirding our family relationships. Within my family, hesed exists and flows out in acts of care and concern for each other. The relational context is the matrix in which loyal-love has existence. A relationship is like the boundary lines within which hesed is possible.

God’s Hesed

This notion of hesed is important in Scripture. God is a God of love, yet it is a bounded love. Not bounded in the sense of limited, as though God ever runs out of love to give but bounded in the sense of it covers a certain area, if you will. Those outside of that “area” experience God’s general benevolence—“he causes the rain to fall on the just and unjust”—but not the deep and profound love, the hesed. That love flows within the bounds of relationship: his covenant, his people, those who have come to “live in the area of God’s love,” as it were. And within the bounds of this love, God’s love is not only a good thing, but a duty, a loyal thing. God fully commits himself to those who are within this “area.”

The Bible calls this “area” of God’s love many things: the kingdom of God, salvation, eternal life, being in Christ. What unites them is the undergirding reality that God fully and freely commits himself to any and all who come into this area of his love. And he commits to being for them and not against them, to be the giver of joy, to fill up their hopes…and all these things even when they fail to be as they should.

God holds up his loyal love

That last sentence is important. God remains faithful to his hesed, his covenant love, even when we don’t. That is part of why it is so important to keep a sense of duty and loyalty in our notion of love. Even when people in my family make me angry, or I make them angry, we continue in love. Not because we necessarily are happy with each other at the moment. But because we have loyal-love, dutiful love, love which finds its strength and existence in our relationship rather than in the transient nature of our feelings at the time.

The gold standard of this kind of hesed, loyal-love, is God reaching out to humanity in various promises (covenants). In these promises, God makes a commitment to humanity. The commitment sets the boundaries in which hesed exists. Those who enter in get to receive the endless bounty of God’s loyal-love…even when we fail to be loyal. Why? Because God’s loyalty to his commitments never runs out. While anger and frustration are not foreign to God in his dealings with humanity, he does not cease to be full of loyal-love.

This calls for praise! Praise God that his love is loyal to the end.

This calls for emulation: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Ephesian 5.1-2).