Dear Ray,
The question of abortion brings us face to face with vulnerable human life. But it also exposes something in those of us who speak about it.
What life is supplying our response?
We may possess a firm conviction, a persuasive argument, and an unwavering commitment to our position. Yet none of these establishes that we are living by Christ.
The natural man can defend a moral cause. He can sacrifice for it, organize around it, and condemn everyone who opposes it. He can become intensely religious in the process.
Zoe is something else entirely.
Zoe is the uncreated, eternal life of God, given to us in Christ and dwelling in our spirit. We have received more than instruction about how to behave. We have received Him as our life.
That must become the center of this discussion.
We cannot claim to defend life while remaining indifferent to whether we are living by the life of God.
I can oppose abortion from fear, anger, disgust, political loyalty, or the satisfaction of being right. I can defend abortion rights from equally independent ground. The strength of my conviction cannot tell me whether Christ is supplying my living.
Even agreement with a moral truth does not make my independence from Him divine.
That is what troubles me about turning abortion into a test of Christian faithfulness. We examine someone’s position and assume we have discovered their spiritual condition.
But have we encountered Christ in them? Have they encountered Christ in us?
A position cannot answer those questions.
The unborn life deserves serious regard. Dependence, smallness, and being unwanted do not make a developing human life insignificant.
And the woman carrying that life must be fully seen.
Her body is involved. Her circumstances are involved. Her fear, health, responsibilities, and future cannot be pushed aside so that our argument may proceed undisturbed.
We cannot honor one by making the other disappear.
Yet political argument repeatedly asks us to narrow our sight. We are taught which vulnerability to emphasize and which suffering to explain away. Soon we recognize the familiar words of our own side more readily than we recognize the person before us.
Then we bring that narrowed vision into the church and call it discernment.
Ray, the woman standing before us is not an opportunity to demonstrate our moral superiority. She is someone to receive, hear, and love.
Perhaps she is frightened. Perhaps she has been abandoned. Perhaps she has received devastating news. Perhaps she cannot imagine how she will care for another child.
Will we allow her to speak?
Will we remain present long enough to discover what our certainty has overlooked?
And if she makes a decision we believe is wrong, will our care disappear?
Love that is withdrawn when persuasion fails has exposed its conditions.
This does not empty abortion of moral seriousness. It brings our own conduct under the same searching light. We do not become free to humiliate someone because we believe a life is at stake.
Christ must govern the one who speaks as surely as we want Him to govern the one who decides.
Here is where living out Zoe becomes practical.
I may arrive with a speech prepared. Yet as I turn to the Lord, I become willing to listen. I may want to settle the question quickly, but find myself remaining beside someone whose circumstances cannot be settled in an afternoon.
I may discover that my strongest resistance concerns what helping her will require of me.
My time. My money. My comfort. My willingness to remain involved after the urgency has passed.
The cross reaches the person who wants to give an answer without giving himself.
And Christ becomes available through a human life surrendered to Him.
That is more searching than asking whether I have taken the correct side. It asks whether He has access to me at all.
If I urge a woman to continue a pregnancy, am I willing to help her through it?
Will I help her find support? Will I bring food, offer transportation, listen without gossiping, and remain when she is exhausted?
Will the child matter to me after birth, when caring becomes repetitive and receives no applause?
I cannot meet every need. But I must not use that limitation to excuse meeting none.
A prohibition does not feed a child. Winning an argument does not accompany a frightened woman through the night. A political victory does not supply the patience required to care for another person.
These things require people who are available.
Zoe must have access to our hands, our possessions, our schedules, and our relationships.
Otherwise, we have made the divine life into a subject we discuss while our actual living remains governed by convenience.
But even outward generosity does not settle the deeper question. I can help someone while inwardly demanding gratitude, agreement, or recognition. I can turn service into another proof of my righteousness.
That is why abiding cannot be an introductory thought we leave behind once the practical work begins.
We need Him while we listen. We need Him while we give. We need Him when help is refused, when gratitude never comes, and when the person before us remains unconvinced.
We need Him to love without possessing.
Living out Zoe means depending upon Christ in the very encounter where our natural reactions insist on taking charge. His life reaches our impatience, our judgment, and our desire to control the outcome.
We do not manufacture His expression by trying harder to appear compassionate. We turn to Him, yield what He exposes, and act in dependence upon Him.
This is our calling.
The church cannot surrender it to a political party.
No party possesses Zoe. No legislation can regenerate a person. No candidate’s position on abortion grants that candidate authority over the conscience of Christ’s body.
Nor does agreement on abortion excuse dishonesty, contempt, or cruelty elsewhere.
We cannot defend one conviction by giving another person permission to violate everything inconvenient to it.
Christ must remain Lord of the whole of our living.
And the person who has already had an abortion must not encounter a closed door among His people.
You are not reducible to that event. Your history is not public property. You should not have to perform grief to receive tenderness, or hide grief to remain accepted.
Christ is available to you.
Those who speak of Him must make room for you to turn to Him freely. We also live by mercy. We have no higher ground from which to make you an object of contempt.
Ray, the hallmark of God’s kingdom is His presence and rule. Its fullness brings righteousness, peace, and the end of death and mourning. Our calling now is to allow that same Lord to govern us from within.
That government must reach our response to abortion.
Let it expose every place where defending life has become an excuse for refusing love. Let it expose every place where defending freedom has made us careless about another life. Let it bring our convictions, fears, and loyalties beneath Christ.
We must take the people before us seriously enough to seek Him, and seek Him deeply enough to become available to them.
The question reaches beyond what we oppose or permit.
Has Christ gained the freedom to live through us here?
When the frightened woman speaks, when the child needs care, when the person who disagrees tests our patience—who comes forth?
We may have spent years defending our position.
Have we allowed Zoe to become our living?
