Stern and splendid: why abortion can never be the "compassionate" solution

Yesterday, I received a tumblr message from a fellow user of the blogging site.  She was challenging the pro-life views that I occasionally express on my tumblr blog.  Her claim?  That it is "uncompassionate" to deny an abortion to a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.

Here's my response:

'The great theologian and philosopher C. S. Lewis once asserted that “love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

What’s he saying here? That kindness is unimportant? That we can stop being nice to each other, because it doesn’t really matter? No: just that kindness alone can’t be considered the epitome of love. It is only one side of a multi-faceted gem. Sometimes things must be put before comforting expressions of affection – things like truth. Love does not, and never can mean simply letting someone do whatever they want. Failing to interfere when someone is about to make a bad decision isn’t called love, it’s called cowardice. It seems that true love is often tough love.

Ok, now consider this. In my class on the theology of healing this semester, one of the many wonderful texts we’ve been studying is Peter Kreeft’s Making Sense Out of Suffering. In it, at some point, he talks about the ancient Greek philosophers’ understanding of the meaning of happiness. To them, happiness is not a mere emotion. Rather, it is a state of being. The Greek word for happiness is eudaimonia, which means “good spirit” or “good soul”. Whether or not one is authentically “happy” is dependent upon his moral state. And thus, to these great thinkers, there existed much greater evils than to suffer, or even to die. To sink into moral depravity is the greatest evil – and greatest killjoy, if you will – imaginable.

To quote Kreeft: “What is the greatest good? What gives our lives meaning? What is our end? Modernity answers, feeling good. The ancients answer, being good…Furthermore, the most popular modern answer to the question of what it means to be a good person is to be kind. Do not make other people suffer. If it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s O.K. By this standard, God is not good if he lets us suffer. But by ancient standards, God might be good even though he lets us suffer, if he does it for the sake of the greater end of happiness, perfection of life and character and soul, that is, self.” (Making Sense Out of Suffering, 1986, pp 64-65.)

See, you speak of “compassion”. I suppose that if, faced with a frightened, distraught, confused pregnant woman, I could convince myself that it would be “compassionate” towards her to support her in getting an abortion. But oh, wouldn’t I feel like a hypocrite? And wouldn’t I be one, showing her “kindness”, at the expense of her own child’s life? Forced to choose one or the other, feeling good can never be chosen over being good. Emotions are fleeting. Your substance – well, that’s who you are.'

Receiving such messages via a computer - and from complete strangers, no less - often frustrates me, and always saddens me.  But I've discovered that these situations are really blessings in disguise.  Not only do they force me to think through, articulate and defend my beliefs, but they give me the opportunity to witness.

What do you think about the issues this woman brought up?  How would you respond?  Share below!

image: Charon and Psyche (detail) by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope

the great and wild Fairytale

To the atheist living in the secular world, fairytales do not exist, because they are too fantastic and too beautiful to possibly be true. Gerda never trekked across the frozen wilderness to save Kay from the Snow Queen. Beauty never went to stay in the Beast's palace. A certain dapper cat never set out to make a prince of a miller's son. It is good to believe that such stories are real when one is a child, and it is good to believe in their “messages” when one has grown up. But that is all.

To the Christian, the fact that the aforementioned events did not actually occur in history is mere happenstance: the Divine Author simply chose not to write those stories upon the pages of time. Instead, he chose to write the greatest and wildest Fairytale of all: the story of how God became man, suffered and died, in order to conquer death within us; and then rose again from the dead, in order to restore life within us. Before returning to Heaven, he bestowed upon certain chosen men the power to transform bread and wine into his very body and blood, and he commanded us all to eat this strange and beautiful Food, so that he might be with us always, and so that he might be always bringing us back to life.

See, the Christian does not shy away from the fantastic. It is his sustenance, his pilgrim's fare.

He is the quintessential dreamer, the odd-one-out, the one who has been to the magical world and back, who has seen wonderful things there and who has been changed by them. He is the one whom no one believes, who is named the fool or worse, the madman; he is the one whom society rejects, because a society obsessed with being modern and sophisticated has no place and no patience for the one who still believes in fairytales.

And yet, he is the one who always seems to be proved right at the end of the story. His childlike faith is always rewarded.

The world says to the Christian: “Your tale tickled our fancy at first, but now you have taken it too absurdly far. How could you believe that such impossible things actually happened? And how could you believe it so much as to let it change the way you live every part of your life? We will not be so changed – such a change would be too hard, too risky for us.

“Enough. Stop dreaming. Rub that stardust from your eyes.”

The Christian's reply is simple: “No, I cannot. The stardust allows me to see.”

Image: St. George and the Dragon by Edward Burne-Jones, found at illusionsgallery.com

In which the music of Georges Bizet does not prove conducive to getting to bed early

I think I've found my theme song.

I discovered it the other night, stayed up till 1:00 auditorially ogling it, and have been in love ever since.

It's going to be part of my French set for senior recital next semester.

Just look at the translated lyrics:

One day in the Springtime
as they walked in the valley,
Joseph sang a song
 to express his desire:
Shepherdess, oh shepherdess, 
 Oh tra la la (bis)
Shepherdess, oh shepherdess, 
Oh tra la la (bis)
Please allow, grant me this, may I now steal a kiss?
Oh fair shepherdess, won't you let me steal a tender kiss?
Oh fair shepherdess, please let me steal a tender kiss.

She then in reply
answered him in this way:
You wish, says your song,
 to take something of mine.
No, Joseph. No, Joseph,
 tra la la (bis)
No, Joseph. No, Joseph,
tra la la (bis)
Would you dare steal a kiss? Could I be so remiss?
No no no no, Joseph. You won't steal it.
I will give it away!
No no no, Joseph. You will not steal it.
For I'll give it away to you!

It's humorous and heart-melting at the same time. It's just so sweet. I love, love, love it.

gah. I can't wait