Visible success and hidden obscurity in ministry

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Pastoral ministry is a holy calling, but that does not make it invulnerable to perverse motivations and desires. Every pastor knows all about the peculiar temptations and idols of ministry which revolve around success; or merely the appearance of success.

The particular way that success is defined will be different depending on which tribe a pastor belongs to. Some tribes value intellect, others value charisma, and still others have  strange attachments to idiosyncratic behaviours that are part of certain Christian sub-cultures (ways of speaking, dressing, and acting).

Regardless of your particular tribe and its measures of meritocracy, the common streak that runs through the human heart is the sin of vainglory; that longing for the praise of man as the primary motive in ministry.

It is probably true that this season of lockdown has exacerbated this temptation. I can think of a few reasons why this would be the case. First, there is the fact that we are spending more time online and part of that time is spent poking around and looking at what our peers are doing which leads to comparison – that mother of all misery. In the normal run of things these comparisons are impossible because I cannot see what happened in your church this past Sunday, nor you in mine. Taking church online has changed that. Second, there is the fact that we have fewer meetings to distract us with the humdrum of business as usual. That leaves a vacuum in our days in which we can mull on our deeper existential longings, such as the desire to be liked. Third, we are experiencing less encouragement in our work. We cannot see the faces of our people when we preach, or their responses to God in worship. That desire for encouragement is not at all a bad thing; nobody wants to live a fruitless life. But in its absence, the heart searches for ways of finding significance.

Success in any field often follows an arc, like the journey of the stars across the sky. A star will rise until it reaches its apex, but then it will fall behind the horizon where it is out of sight, forgotten. So too in ministry. This means that the temptation towards vainglory has to be resisted at each phase of ministry life, whether your star is rising or it is falling.

That is why the words of John the Baptist resonate so deeply. His star had risen as one uniquely called to prepare the way for the Christ. But just as soon, his ministry began to diminish and fade precisely because he had been successful: He had cleared a path for Jesus, and now all eyes were swivelling to behold that man. And how does he speak of this experience?

A man cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.

Two sentences stand out as life mottos for pastoral ministry.

First, he speaks to his visible success: A man cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. Every natural talent you possess, every opportunity that has opened, every experience of the power of the Holy Spirit working through you has been a gift from heaven. That is grace; that God would use us undeserving, frail and flawed vessels for his glory.

Second, he speaks to his fading into obscurity: He must increase, but I must decrease. There is only pain in obscurity if your deepest desire is for recognition. But this self-worship will diminish as our love and longing for the glory of Jesus grows. And while the Scriptures are clear that in Christ’s kingdom ‘star differs from star in glory’ – that is, God will raise up some to prominence above others even in our eternal home – it is equally clear that all stars will be rendered as nothing in comparison with the glory of the Son.

What kind of ambition should we therefore nurture? ‘I must decrease.’ Or, in the words of Count von Zinzendorf that have so often been on my mind in recent years: ‘Preach the gospel. Die. Be forgotten.’

Coronavirus, faith, and the fear of death

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Many are questioning religious faith right now. I understand this. The shock of watching the death toll rise each day as the world is battered by this invisible enemy is an example of something very evil in this world. And the question of how God can allow evil to exist is, perhaps, the greatest obstacle to faith in the modern age. 

But, with all respect to those asking such questions, to pose the problem in this way is to miss the entire point of the Christian faith.

Christianity has never been in denial about the reality and the horror of death. In that sense, coronavirus has not (from a Christian perspective) changed anything. Death is coming for all of us. The only variable is the question of when.

That said, the virus has changed one thing: It has shattered the illusion of immortality, the denial of death, and revealed how unprepared we are to die. How so?

Arguably, we are less emotionally prepared for death than any generation that has gone before us. This is for two reasons. First, we have gone to great lengths to suppress awareness of our mortality. We do not speak about death in day to day conversation, we separate ourselves from those who are dying (especially the aged), and very few people have even seen a dead body. Contrast this with previous generations for whom death was a near daily part of life.

Second, we have made great strides in lengthening life, and so most of us live with the expectation that death is far away. The triumph of science, technology, and medicine has ensured that many who would otherwise have died already are enjoying long life today. If we were living in a more primitive age, I am sure my wife would have died seven years ago when my first son was born and she bled out after the birth. I am even more certain that my dad would have died 31 years ago when he suffered acute pancreatitis. Both were saved by the wonders of modern medicine, and all of us have stories like this. The effect has been to cause us all to think much less about the possibility of dying. For most of us, we know we’ll die, but not anytime soon.

Hence, the world has never seen a stronger reaction to the possibility of death than we are witnessing right now. Of course, the hyper-connection of the globalised age is fuelling this reaction. But I suspect that much of this is due to the basic shift in the way we think about death: We finally thought we had gained the upper hand, reigned back most diseases, and lengthened human life. Coronavirus is a stubborn reminder of our failure to conquer death.

Today is Good Friday, the date in the religious calendar when we recall the crucifixion of the Son of God. It is a religious festival that centres on a death. There is something deeply ironic, and profoundly symbolic, about the timing of all this. The coincidence of our nation experiencing new peaks in the daily death toll of the virus at the same time that we remember Jesus’ death is something to make you stop and think. And yet, this is also exquisitely beautiful timing; it is the very reason nobody needs to despair.

Consider this. Why do Christians put so much emphasis upon the death of one man, nearly 2,000 years ago? The answer is rich and complex, but it has much to do with the Sunday that follows the Friday. The crucifixion was not the end; resurrection followed soon after. The New Testament records very briefly that:

…Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [the Apostle Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive… [1]

This is written by the Apostle Paul. Because he had seen Jesus risen from the dead, Paul was no longer afraid to die. He was fearless, and later embraced martyrdom at the hands of the Roman empire with courage. The reason for his courage is simply that death no longer loomed as a final and irreversible danger to him; he knew that death was not the end for himself because it was not the end for Jesus. That is Christian belief. Jesus was the forerunner; and, we will follow. There is life after death, and Paul made it his life’s mission to ensure that others understood this fact, and to prepare them to meet their maker. And so, freed from the fear of death, he taunted it:

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? [2]

It is not a bad thing to be reminded that we are mortal, and it’s certainly not a new crisis. The reaction of horror we’re seeing around us on account of this virus makes sense in a secular age: I would not want to contemplate dying if I thought death was the end, or if I was not ready to face Jesus as judge. But Good Friday is followed by Easter Sunday, and death is not the end, and forgiveness is offered to those who receive it. That is why fear is not inevitable, it is optional.

[1] 1 Corinthians 15.3–6
[2] 1 Corinthians 15.54–55

This article first appeared at Salt.

The root cause of all our anxiety

Why are we all so anxious? That there has been a rapid and dramatic rise in anxiety in this modern world is clearly true. Even though life is getting better by most measures in that we are working less hours, eating better, enjoying better health and longer lives, yet a huge proportion of people are still spiralling down into deeper levels of anxiety than we’ve ever seen. A third of Britons will experience anxiety disorder at some point. [1] The situation seems to be even worse in America, where 4% of Americans had experienced an anxiety related mental health disorder in 1980, and now half the population has suffered in this way. [2]

Yet, nobody really knows why this is the case.

It’s easy enough to point to a set of contributing factors. First, there are the changes in lifestyle that affect our mental health – sleep loss, being sedentary, staying indoors. A second factor, which is tied to the first, is the rapid development of technology. In his book, Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport describes how he met the head of mental health services at a well-known university in the US. Until recently, she had been dealing with the same routine issues (homesickness, eating disorders, depression, OCD), but there was an abrupt shift that coincided with the universal presence of smartphones:

Seemingly overnight the number of students seeking mental health counseling massively expanded, and the standard mix of teenage issues was dominated by something that used to be relatively rare: anxiety. [3]

A third reason we can point to is the change in the fabric of society that has led to deep and widespread loneliness. Community is a powerful antidote to all kinds of mental health issues, anxiety included. But loneliness is rising, and the very things we need in order to solve this are diminishing: we attend fewer social clubs and societies, we’ve stopped going to church, we’re less likely than any generation in history to get married, we leave our families in pursuit of fulfilling our very personal, individualistic dreams, and so on. The picture is of a generation of lonely individuals working hard to find fulfilment but instead experiencing isolation and rootlessness.

Fourth, there is huge fear about the future. Greta Thunberg is only the latest in a long line of prophets of doom, and her words are designed to unsettle the most apathetic of people. The message is clear; this world is going to burn.

All of this would naturally point to the conclusion that the rise in anxiety is due to a kind of perfect storm of all of the above. In other words, if you wanted to make the most anxious generation in history you would first of all deprive them of sleep, exercise, sunshine, and rest. Then you would keep them in that state by causing them to be addicted to their screens. Next, you’d want to separate them from genuine relationships and connection and physical affection. And finally, you’d tell them the world is about to explode and that they’re powerless to stop it. 

I can certainly see how all of these factors cause anxiety. It’s easy to find data to support them as causes, but they also have the ring of truth; we know intuitively that these kinds of things have had a detrimental effect on our personal wellbeing. 

But there is an incompleteness to this list. There is one great factor that is not often spoken about, but which seems to be present under all of our anxious feelings, and that is the fear of death. You can think of it like this: each expression of anxiety is merely a symptom, a way of your brain telling you that there is a deep unsettlement in your soul. Trace back any particular expression of anxiety to its root, and you will see that all of them are different manifestations of the fear of death.

For example, anxiety and stress from your work is related to the longing for success, which is really the desire to be immortal, to be known and to be remembered. Anxiety about health is based on an awareness that our bodies are relentlessly decaying, no matter how many detox shakes we consume or burpees we perform. Anxiety that springs from loneliness and the longing for love come from that sense that we do not want to be separated from others – the very thing we find sad about death. 

When you spend any time reading about the subject of anxiety, scouring through books that purport to offer solutions and treatments to this problem, you come across many very superficial bits of advice. You may be told to look in the mirror and tell yourself how beautiful and successful you really are. Or you may be told to let go, to surrender to fate, to acknowledge that you’re powerless. The problem, as I see it, is that nobody is really squaring up to this great and immovable problem that is the inevitability of death.

The obvious rebuttal is to point out that everyone everywhere has always known they were going to die – this is no new factor, and so it can’t explain the rise in anxiety. To which I would respond: It’s true that death is not new, but what is new is our dire lack of resources – moral, philosophical, theological –  for dealing with death. In other words, we have no idea how to die.

If it is true that all fears are connected to the basic fear of death (and I think it is) then our narratives around death have a disproportionately important weight in determining our day-to-day emotional states. We live in a day and age in which all sense of wonder and transcendence has been leeched out of the cosmos, and life has no meaning beyond that which we create for it. Death is a certain and empty end, a bottomless pit, a pure blackness without light. But the human soul needs a sense of security and safety beyond the mere provision of daily needs; it craves a kind of cosmic and eternal reassurance.

My central claim, therefore, is not only that our inability to deal with the reality of death is a root cause in the anxiety epidemic, but something further. I suspect that our collective departure from any meaningful spirituality, especially Christian belief, is the fundamental problem here. That is not to say that having a meaningful faith will automatically be a cure for anxiety (though it might). But the Christian faith is a profound answer to the problem of death, since it is centred on an event which is all about the defeat of death – the resurrection of the Son of God.

The reason this is such a potent belief has to do with the fact that it replaces anxiety with its opposite, that is, with hope. The resurrection of Jesus is the foundational belief undergirding Christian hope, because it is the guarantee that death need not be the end. If Jesus was raised from the dead, then we need not fear death any more.

Even if this sounds like an esoteric and other-worldly answer to ordinary day-to-day anxieties, that is only because we have not really stopped to consider how threatening our mortality is. It is the great looming dread that validates all of our present fears. But by the same token, a deep and settled confidence about life beyond death has the power to unravel our trivial and mundane worries by giving us a wide-angle perspective on reality; there is something better to look forward to.

As we in the West continue our slide toward secularism, I predict that mental health issues will continue to rise simply because a godless world is essentially a hopeless world. But I also predict that this will be one of the main reasons we will see a revival of belief, and a renewed interest in the message of a resurrected Jesus.

Is too much freedom making you miserable?

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The story of the West over the past century has been a story of the fight for freedom. One generation fought for freedom against the rise of tyranny in Europe. Subsequent generations have fought for personal freedoms in just about every area of life – sex, identity, rights, politics, and so on. A huge part of this has been casting off the restraints of tradition and of religion. James Williams, describes this development like this:

For most of human history, when you were born you inherited an off-the-shelf package of religious and cultural constraints… The packages included habits, practices, rituals, social conventions, moral codes, and a myriad of other constraints… In the twentieth century the rise of secularism and modernism in the West occasioned the collapse – if not the jettisoning – of many of these off-the-shelf packages of constraints in the cause of the liberation of the individual. [1]

We have been part of an unstoppable campaign, with no obvious end in sight, and one single purpose: the freedom of the individual to create their own identity, live as they choose, and express that life to the full. 

Yet, at the same time, we have grown more and more miserable, with dramatically lower levels of happiness and wellbeing, and a rapid rise in anxiety and depression. How can you explain that? I would argue that, while freedom from oppression is vital to human flourishing, it’s also quite clear that freedom as an absolute simply doesn’t work for three reasons.

First, freedom cannot operate without constraint. Everything we enjoy in life is enjoyable because there are constraints and boundaries. Sport only works because of rules. Society only functions because of laws. Trains need tracks. Fish need water. Language needs grammar. Humans need skin.

This is especially important when we think about morality. Moral boundaries make happiness possible. As much as we talk about the freedom of the individual to do as they please, to simply ‘do what makes you happy’, we all accept that without moral limits the world descends into anarchy. We abuse and hurt one another in the name of pleasure seeking. We self destruct.

So, even if you reject ancient moral codes as limiting and oppressive, preventing you from doing what you want, you simply cannot reject boundaries altogether. It’s impossible. Constraint of some form is inevitable and essential for any kind of experience of freedom. The only question is who gets to decide where those boundaries lie. 

Arguably, the fact that we have no system outside of ourselves (such as religion) to establish certain givens is the reason we are so at war within ourselves, and at war with others. We’re all on the same pitch, but playing different games. There is no harmony, no beauty, no form, and ultimately, this lack of constraint – of someone saying, ‘This is right, and this is wrong’ – is one reason we are so confused and so miserable. The boundaries of moral constraints make us feel secure, and help us live at peace.

Second, unlimited freedom makes you miserable from an overload of choice. This is called the ‘paradox of choice’ – a well documented phenomenon – and it tells us that limitless options are paralysing, and that even when you do make a choice, you will question whether it was the right one, and that makes you less happy. For example, people prefer to shop at Lidl because they don’t have to experience the anxiety of choosing between hundreds of air fresheners, and dozens of ketchups. Studies have shown that if you give someone a choice between thirty chocolates, they are less likely to be happy with their choice than if you only offered them six options. [2]

This is clearly true when it comes to sex. People tend to believe that more experience and more sexual partners will lead to more satisfaction in the long term. It turns out the very opposite is true. Those who have had fewer sexual partners tend to report more satisfaction in marriage. Why? Because you’re not comparing your spouse with a mental library of experiences. You are content.

Consider the movement to abolish the gender binary of male and female. What is likely to be the result of authoritative voices, like the BBC, teaching children that there are over 100 different genders, and they need to figure all of this out for themselves? Will more choice make children happier, more carefree, and more secure? I doubt it.

Western society has engaged in vast social experimentation by smashing down old beliefs, customs, and traditions in the name of unfettered freedom and choice. But with that comes a host of unintended consequences, the downside of living in a world without certain beliefs as givens.

In speaking of this constant effort to reform the world, G.K. Chesterton famously used the analogy of a fence. If you come across a fence in a field, and you don’t know what it’s for, it would be stupid to smash that fence down for fear you might come face to face with a bull. Chesterton argues that an intelligent person will tell that reformer, 

If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. [3]

Sometimes tradition is wiser and more important than we know. Choice has been limited for a reason, and we would do well to understand that reason before we smash down the fence.

Third, limitless freedom leads to a new kind of oppression and slavery. In The Social Contract, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau put it like this: ‘To be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.’ [4] In other words, when there are no rules, you end up being a slave to your own desires and lusts. You have no means by which to renounce and conquer them. 

Russell Brand has famously and candidly spoken about his own addictions, and his efforts to get free from them. He puts it like this: 

We have been taught that freedom is the freedom to pursue our petty, trivial desires. Real freedom is freedom from our petty, trivial desires. [5]

It’s difficult to know for sure how things will develop as we continue to press the limits of personal liberty. I suspect there will be a counter-movement, and a resurgence of religion – perhaps of Christianity, or of some other ‘off-the-shelf package’, as Williams puts it. 

This is certainly what I have witnessed in individuals. It is very common for people to grow up shunning all moral constraints, and then to grow quite sick of their new-found ‘freedom’ for all the reasons I’ve described above. They become more anxious, more uncertain, and more empty because of their slavery to their own desires. And at that point, they often experience a longing for spirituality, and even for God.

[1] Stand Out of Our Light, James Williams
[2] Confronting Christianity, Rebecca McLaughlin
[3] https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/ 
[4] The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
[5] Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions, Russell Brand

This article was originally published at Salt.

Why the atheist church is failing

On the surface, they looked a lot like any other churches, but with an atheistic twist: ‘Meetings involved “sermons” from scientists, artists, and academics; members sang pop songs together and snapped their fingers to poetry readings. Old-timers chatted by the snack table and invited newbies to meals outside the group.’

This was the explosively successful Sunday Assembly movement that began in London in 2013, and spread rapidly from there. Spearheaded by two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, the idea seemed to strike a nerve for those who had grown up in church, but lost their faith. They wanted the experience of togetherness without the accompanying doctrine. There was a sadness for something lost at the heart of our culture in the absence of religion, and this seemed like a viable alternative.

The movement grew rapidly and peaked early, but is now in a steady state of decline, with global attendance dropping from 5,000 per month in 2016 to 3,500 per month in 2018.

Why this dramatic drop in attendance? The fundamental answer seems to be the lack of a coherent binding force beyond the desire for community. Faith Hill, writing for the Atlantic about this decline, quotes one researcher as follows: ‘Being uninterested in something [i.e. religion] is about the least effective social glue, the dullest possible mobilising cry, the weakest affinity principle, that one can imagine.’

So, what does bind groups together over the long haul? Apparently, it’s vital to have the element of ‘sacrality’ that calls for ‘challenging rituals and taxing rules’. In other words, there needs to be a transcendent and compelling system of truth that calls for a deep and wholehearted commitment.

The funny thing is that Christians could have warned them it wouldn’t work, because they’ve tried this before. Many times.

If you want to know why churches are mainly empty across the UK it is for precisely this reason: that God was effectively removed from much of Christianity in Britain more than a hundred years ago. Back in the 1800s many churches and denominations began to feel embarrassed about the more supernatural claims of the Christian faith (for example, that Jesus rose from the dead) and about the Bible itself. Preachers began to espouse humanism from their pulpits, majoring on themes like the brotherhood of man. While some of the language of God remained (especially in the hymns), belief in God was fading away, led by the very men who were at the helm of those denominations and churches. These churches were like drag queens dressed up in the trappings of religion, with all the smells and bells and lashings of makeup, but any observer could tell that the religious garb was superficial. Underneath was a hairy atheist, balls and all. 

To this day, you can walk into one of the nearly empty churches of the main denominations – Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, United Reformed – and you’ll discover what I’m talking about: mostly, they don’t preach the same message you find in the Bible of God’s wrath against sin, and his peace deal brokered through the blood of his Son, Jesus. Instead, they preach a neutered and secularised version of Christianity, much more tame, and much more lame. They’re identifiable by their language of inclusion, their endorsement of all lifestyles, and their passionate embrace of all religions as essentially the same. But this is not Christianity, it’s just atheistic humanism with an organ and a few candles. They act as mere mirrors to the culture at large and so render themselves completely pointless, and devoid of interest. Their main message is about being nice, the very thing Jesus was emphatically not.

It may seem odd that I, a church pastor, would be so scathing of so much Christian practice in the UK. I suppose it’s because I simply don’t see the point of going through the motions of religious devotion when you decided a long time ago that you would bend that religion to conform to modern sensibilities, rather than bending your life to conform to God’s will. The Bible teaches that man is made in the image of God; and yet here we are, trying to mold a god in the image of ourselves. The proof of the futility of all this is the fact that most of these churches are in terminal decline, at least the ones that are not already dead.

That is not the entire picture, of course. There are thousands of churches (within and without those denominations) that have resisted this trend and preach a full-blooded version of the Christian faith, with a living God who is a Sovereign Judge who invites us to experience his forgiveness. Those churches tend to be full because they offer something the world and secular humanism isn’t offering: the power of God.

My own experience of starting a church has been proof of the irreducible importance of the Christian message, the gospel. If you remove parts in some attempt to make it more acceptable the whole thing begins to crumble. But when you confront people with a true version of the message Christ preached, in all its offensiveness and glory, people’s lives are dramatically impacted for good. The success we have seen in growing a church of (almost entirely) millennials in the heart of London has had nothing to do with any talent I possess, and everything to do with the yearning ache in all of us for genuine hope in a broken world.

I can understand the urge to keep the form of church gatherings, even when the message has been completely excised (as in the case of the atheistic churches), or transformed beyond recognition (as in the case of so many established churches across the UK). The idea of church has a lot going for it. But in the end, such experiments are always going to fail because the real power in Christianity has never been the form, but the message.

The article was originally published at Salt.

When pastors fall

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With the recent announcement on Instagram from Joshua Harris that he is separating from his wife, and has lost his faith, yet another oak has crashed to ground.

Harris has been furiously back-peddling for a few years now, seeking to un-write what he has written on matters of dating, courtship, and sex. I was in my teens when his books (I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl) were published. I didn’t read the first one – no doubt the more controversial of the two – but I found the second one a huge help as I moved towards marriage. It was sound, practical advice. The truth is, that whatever faults there may have been in Harris’ overall approach to dating, the situation in the world right now when it comes to finding a marriage partner is seriously messed up and the church is barely doing any better. Secular sociologists like Jean Twenge have written at length about all the sadness and loneliness the modern dating scene is creating, where commitment and honour are virtually absent. About this, there is too much to say. (Have a listen to my Salt Live talk, Can Love Survive the Dating Apocalypse?, on this page.)

Waking up to the news of Harris’ public denial of the faith he used to preach is sobering, not least because I am a pastor. It’s right to feel sadness and sorrow. This is a seriously messed up situation. But, after the sadness and sorrow there are other thoughts that we ought to dwell on.

First, this is nothing new. The Bible is an honest, warts and all, portrayal of human frailty and faultering faith. There is no hagiographic editorial air-brushing going on. Even the best of biblical heroes are revealed to be massively flawed in some very shocking ways. This is one of the evidences that the Bible should be taken seriously and read as history; what possible incentive would authors have to put their best characters in such terrible light, when those same men are considered leaders and prophets of God? The fact that these men trip up and sometimes crash and burn is written down to warn us that this can happen to you. 

In other words, sin is more insidious and dangerous than we realise. That’s why Jesus had to die. That’s why he had to deal with the mess we’re in. This is spiritual warfare, and there are casualties, betrayals, treacheries, and treasons. Some people are rescued from the brink, others wander blindly or deliberately over it. If public denials of faith serve any purpose (and arguably, a man like Harris should just stay quiet), then they do at least cause us to wake up and stop slumbering through this spiritual war we are in.

Second, there is only one hero worthy of the name. Every exposure of sin – be it sexual sin, abuse of authority, bullying, greed, pride, self-aggrandisement, or whatever – has the effect of emphasising how totally awesome and perfect is our saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was tempted in every way that we are, yet he was without sin. He learned obedience through what he suffered. He was humbled to the ground, and humbled further on the cross, but he never once cursed God. He said, take this cup from me, but yet, not my will be done, but yours. He surrendered to the will of the Father, set his face to Jerusalem, wept over lost souls and baying crowds, and then died an ignominious death. And the Father saw fit to glorify him in vindicating resurrection power, placing him above all rule and authority, at his right hand. And now he has light in his eyes, and a sword in his mouth, and he’s coming again to judge the living and the dead, as the only truly worthy and blameless man.

Maranatha.

Ten questions for pro-choice people

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Let me state my purpose up front: I’m a pro-lifer with ten genuine questions aimed at pro-choice people, and I’m hoping that you (dear reader) will keep on reading to the end. But I’m also realistic. The chance of keeping your attention on such a matter of deep division is not going to be easy, not least because you may well imagine me to be misogynistic and backward.

This debate is always vitriolic, and as a result, often deeply unintelligent. Most people (on both sides) are content with sharing facile memes and purile soundbites. I want to avoid that tone, if I can. It’s not the strong language I have a problem with (vital issues call for forceful language), but the ignorant ways that opinions are often voiced, and the consequent refusal to engage in rational discussion. I hope to convince you that the pro-life perspective is rooted in compassion, not misogyny. And so, I urge you to read and even respond.

Here we go…

1. Why is there a double standard at work here, in which we stay quiet about abortion while mourning miscarriage? Last year we had the tragic experience of losing a little boy at 15 weeks. Everyone around us – pro-life and pro-choice friends included – mourned with us and helped console us at the loss of this child. But what made it a tragedy? Was it the fact that he died, or the fact that we were sad about him dying? Anyone who has felt sadness about a miscarriage feels that way precisely because it is the loss of life. To me, this is an inexplicable double-standard, in which terminations are swept under the rug and miscarriages are met with flowers and cards.

2. Why do we fight to save the lives of disabled and premature babies? It is a strange fact that the same surgeons can be disposing of unwanted foetuses in brutal fashion, and then performing nigh-on miraculous operations on the bodies of equally young babies in order to save them (as in the famous photo of Samuel Armas poking his hand out of the womb at 21 weeks while the surgeon tried to fix his spina bifida). A hospital in California recently broke world records by saving the life of a tiny 23 week little girl. What made that girl’s life worth saving? Was it the mere fact that she was now outside the womb? Was it the will and desire of the parents? Or was it some inherent worth in her humanity?

3. Why are abortion laws based on viability outside the womb? The cut-off point of 24 weeks (for healthy babies) is based on whether the baby can survive outside of the womb. The reasoning is that if a foetus cannot survive outside the womb, then the mother has the right to terminate her and choose not to support her development any longer. Now, while it’s true that viability increases with each passing week all the way to 40 weeks, and babies born before 24 have a lower survival rate, it’s not at all clear to me why that has become a boundary for conferring human rights on the baby. The fact is that all babies are highly dependent on the care of others for a long time after birth, and many of us will become dependent on others towards the end of our lives. Dependency on others does not determine whether your life has value, so why do we establish this blurry and somewhat arbitrary line for unborn babies?

4. Why is a woman’s body pitted against her baby’s? The whole debate is set up so that the right to life is set against the right for women to govern their own bodies. The problem, as I see it, is that the foetus is not the woman’s body. This is acknowledged in our legal system. [1] It’s also the reason you celebrate or panic when you see those two blue lines on the stick. This is not a ‘growth’, and your emotions are proof of that. The pro-life movement views both bodies as beautifully valuable. That’s why we fight for babies and for women. We want women to be genuinely valued and empowered, but abortion doesn’t do that. Why is it that seven percent of women have been forced into having an abortion and it’s used as a tool of coercive abuse? Why is it that women feel they have to choose between pursuing a career or education and having a baby? Why can’t they do both? Why do we see an abortion as a central tenet of women’s rights when it seems to cause women so much grief and pain? (see point 5). Furthermore, more than 50% of aborted babies are female when you factor in widespread sex-selection on the global scene, so it’s not at all clear that abortion is pro-women on any level.

5. Why don’t we talk about the fact that many women suffer unbelievable guilt after having an abortion? This is not mere anecdote. [2] I’m conscious that the debate is ongoing as to whether there are long-term mental health issues after abortions, but that discussion can be a smokescreen to cover up the fact that many women have been very public and clear about the guilt and regret they have felt after abortions. Whether or not this is categorised as a mental health issue is not the important thing here. Guilt signals something important to a person, and without guilt we lose our humanity. So why do we ignore the fact of guilt after abortions? Is it because the admission of guilt is the admission of wrongdoing?

6. Why is the pro-life movement vilified and bullied as though it was somehow backward to campaign for human rights at this fundamental level? The pro-life movement is often portrayed as led by white men and as fundamentally backwards and misogynistic, despite the fact that women of all races are involved and are more opposed to abortion than men). But talk to a pro-lifer. Generally, they believe a basic ethic: All human life has sanctity. Which part of this is backwards and misogynistic? Consider this carefully. Most of our concerns around justice on a global level are based on this fundamental ethical conviction. Without this belief there would be no anti-slavery, no anti-poverty, and no anti-misogyny movements. Pro-lifers are merely consistent in applying this fundamental ethic to every single human being, including people in the womb.

7. Why not prefer adoption over abortion? Since this issue is often cast in terms of the pregnant woman’s difficult decision, given how all-consuming it is to have a child, why do we make this a binary choice between abortion and keeping the baby? There is a beautiful third way: the fact that there are so many childless couples out there who would do almost anything to have a baby of their own. Wouldn’t it be a heroic thing to carry a baby to term and let that child live and be raised in a loving home? I don’t want to minimise the pain involved in giving away a child, but it seems to me quite obviously preferable to ending that child’s life altogether. It is sometimes argued by pro-choicers that such children will go on to lead awful and painful lives, and thus it is kinder to terminate them if they are unwanted. However, this is rightly seen by those who have been adopted as deeply offensive, as it devalues the childhood they had in their adoptive families and the fulfilling lives they are now leading. 

8. Why is it more acceptable to fight for the rights of animals than of unborn humans? Veganism is on the rise, and campaigners often base their argument on the personification of animals, with slogans like, ‘I’m ME not MEAT’ (next to a picture of a pig), or ‘We take them from their mothers and butcher them’ (next to a picture of a calf). As a rule, vegans are not considered to be among the lunatic fringe. Unlike pro-lifers, they usually get respect for their beliefs. Now, I am willing to tolerate a certain degree of madness in our society when it comes to many social issues, but the fact that the animal rights lobbies are considered compassionate and pro-lifers are considered barbaric is totally irrational.

9. What do you think our descendants will think of us? Western society has been shown to be wrong on some key human rights issues in the past – most notably slavery and racial prejudice. To this day, we grieve the history of our ancestors who were capable of stripping away the dignity and humanity of people on the basis of their race. But do you not suppose that we have equally glaring blind spots in our seemingly advanced age? I am confident that some future generation will look back on us with disgust for two reasons: (1) The logical inconsistencies of the pro-choice movement will become clearer over time, just as the pro-slavery movement eventually lost the argument; (2) Advances in medicine and science will make it more difficult to sustain a hard boundary between ‘blob of cells’ and ‘human being’, and with no such boundary there is no longer any conscionable reason for allowing abortion at any point after conception.

10. When does a person become a person? This is really the question to rule them all. Everything depends on this. Assuming we agree that an individual person has dignity and rights that we want to protect, then the importance of this issue simply cannot be exaggerated. So, let me ask it this way: When did you become you? Was it when you were born? Was it when you were viable outside the womb (around 23–25 weeks)? Was it when your heart could first be heard beating in the ultrasound room? And does a person become a person gradually or in an instant? Our laws answer this: a person becomes a person at 24 weeks exactly (and at birth if they’re disabled). But how would you answer this question? And more importantly, why?

Let me offer some concluding thoughts. It seems to me that persuading anyone to change their mind about this issue is very difficult. The divide is deep set and deeply emotional. But my hope is to get greater sympathy for the pro-life cause, and to show that it is based on reason and compassion. First, it is reasonable because there is something beautifully and elegantly simple about saying that life starts at conception, and establishing a firm line rather than an entirely arbitrary one, that risks ending the life of a person. Second, it is compassionate because all pro-lifers believe that the lives of the unborn are worthy of protection and justice – just as we believe that women are worthy of protection and justice, and of the greatest support in pregnancy and beyond. Abortion is simply not the way to do this. We recognise that unplanned pregnancy is frightening and life-changing. But it’s time we questioned the culture that pits a mother against her baby, that offers no support to women in situations of unplanned pregnancy, that discriminates against people with disabilities and little girls in the womb, and that does not uphold the absolute right to life for all and protect the most vulnerable people in our society. It is time to deal honestly with these questions, to wrestle with them together, and to stop dealing in soundbites.

[1] Lord Hope said the following in the case of Attorney-General’s Reference (No 3 of 1994): HL 24 Jul 1997: ‘an embryo is in reality a separate organism from the mother from the moment of its conception.’

[2] The most comprehensive review of the evidence in 2013, incidentally by a pro-choice psychologist, found that there is no mental health benefit to abortion and there is an increased risk of psychological problems following abortion including anxiety, substance abuse and suicidality: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23553240 

The article was originally published at Salt.