There are several ways that people can participate in the 40 Days. You can take time to think about the myriad of life issues, educate yourself and others, or pray. You could even travel to Casper or Laramie and participate in person (for details see: 40daysforlife.com). My own preparations led me to think about a much broader picture—beyond abortion, beyond euthanasia, beyond embryo-destructive research. I have come to see being pro-life less and less as a burden on the living and a restriction on freedom. Quite the opposite, I increasingly see it as freedom, and permission to follow our human hearts.
It is extremely unfortunate that the national debate over abortion has been cast in terms of “rights” and “choice.” How much better it would be if we could be talking about “gifts” and “freedom.” As long as we are talking about rights and choice, we are in the realm of power. One person tries to exercise power over another. Do my rights trump your rights, or do yours trump mine? Should your choice take away my choice? Or should mine negate yours? Cast like this, it is impossible to decide.
Power is a zero-sum game. The more of it I have, the less of it you have. The same goes for choice. If choice is about doing absolutely whatever I want, then your choices cannot possibly be absolute. Wherever our desires come into conflict, one of us must lose.
No wonder the issue is so hopelessly contentious! With the battle lines drawn this way, even the slightest concession to principle or civility is a loss. In fact, this is a snapshot of our entire problem. Whether we are talking about LGBT rights, or ethnic rights, or the right to life, or the right to choose… you name it, the entire conversation starts out on the wrong foot.
We pit one person against the other in a winner-take-all contest, then are surprised when people take from each other. We square off against each other in a fight to the death, and then are aghast that people actually kill each other! The problem is the paradigm.
But what if this paradigm were an illusion? What if there was a way to live in which we weren’t competing, like rats, for our share of the pie. What if our deepest human desires could never come into conflict? What if, instead, the more authentic you were to your own life, the more life everyone else had. What if true freedom never impinged on someone else’s freedom -- if exercising your full freedom meant everybody else was more free, not less?
What if we were designed so that in seeking what is best and right for us, meant that everyone else also got what was best and right for them? More to the point, what if you could be certain that by seeking first and only the best for your neighbor, from least to greatest, it would always turn out best for you as well?
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| (Photo: Weheartit.com) |
Too good to be true? Not at all. In fact, in the most foundational events of human life, we see it every day. Consider a mother and her newborn child. All the child wants is the sound of his mother’s heartbeat, to snuggle against her warm skin, to hear her soft voice, and to feed from her breast. Meanwhile, what does the new mother desire most? To snuggle with her newborn, to feel his soft skin, to gently coo in his ears, and for him to feed from her breast.
It’s a perfect, complimentary, fit. The needs of one are supplied by the desires of the other, and visa versa. They are not TAKING FROM each other, but GIVING TO each other. In a moment like this, we ordinary humans, get a glimpse into heaven. We see love. And in love, we see, even if only for a moment, the way things were meant to be.
And it’s not just the love between mother and child. We see it in any type of love. The love of husband and wife, father and daughter, brother and sister, mother and son, and love between friends are all distinct and different from each other. But each in its own way shows us a little glimpse of the human ideal. In these glimpses of the divine, there is no question of rights or power, there is only the mutual recognition of each other as gift, and the desire to serve the other, purely for the other’s sake.
Of course, these are only glimpses. These tiny sparks of pure love are awash in a big black sky of selfishness, anger, frustration, fear, hatred and a million ugly emotions and desires. All of these fears and worries draw us away from love and turn us upon ourselves. They cause our survival instincts to go hay-wire and grasp for ourselves what can only be attained by giving.
But none of this blackness disproves my point. Even when we are grasping and selfish, we do not feel good about it. And no matter how forcefully we grasp, or successfully we acquire, we can find no satisfaction and no peace. In the end, the very fact that we recognize such behavior to be ugly proves that we all aspire to the same beauty, the same humanity.
So, if there truly is a life where desires are not in competition, where you can fulfill your own needs by taking care of everyone else’s needs, it is the life of love. It is a life of renouncing selfishness, perverseness, hatred, robbery and every other vice, and living as if others matter most and if I matter least. This kind of life renounces demanding rights and arbitrary choices, and thinks only of which choice is RIGHT for my neighbor and what I can give him freely.
Against this, is the fiendish lie that your freedom and mine are mutually exclusive. This is the most inhuman subversion of our true interests. It makes people think that by doing the exact opposite of their heart’s desire, and taking from their neighbor, they will benefit by it. But the lie cannot deliver. After throwing all decency to the wind and robbing someone of life, liberty or happiness for personal gain, we find that we still haven’t gained what we thought. We have only robbed to no avail, making more misery, but no beauty.
So, during these 40 Days for Life, it is time to recognize that the real struggle is not my desires against yours, but my evil desires against my noble desires, your high aspirations striving to overcome your base impulses. In this light, it is not a struggle against one another, but against the grand lie, against the inhuman forces of evil. The real loss of freedom comes when my noble desires are enslaved to my selfishness. Only when we see this can we look for the keys which set us free from these chains.
Understanding this, can open our minds to consider how we can encourage one another in fulfilling their deepest noble desires. Let’s find ways to come together and take away the fears, worries, pressures and pain which drive us out of our true humanity and into the realm of unfulfilling, selfish grasping.
And let the encouragement begin with you. Affirm and uphold the noble desires of people you meet. Help them win their personal struggle. Give of yourself to take away their fears. Confess your sins against them to take away their anger. Give them permission to be the loving human being they were created to be in full assurance that they will have what they need. Give them permission to receive the people-gifts that have been given to them. And as you give these things from yourself, watch how you are fulfilled in the giving.
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