On Sports Fandom

 It's hard to be a sports fan these days.  If your team tries to be decent members of society, they often end up being hot garbage on the field.  Instead, we are glad when our team picks up the all-star free agent who is free because he threw his pregnant girlfriend down a flight of steps six months ago and we hope that at least for the rest of the season he can keep from being a complete dirtbag, at least in public.  Rooting for decent people is nice...but winning is everything.  

The World Cup began this week.  It's being held in November and December instead of it's traditional summer place, because it's being held in Qatar, a place that most of us couldn't place on a map until three weeks ago.  And it's held as the frost settles on our cars each morning because in Qatar if it was held in summer players would literally die on the field because of the heat.  

Thing is, lots of people have died to build the stadiums in Qatar.  And the survivors, mostly people from India and Bangledesh imported to provide the brute labor needed to build such things, have been repeatedly documented to be living in squalid living conditions and often cheated out of their negotiated wages.  They're basically slaves, living as slaves in a nation that currently has the highest GDP in the world becuase of its oil revenues.  

Of course, now the matches have started.  We've watched England put a half-dozen past Iran, Saudi Arabia upset tournament faves Argentina, and our household team the USA underwhelm again.  We don't really care about those other stories now, as long as we get our sports.  

And maybe that's how it's supposed to be.  We live in a world of trouble and misery and maybe these kinds of games keep us from thinking about things too much.  I'll watch, but it's just not as much fun as it ought to be.  

The analogy of divorce

God hates divorce, according to the prophet Malachi.  And according to Jesus, Moses allowed divorce only because of the hard hearts of people.  It seems rather clear that divorce should never be a first option in a difficult relationship.  Far too many people divorce for the wrong reasons (just as they got married for the wrong reasons).  

But divorce may well be a necessary legal remedy, even for Christians.  Think of the woman who is abused by her husband...should she not have the ability to divorce her husband for her safety and the safety of her children?  Think of the man whose wife continually cheats on him and has no desire to stay faithful...should he not have the ability to divorce his wife and eventually marry a woman who desires to stay faithful?  Think of the spouse whose partner leaves simply because they no longer desire to be married...should the innocent party not have some remedy to end the marriage and move on with their life rather than be dragged down by somebody who has no intention to stay in the marriage?  

Throughout my 27 years of ministry I have come across many men and women who have been divorced.  None of them enjoyed it.  None of them wanted to do it.  None of them willingly accepted it.  But for each of them divorce was the last option to remedy a bad situation.  It allowed them to move on and start over again after years, even decades of hurt.  

I'm guessing that few Christians today would think that all divorce should be banned...having had church friends or family members go through it, we have compassion and realize that there are at times necessary reasons for it.  

But what about abortion?  As my state of Kansas will most likely in two weeks vote to begin a process to make abortion illegal in this state (as many others have done), I've been thinking a lot about this issue.  Since many of my fellow Christians believe it is a good thing to ban it, I've been searching the Scriptures to see what God says about abortion...and I've found (here's the dirty little secret) that the Scriptures are silent.  There may be a couple of passages in the Old Testament about how God knew a prophet in his mother's womb or how we are made by God.  But these are usually calling passages or passages poetically speaking about the love of God for people who are hurting; to use passages like Psalm 139:13-14 ("For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.") as a blanket statement of the sanctity of life at conception is a gross misuse of the Scriptures.  As far as direct passages about abortion itself, even as I am guessing it has been practiced since at least the days of the Patriarchs, the Bible says nothing about it.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  It's as if God willfully and pointedly chose to stay silent on this issue when he could have said something.  

Abortion should never be a first option, and as I said in my last post about how when the fetus becomes viable at about the 5-6 month mark we should protect that child.  But before that, the mother (and father) might have to make the difficult decision about whether or not to go through the pregnancy.  And while in a perfect world all children would be welcome, we don't live in perfect world with pregnancy any more than we do marriage.  We grieve that marriages might end, and we grieve that pregnancies might end.  But is it not better to keep that (poor) option open for the sake of those who are seeking to live their lives?  

Should a woman struggling to raise three children alone be forced to bear a fourth?  Should expectant parents who learn through prenatal testing that their child will live a brutal and painful few years before dying of a terrible genetic disorder have to ensure that child lives out its terrible fate?  Should a college student bear the weight of a bad choice on a Friday night for the rest of her life?  Should a 10-year-old child who has been raped (a very real story in the news) be forced to endure nine months of a pregnancy?  We recognize that all these situations are unfortunate, or worse.  We admit that in some of these instances the pregnant woman might well bear some responsibility for getting pregnant.  And we genuinely wish that we didn't even have to talk about these things.

But we live in the real world, and in that world divorces, bankruptcies, restraining orders, and the like are necessary.  Shouldn't abortion be considered the same way?  

Pro-Life?

It appears that almost a half-century abortion is going to be illegal again in many states.  Roe v Wade is finally going to be overturned.  The prayers of many Christians in this country it seems have finally been answered.  

As a Christian there is a large part of me that is happy at this development.  If, as many of us believe, abortion is something tantamount to murder, for it to come to an end (or at least be more strictly prohibited in many places) is something to give praise to God.  It appears that we are becoming a more 'pro-life' country after all.  

But are we?  In the weeks since the leak has come out that the Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe v Wade, I've thought a lot about abortion in a way that I've never thought about it before.  In truth, it's never been a big issue for me.  As a male who has been faithful to one woman and am grateful for the two children I have, I have not had to worry that my 'seed' has been scattered out in places where it should not be.  I don't lay awake wondering if I have other kids out there by other women.  In some ways for me abortion is more of a symptom of the problem of infidelity and casual sex.  

But I also know that for many it's not quite this simple.  While many abortions really are about convenience, there are others for whom it is a health issue for the mother, or a socio-economic desire to not stretch limited resources of a poor family, or about putting an end to the trauma of a rape or bad relationship.  I would doubt that very many abortions are as selfishly considered as pro-lifers would have us believe.  

And then there's the question of whether or not it's really murder.  I've come to think that in the last 3-4 months of a pregnancy, when the fetus is now viable outside the womb, that murder isn't too strong a word to describe the termination of a pregnancy, if there are no other complicating factors.  But in the first 4-5 months of a pregnancy, when the feteus is not viable, I'm not sure murder is at all a fair term.  Is abortion in the fourth month of a pregnancy, perhaps not long after a woman unexpectedly realizes that she's pregnant, anything fundamentally different than taking birth control pills?  My wife has used the little yellow pills (to great effect) since we've been married during the time when having a child was not desirable: in the first few months of marriage, in the time between pregnancies, and now as we are both squarely middle age and not at all desiring to have a child.  Others have not been so lucky...even as they use accepted birth control practices, it is still possible to 'slip one past the goalie' and get pregnant...not something all families, even the most loving ones, desire.  Should we punish them because some have this sentimental view that children are 'sacred', a gift from God?

Yet as I've thought about this issue the past few weeks, the one thing that I keep coming back to again and again with this issue is the idea of what it means to be 'pro-life'.  That's a term that those against abortion have taken as their self-identifying label.  But I've learned that it's a very particular type of 'pro-life'.  While these generalizations are not true for everybody, they are more true than not.

-Many would identify as pro-death penalty.  That is, a living human being deserves death for some crime that he/she has done.  

-Many are very much pro-second amendment in that they want no restrictions on guns or firearms.  Even though hundreds of people die in this country each day due to gun violence, they want no limitations on their guns because of their sense of 'freedom'.  

-Many showed themselves during the pandemic of the past two years that they don't really care about the lives of others.  Many 'pro-life' people were the ones most against mask regulations or social distancing or even vaccines that study after study showed saved lives.  Even as over a million people died in part from the pandemic in this country alone, these were the ones who used slogans like 'my body, my choice' when it came time to refusing simple measures that would have kept people from dying.  

-Many are very pro-military, not just in national defense but in American militarism.  The very purpose of the military was summed up by the late Rush Limbaugh, who said that the purpose of the military was 'to kill people and break things'.  

-Finally, many who have marched and demanded that abortion be ended care nothing for the quality of life of that child once he/she has been born.  This is shown by their opposition to public school funding, expanded health care, and other programs that will enhance a child's life.  The moment that child leaves the womb, for many pro-lifers, is the end of our responsiblity as a society to ensure that this child grows up healthy and prepared for what life throws at them.  

Are these all overgeneralizations?  Perhaps.  Some people are consistently pro-life to their credit.  But most people, especially those who proudly wear the label, aren't pro-life at all.  They're hypocrites.  And we need to call them out for what they are.  If we are going to absolutize the value of a human life, shouldn't we do this across the board, not just as it applies to women's health issues?  Because if we don't, 'pro-life' is in fact just a hidden way of controlling the lives of women and telling them what they can and can't do, even as 'freedom' becomes the absolute for so many in our culture today.