Tonight’s Match: Life vs. Life
The Midwest: where agriculture and industry meet. It is here in the heartland where these two staples of production and consumption convene to dance in the grand ball of demand and supply. The air here stinks of cereal and grain. The rolling hills swell with winter’s death while the highways teem with semi-trucks hauling…who knows what. The people of corn country live happily in the heartland, never really minding what else goes on around the rest of the country or the world. The clothes that don the backs of the people seem to me as déjà vu – didn’t I see these outfits a few years ago? Of a deeper nature, Heartland politics lie in just that – the heart and the land. Farmers continue to lose the battle against the corporate hijacking of lands long held by blood alone. Families lose out to the dollar because they cannot make any without monsters like ADM. Yet, monsters of equal proportions embodied by Wal-Mart superstores destroy the towns as if they walked in with a bomb in a backpack and let ‘er blow. The people have no money and like to buy their goods cheap, but seem to miss the link that by paying the lower prices in the first place is how the blood lost to the machines. And, of course, Heartlanders love God.
God here seems to take on a much less theological body or notion. God is more concrete; more like a Him than God or more prone to revenge and punishment. The God of the Old Testament in all the glory and wrath is alive here. Some people have even had the opportunity to speak with God as conveyed by their road-sign marquee declaring: God is Pro-Life! Somehow, I believe that God has relayed no message of the sort. Personally, I don’t believe God has relayed any messages to anyone at all. The Old Testament, a series of books compiled over hundreds or, probably, thousands of years of human story telling, is full of allusion and allegory as are countless stories of other ancient civilizations. Allegory, apparently, is not a concept readily accepted or, possibly, even remotely understood by some people here. Sadly, the theologically crippled of Cedar Rapids seem to number highly in the population. It is difficult to express what God is, indeed, because God is simple in acute complexity. God is – but cannot be described or formed into a coherent explanation using tongues and brains. It is as simple and as complex as that. But, simple is as simple does – and God is certainly simple alone here.
My intent in writing about the Heartland as a whole, specifically commenting on the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area, and its understanding of God and Christianity is not to negate the lives or minds of the people here. I may seem bitter and sometimes, indeed, I do feel bitter about the myopia of the Midwest. An emotion of swift judgment, bitterness is not one of the human race’s strongest face cards. What I am attempting to do is make some sense of the process of theological assessment rooted all across the Midwest. At the very base, I am posing a simple question to my Christian brethren: Why is there a Bush/Cheney sticker on your car while you exercise your spirituality inside a Christian church?
The answers to this relatively straightforward question seem to revolve themselves around another debate that silently carries on its battle in the background of church life. The battle, if not an all out war, is life vs. life. What is life? What is the sanctity of life? What does “life” encompass? What does it really mean to be pro-life?
This past October, the Catholic Church celebrated “Respect Life Month.” Typically this month is wall-to-wall anti-abortion/pro-life propaganda. I understand the Church’s concern with abortion and reluctantly agree it is not “good” to get one. However, I also understand the other side of the coin. The woman who is faced with this choice is not in a position I envy. It is often an excruciatingly difficult choice to make and it is a right granted by the law to make this choice. I ardently believe in the separation of church and state, and the law protecting a woman’s choice to an abortion or not is probably one of the, if not THE, preeminent issue straddling this chasm. Yet, “Respect Life Month” is not merely about abortion, as many Catholics choose to believe. The first weekend in October, before we left Portland, we attended what turned out to be the “kick-off” mass for “Respect Life Month.” Fr. Joseph Jacobberger, the pastor of St. Mary’s Church of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, Oregon, always the thoughtful intellectual, laid out during his homily the staple life issues of Catholicism. Doubtless, those who know just a little bit concerning the Catholic Church know that it is staunchly anti-abortion, anti-assisted suicide, and anti-stem cell research amongst other varied “life” issues. This is no surprise. However, Fr. Joe continued on concerning life issues that are not often debated amongst Catholics on a very serious level: elder care, welfare and food stamps for the poor, the death penalty, health care, working for living wages, artificial insemination, familial issues in conflict with employment, and, of course, war. These, my friends, are the real issues that face most people. Abortion is far less common than the inability to earn a wage sufficient to support your family. Assisted suicide has trumped care for the elderly as the billboard issue. What many fail to see is that there are root causes to abortion and assisted suicide, but as a whole those people fail to act on the root causes in order to sensationalize the “death” as opposed to carrying on life with some manner of assistance. Many women who receive abortions are poor, single women. If our social programs were improved, then perhaps those situations would decrease as they did during the Clinton years. Senior citizens, by the day, are losing health care, prescriptions (which is another issue entirely), and the assistance to live their last years out with some manner of dignity. These are life issues that affect everybody. Social programs that have been all but eliminated by our current administration are certainly not in support of life. Bodies come back in bags every day from a war that is far from just. More people, including women, are killed via the death penalty now than ever. The poor become more destitute and the rich run with the blood money. President Bush and his anti-Christianity are certainly not pro-life.
So, I ask my question again: Why do you, fellow Christians, have Bush/Cheney stickers on your cars?
Today’s reflection: Et iudicabit gentes et arguet populos multos et conflabunt gladios suos in vomeres et lanceas suas in falces non levabit gens contra gentem gladium nec exercebuntur ultra ad proelium; And he shall judge the Gentiles, and rebuke many people: and they shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they be exercised any more to war. (Isaiah 2:4)
Let me start by saying assisted suicide sparked one of my earliest leanings toward activism. When I was a kid Dr. Kevorkian assisted a terminally ill elderly gentleman that lived across the street from my childhood home in ending his life. I knew about Kevorkian but being 11-years-old I had no interest in manners outside elementary school until this event. With the excitement of every local news station in front of my house I started watching Kevorkian coverage religiously. I felt then, and still feel know, the individuals deciding to take their lives had/have every right to do so. If a doctor can make that decision painless and humane then what has/is he done/doing wrong?
Watching the story unfold made me conscious of the other side. I’ve always been curious about one aspect of the anti-”assisted suicide” stance, basically the, “Kevorkian is trying to play God” part. How is this doctor doing anything different than an emergency room physician? Using anti-assisted suicide logic, one would have to concur that saving someone that would otherwise die is also playing God. I mean come on; bleeding internally because you just got hit by a bus isn’t something you’d “naturally” survive from.
I always think of God as all wise, above everything. I can’t help but feel that if we’re all here because of God’s “divine plan” then there’s nothing we can do to surprise Him/Her. If a person is inherently bad or good, God knows. Isn’t this the same logic Christians use to excuse war? A soldier that has taken a life was doing so for the greater good, as long as that soldier is inherently good, his/her soul will rise to heaven, right?
Concerning end-of-life choice issues, I completely agree. I think that we, as humans, have been given free will and, therefore, are always faced with choices, sometimes as grave as this one. Mercy is the key issue here. Interestingly enough, though, as the Terri Schiavo issue mutated into the monster that it did, many Catholics missed a very large “little something” in the Cathechism of the Catholic Church:
“Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘overzealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s ability to impede it is merely accepted.” (No. 2278)
I found this interesting bit of information in the editorial column of the November 21, 2005 issue of America magazine. Basically, much like artificial insemination, people think that because it involves either bringing in or keeping a life that all measures, no matter how drastic, should be taken. Now, this might add up to a hill of beans to non-Catholics, but issues much like these and abortion seem to bring out the zealots, and it is this zealotry that the Cathechism warns about.
Concerning God and the all-knowledge, again, I agree to an extent, but I don’t think that God watches in any fashion. I know you are putting it in the sense that most people refer to in reference to God: “He’s watching you!” And, yes, some Christians do excuse war. Since the time of the varied writings of the New Testament came about, war has indeed changed. Time has given birth to the idea of a just war, a concept of much debate. Is war EVER just? I struggle with this myself because World War II, to me, can be described as a just war, yet it is war and the true Christian perspective on this is that war is wrong, period. Jesus made this very clear in the Gospels. Using a microscope, however, an individual soldier killing another is definitely inherently good and the interpretation of what may happen in the after-life is what ties this in knots. Those that proclaim that they have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior (i.e. modern Evangelicals) see that because they have made this profession, they have a seat in heaven. They can basically do what they want (George Bush, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, John Ashcroft, amongst so many others…) and they still have their slot as they continue to proclaim Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Catholics, however, go through a little more red tape as is typical of an institution that is around 2 millenia old. Still, in the end, we are all forgiven anyway. So, I suppose, if you’re a Christian believer, things are looking up if you’re the “right” ones.
I look at this issue in third person so I can’t help but boil all of it down to one single thought. If the idea of God (in the manner of a monotheistic entity) is correct and the theory of “weighing souls” holds true, a soul isn’t going to lose weight simply because somebody “accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior” one time in their years. Only a lifetime of events can determine whether you’re good or bad. This type of justice is used in our courts everyday. Isn’t our judicial system based from theological lessons?
Right.
My basic gripe about the idea of being saved is this: the proclamation doesn’t excuse the action. As a Catholic, I understand that life is more than a proclamation. Life is the carrying on of doing good for others, especially those less fortunate than I. However, proclaiming the “saved” nature of your soul is used moreover as a blanket to cover intentional wrong doings. Catholicism adopts the idea of a purgatory where we exercise our sins away before reaching heaven. There are no slots. You either don’t believe or do believe and are expected to imitate as closely as possible the works of Christ. New forms of non-denominational Christianity and some forms of Protestant Christianity manage to move aside the idea of works as an integral part of faith.
Nevertheless, these are all ideas of a varied amounts of institutions. Jesus’ bottom line was: follow me, and live. That’s all.
And, yes, I do believe our judicial system is based off of the theological notion of a final judgement and is put into motion in somewhat of a similar manner that the Church set up in its early years of formation.