Part 2: Wrestling

When I was in high school, my main identity was as an athlete. This surprises no one who knew me back then, but it might be news to some of my current friends. When I injured my knee during my junior year, I was devastated. My imagined future revolved around playing college soccer, so the injury shattered all kinds of expectations I was holding for how the next several years would go. I had surgery and committed to an extreme regimen of physical therapy so I could bring my reality and my expected future back into alignment. During my senior year, I made a compromise: I would release my expectations of playing soccer in college, but I would play softball instead. Still an athlete, different sport. I tried out and received a college scholarship to play softball. Then, on my graduation night from high school, I re-injured my knee at a party. I spent the next morning laid out on a table at my physical therapist’s office sobbing. My dad sat next to me and I looked over to catch him quietly crying. I knew the future I imagined was officially not possible. He knew it, too.  

As I have gotten older, I have been able to process that grief and learn a few things. One thing I realize now is that the grief itself was 100% real, but the source of my grief – my dream of playing sports in college – was imaginary. That dream was built entirely on my expectations of what college would look like for me: best friends who were also teammates; practices and workouts and getting into the best shape of my life; a higher level of competition than I had ever experienced; really cool uniforms and accessories (bags, sweatsuits, etc.) that would represent my status as an athlete. The problem with this is that I spent a majority of my junior and senior years of high school organizing my day-to-day life around the rebuilding of that dream (SO. MUCH. PHYSICAL. THERAPY.), and a majority of my freshman year of college grieving the final loss of that dream. Three years of my life overwhelmed with physical challenges and mental/emotional anguish that were based more on imagination than reality. I was never going to be a college athlete.  

Coming to terms with that reality sooner would have given me the chance to focus more on what was actually happening in my day-to-day life. My friends who were friends regardless of my athlete status. Finding non-sport activities I enjoyed (I am looking at you, band and theater – I feel like I missed out!). Investing more in academics (which I happen to be very good at – hello, PhD). Coaching youth sports (which I LOVE but waited more than a decade to try). At this point, that list of what-ifs is also imaginary, of course. Once I woke up to my reality during my sophomore year of college, I lived in the here and now with great joy and success. I got straight As in college and finished over 150 credit hours, two majors, and one minor, in 4 years (turns out I love learning). I studied abroad twice (Uganda and France will forever have my heart). I did overseas missions work in the summer (turns out I love traveling). I made best friends in my dorm, none of whom were athletes, all of whom are still my friends a decade later (turns out I have more in common with nerds than jocks – hah). I engaged in hours and hours of community service, eventually winning the Servant-Leader award at my university during my senior year (turns out I love, and am built for, community engagement). I joined the hiking club and wrote for the school newspaper (turns out I love to be outdoors and am a great writer).  

Ok, enough of my personal story. Let me try to connect it with what I really want to focus on in this post. I want to discuss abortion more openly than I have previously. There is pressure from the right and from the left politically to take a side and proclaim it loudly. I have not seen wholehearted admission from either side that this can be a complicated issue to come to a personal standpoint on (for a lot of people), let alone a public or political and collective standpoint. All sides have been doing our fair share of oversimplifying and villainizing and generally not pausing to listen or breathe. In reality, I think (hope?) many of us wrestle with this and other ethical questions more than we admit. It certainly is not politically expedient or religiously in-bounds to say things like, “I don’t know” or “I am somewhere in the middle.” Well, damn. 

Truthfully, I do not know “when life begins.” I just don’t, and I don’t feel like I can know that with certainty. I can see the merits of the idea that babies are alive in the womb and of the idea that fetuses are not endowed with a soul and thus do not become fully alive and human until they breathe outside of the womb. I’m sure there’s other religious and scientific perspectives on this question that I’m not familiar with but that also have merits. I’m not sure I’m allowed to say any of that, but I just did. Can we agree that mixing science and religion and politics and literally trying to be absolutely certain about the moment life begins is not something humans are equipped to do? Can we admit that some things, like the miracle of how the human body can reproduce life will remain at their core a mystery, no matter how much science, technology, and wisdom we gain? Can we be ok with mysteries?   

I believe there is real grief and outrage that undergirds and fuels the anti-abortion movement. I also recognize that because none of us truly knows the moment life begins or exactly how God understands or judges what we define as abortion (it’s not in the Bible – the Bible does not provide a handbook we can apply with clarity or certainty to many contemporary issues), much of this grief and outrage is based on our imaginations – the children we imagine would have lived if every aborted pregnancy was carried to term and resulted in the birth of a healthy baby who had every opportunity to thrive and contribute to our families, communities, and world. Also, even more problematically, we tend to imagine who has abortions, thus ending the imagined children’s lives, and in these imaginings, people who have abortions tend to be “them”, not “us.” And this “them” has definite race-class / part-of-town / type-of-person dimensions. 

It is easy when we are caught up in our grief over imagined futures and expectations to miss the issues here and now. We need to listen to people around us and ground ourselves in the present. When I tune in to what is happening around me right now, and I listen to what people are saying, it forces me to wrestle. While it is easy to want to protect the imagined futures of children who are not-yet-born – these are not people right in front of me who might be hard for me to like or love – it is often harder for me to take a stand for the rights of my already-here, now-neighbors who might lead very different lives from me and have different experiences and perspectives and thus make different decisions. And yet, I share my community with these neighbors, and I am called to love them as myself.  

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40, NIV) 

Listening to my neighbors’ stories and their experiences and fears over the past couple of weeks forces me to wrestle with the fact that American society does not provide equal opportunities for all people to achieve their full potential and then invest that potential back into their families, communities, and world. This is the world children are being born into. As a white, straight, middle class woman, I am essentially a protected class of citizen in the United States. What I mean by this is that throughout our country’s history, laws and institutions have been set up to favor me. Do I experience some gender inequality? Yes. (When our country was founded, women weren’t welcome in most universities, couldn’t vote, and did not hold the same rights as white men, but much of that has changed over time, and it almost always changed for white women before it changed for other groups of women). Largely, though, in American society in 2022, I have a lot of space to achieve my potential and invest it how I want; I will encounter few obstacles and minor resistance at most. To ignore the fact that this is not true for my neighbors, and that current changes (like the overturning of Roe v. Wade) are making it worse, not better, is not loving my neighbors as I love myself. 

A person of color, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a disabled person, a low-income person, an immigrant (etc.) or someone who exists at the intersection of these identities and social locations (e.g. a Black, female, disabled lesbian who immigrated here) could set out to take the same path I have chosen – let’s say 4-year university degree, PhD, full time university employment, marriage, home ownership (my last 12 years of life) – and they might also “make it,” but they will encounter obstacles and resistance that I am unlikely to face and that have nothing to do with their individual personal qualities (how good they are, how hard they work, etc.) and everything to do with their social identities (and the patterns in our society that distribute resources and opportunities unequally). This could look like not qualifying for college scholarships due to immigration status. It could look like finishing college with more debt and needing to take time off before graduate school to try to work and pay down that debt, postponing long-term education and career goals. It could look like struggling to find affordable and available housing (the housing industry has a long history of racial discrimination even though it is technically illegal). It could look like being offered a job at a university and then finding out that the office and classroom building does not comply with the ADA and is not accessible to a wheelchair user (the building I work in at LSU has four floors and no elevator). It could look like deciding to adopt children and being turned away by an adoption agency due to sexual orientation even though all other standards for providing a loving and safe home are exceeded. It could look like getting pregnant, having difficulty accessing medical care, having a miscarriage, rushing to the hospital only to being reported by doctors to the police for a suspected illegal abortion (this has already proven to be more likely to happen to African American and Hispanic women than white women)... 

Focusing on the here and now means realizing there are a lot of places where I need to use my voice and my energy to make my community a safer and better place for my neighbors who are suffering (and for children who I want to be born into a society where they will thrive). I can do this by engaging with politics – and certainly should use my vote in a way that honors myself and my neighbors. But as a Christian, I have to admit that Jesus is the example I am called to follow, and he did not choose a political path for his teaching and engagement. He stayed very local, very marginal, and very much outside circles of power and influence. He also stayed very present. He talked a lot about God’s Kingdom, and instead of talking about it like an imagined future, he talked about it now. His parables are so grounded in first century middle eastern peasant-farmer life that their imagery and lessons can be hard to translate for a twenty-first century Western, middle-class person. What I can gather from reading New Testament Scripture is that God’s Kingdom now values and centers marginalized people; resists casting judgement; draws together people from multiple social locations into one family; and rejects the societal inequalities connected to these social locations regardless of how the larger political realm (in this case, the Roman empire) classifies and treats people. 

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:32-35, NIV) 

The one time Jesus addresses politics directly (that I am aware of) is when extremists ask him a question about taxes, trying to trap him in an answer that would cause division and possibly provide a reason for his arrest. 

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” 

“Caesar’s,” they replied. 

Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” 

And they were amazed at him. (Mark 12:15-17, NIV). 

Jewish people probably had good reasons for not wanting to pay taxes to the Romans, who were an occupying force and whose culture and lifestyle violated the laws and morals of the Jewish community. Jesus could have pointed this out and made a good case for refusing to invest in a corrupt, violent, immoral system that worshiped a man (Ceasar) instead of Yahweh. He could have led a political revolution and won. But he didn’t. Given the choice to pursue political power and kingship in the Roman empire (which his followers expected because they had misinterpreted prophecies), Jesus instead turned tables over in the Synagogue and spent his time making friends and raising up people on the margins of society, not in the center. To the very end, his disciples expected him to take power in human institutions, and he disappointed them, not even putting up a fight when he was arrested and executed. 

When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. 

But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. 

Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.” (Luke 22:49-53, NIV) 

They were shocked by his death. They didn’t understand that the kingdom he was teaching about was a kingdom completely outside of human experience or expectations. The first would be last and the last would be first. And the gentiles would be in. And women would have a voice and would lead. And the sick and disabled and the poor would be invited from the streets to the banquet. And the King would die and then resurrect and then go away for a long time (2000+ years, so far) and leave people in charge of not just teaching about, but enacting this upside down kingdom on earth. 

Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ “But they all alike began to make excuses […]“The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ […] ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’” (Luke 14:16-24, NIV) 

Do we understand this today? What kind of banquet party are we throwing? Who are we inviting? Are we assuming we are the ones showing up when we are actually the ones making excuses and missing the entire event (or the point)? The battle over abortion being legal (or not) is being mostly led by Christians, and the goal of this battle has been gaining political power (the Presidency, Congress, and Courts) to legislate empire changes that align with morality as dictated by a subgroup of Christians. All of this while we continue to ignore and deny many of the issues that are causing our neighbors to suffer and cry out for relief. This tells me we still do not understand.  

Since I haven’t really stated my own perspective directly yet, allow me to do so: 

• I believe abortion for any reason should be a protected right for all people. 
• I would not choose abortion for myself in most cases, but there is privilege in that choice, and my personal choice does not affect my stance that other people should be able to make their own choice to have an abortion (or not). 
• I want to live in a society that gives all children the chance to fully and freely live into who they are created to be. That is not the society we currently have. 
• I want to focus more on the inequalities and the injustices and the suffering that exists here – and the people who are my now neighbors – than on children who I imagine.  

And in my wrestling, when I really want the political and social realities to be radically different than they are – which, God, I do! – I will remember Jesus’ words to give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and God what is God’s, and then I will pay my taxes and vote my conscience and call representatives and march when the times call for it, while I also invest my BIG energy, time, and money being part of God’s Kingdom on earth now. What does that Kingdom on earth now look like for me on a day-to-day basis? Picking teens up for soccer in my van. After games, buying lots of McDonalds hamburgers and fries and now frappes (because, teenagers). Loving and investing in all of my college students and promoting their success however I can (teaching, listening, encouraging, writing endless rec letters...). Using my PhD and other skills to help local nonprofits accomplish their missions. Choosing to be in a church community that is seeking to learn how to do this body of Christ project better and better day by day by making sure all people are affirmed and invited to contribute their gifts. Struggling for days to write blog posts that only a few people will read but that I hope will help them feel less alone in their own wrestling... 

What does God’s Kingdom now look like for you?