Christians are pro-choice

Christians are pro-choice

The title may catch you. I hope this column will, too.

Christians are pro-choice, or should be. We are gifted each day with free will, and choose Jesus.   

In a July 2016 blog titled A Beginners Guide to Free Will, John Piper, founder and teacher at desiringGod.org, speaks to free will from three insightful angles. In one of these definitions he writes, “We have free will if we are ultimately or decisively self-determining, and the only preferences and choices that we can be held accountable for are ones that are ultimately or decisively self-determined.”

He continues. “The key word here is ultimate, or decisive. The point is not just that choices are self-determined, but that the self is the ultimate or decisive determiner. The opposite of this definition would be that God is the only being who is ultimately self-determining, and is himself ultimately the disposer of all things, including all choices — however many or diverse other intervening causes are.”

Said simply, Christians and non-Christians alike have choices. In these choices, which are given to us by our divine being God out of great love for us, we who love God opt for God.  In choosing God, we intentionally follow the teachings of His Son, Jesus.

Jesus aligned those who chose to listen to the ways not of earth but heaven. The marginalized teacher preacher spoke of a grounding love that enabled us to make more choices, more decisions. These decisions continue to lead to more and greater love.

What does this have to do with pro-choice the way nearly all of you have been thinking, that is, with the life of an unborn child? The answer is everything. We are to love. Love big. In fact, we are to love so big we see the Other Side and all angles, curves and hard lines in between. There is no either/or in a love this big. It’s a whole story. In fact, it’s many stories. And we don’t navigate any of them. We don’t call determining shots on any of them. No, our role (our job) is to love.

Listen carefully. I don’t come down either way on Rowe v. Wade in this column; I am saying that there is only one way, and that way is love.

We have sin around us. We have had sin around us. We have sin within us. Rather than let sin divide us, we should recognize our own sin and distance from God not as a block from the world but a block we can step on to gain access into the stories of others in the world we share.

I am convinced God’s love changes everything. When we listen not to self but to our Savior who breathes life into everything he says, then life will abound. Life will always abound. We should teach and reach from the perspective of life far, far, far more than we should ever speak of death.

Some of you may want me to speak specifically and call abortion a heinous sin. Here I am saying we all sin. In this sin, we can choose Jesus. When we choose Jesus, then the right words and actions come at the right time. Only God knows the right words and actions. This is why we follow—why we choose—God.

So, yes, Christians are pro-choice. No matter what we are up against, no matter how hard it is, or actually, how hard we perceive it to be, we still—always—choose Jesus.

When we choose Jesus, that is to say when we choose to let him guide, then the following is always, always clear: there is life. There is always life. I don’t know where this life is, or what this life is or where or how it will be—exactly—I am NOT God, but I do know this, and I repeat. There is life. Always life.