Evangelical writer and passionate pro-lifer Donald Miller gets it right, as usual, in a critique of the pro-life movement’s excesses, failings and flaws. But ends, as usual, offering a quite positive critique at that.
I’m a big fan of the evangelical Donald Miller’s writing, even though I criticized him in a paid book review I wrote once (about his Blue Like Jazz, a terrific book I enjoyed immensely) for being very uneven.
Miller just isn’t that consistently good in everything he writes. He’s not as consistently good as so many far better women spiritual writers out there these days such as Anne Lamott (widely considered the best and most ground-breaking of Christian women writers and for good reason) or Barbara Brown Taylor, or Miller’s fellow evangelicals like Rachel Held Evans, who’s a little like Anne Lamott without the shock-jock vocabulary that made Anne Lamott famous and infamous.
What were we thinking giving women the right to vote? Now they write bestselling Christian books and insist on being heard. As Anne Lamott would say . . . .
Well never mind what she would say–there’s only so much of what salty Anne Lamott would say that one can quote in a PG rated christian blawg like Jitterbugging.
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Anyway, I noted in the review of Miller’s book that I was quibbling a bit in criticizing him given just how good Donald Miller is and can be. When he’s good he’s really, really good.
All of this is a lead-in to his terrific posting on his “Storyline” blog that I read via his Facebook link today; regarding pro-life, he knocks it out of the park with his usual honesty.
The best writers–men, women or horses who have a lot of life experience as well as horse sense, intelligence and some wits about them–always share that common trait: Honesty.
Miller is very much pro-life, but is honest-to-God in his critique of the pro-life movement’s excesses and failings in the blog posting to which I referred.
But he doesn’t just criticize the pro-life movement and leave it at that; he gives a list of six things he’d like to see Christians and churches do in the pro-life movement as an alternative to just being against abortion. He’s always a positive writer at bottom.
Here’s number 5 on his list:
5. “Begin supporting a culture of life. If abortion were to be made illegal (which it likely never will be) pro-life supporters must be prepared to care for an enormous number of unwanted children. If your church isn’t regularly talking about adoption, it’s not a wholistic pro-life church. Not only this, but abortion rates decrease when the marginalized and poor are given access to healthcare. Many women simply can’t afford to bring a child into the world. If we want to change the tone of the pro-life movement, we must start speaking compassionately and often of the plight of women who find themselves in very difficult situations.”
I’ve always noticed that some of the most intensely pro-life people–those who think abortion doctors and anyone who is pro-choice are simply murderers–do nothing whatsoever to support what Donald has described as “a culture of life.” (Some, and sometimes I wonder if it isn’t most.)
If they were half as passionate about adopting, or mentoring pregnant mothers in trouble, or supporting pregnant women who don’t have two dimes to rub together even if they work two or three jobs supporting other kids, or if the Christians were as passionate in supporting rape or incest victims, or supporting those weighed down with the exhausting, 24-7 care required of a parent or single mom with a child with a disability like cystic fibrosis if a mom chose that potentially exhausting life of nonstop caregiving over abortion.
Well . . . even legal abortion would plummet and plummet big-time if Christians walked the walk rather than just be dead-set against abortion.
Being against abortion–being against anything–is easy. Being a compassionate Christian who walks the walk as well as talking the talk is not always easy.
Donald Miller underscores that point quite well, so click here to read what this passionate pro-lifer has to say with his usual, refreshing honesty .
And read Blue Like Jazz if you haven’t already. It’s hilarious and deeply honest-to-God good.
Miller’s point that pro-lifers need to acknowledge the issue is complicated is also a crucial but often overlooked point. If this were a simple issue, it would have been resolved long ago.
My comment is not concerning Donald Miller directly, or his writing skills, but I think it is still pertinent to this post. I have a real problem with the term “pro-life” and its implication that those that are not are somehow “pro-death.” Unless someone is severely mentally ill or possibly possesses a very strange world-view, I doubt that many people are “pro-death;” yet that is what crosses my mind when I hear the term “pro-life.” I have a difficult time supporting abortion myself if it is simply used as a form of birth control; however, especially when it comes to the health of the mother or the child is known to be defective, then I most certainly support a woman’s right to choose. In the early stages of pregnancy, I do not believe that a blastocyst (a grouping of cells) is a human anyway. To sum it up, abortion should be up to the woman and the father (that frequently gets left out of the discussion) and her doctor. At what point do the cells become human? That is what I do not know and will leave up to science for the answer or in the case of the faithful the answer is within the religion of the persons involved. In the meantime, I still think that the term “pro-life” is a loaded term and meant to imply that if one is not “pro-life” then the alternative is “pro-death,” which is a ridiculous assertion!