Picking up where we left off in the last article, recall the quote from Dr. Peter Kreeft:
“And in our work for all the parts of the Gospel, we must never compromise our two absolutes, truth and love. Our truth-telling must always be loving, and our loving must always be true. One extreme tells us that truth and justice and law and order are more important than love, and the other extreme tells us that love doesn’t need truth or justice or law or order, just ‘if it feels good, do it.’ We have a third way as Christians, which is not Right or Left but Straight.”
There’s a sentence in that paragraph that caused a “light bulb moment” for me that helped me better understand why I haven’t been willing to commit more of myself to not just helping young women facing unexpected pregnancies, but going further and offering more of myself (time, talent, treasure) to truly empower them, just as I would for my own children.
The sentence is, “One extreme tells us that truth and justice and law and order are more important than love, and the other extreme tells us that love doesn’t need truth or justice or law or order, just ‘if it feels good, do it.’”
In particular, it’s the first part of that sentence, “One extreme tells us that truth and justice and law and order are more important than love…”, that really grabbed me.
When it comes to the issue of abortion, if I’m honest with myself, it’s easier to think about, to talk about, to debate about the injustice of abortion, and that the truth is on the side of the pro-life team, than it is to pour myself out in love to empower women facing unexpected pregnancies.
I don’t think it’s that I believe that “…truth and justice and law and order are more important than love….”
I believe, as all Christians do, that love is ultimately all that matters.
As Jesus commands us in Matthew 22:37-40:
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
And in John 15:12-13:
“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
But do my actions follow my belief?
How am I doing on laying down my life for my friends?
If those young women experiencing unexpected pregnancies are my friends, and I believe Jesus would say that they are, then if I tracked all the hours I spent thinking, talking, debating about the injustice of abortion versus time spent doing things (investing time, talent, treasure) that empower young women facing unexpected pregnancies, I’m afraid there would be a significant imbalance toward hours spent thinking, talking, and debating rather than hours spent doing.
That’s my self-reflection anyway.
But since we humans have a seemingly infinite capacity to deceive ourselves about ourselves, perhaps I’m not being objective.
So what if instead I turned this evaluation over to a jury of young women facing unexpected pregnancies and let them decide whether I’m focused more on truth, justice, law, and order, when it comes to the issue of abortion, or more focused on love revealed in my demonstrated efforts to empower them.
What would their verdict be about me, about you, about all of us?
And what criteria would these young women use in their process of evaluating us?
We’ll take a look at that in the next article.
To be continued…
Brett
This article was published in Heroic Media‘s weekly newsletter