Pro-Life Christianity and the language of hypocrisy

Pro-Life Christian.

Not since Billy-Ray Cyrus have three words and a hyphen caused such tidal waves of anger and disgust. This loose assortment of what Bill Hicks once eloquently called ‘annoying, evil, idiot-fucks’ swan around damaging people’s lives, wasting people’s time and generally disparaging anyone who doesn’t hold the exact opinion they do.

And yet, and yet…

The simplest of simple pieces of logic will tell you that an absence of any discernable evidence for God is no proof of his non-existence, just as the existence of any infinite number of green emeralds will not provide proof that all emeralds must be green. All it needs is for Jesus to show up with a blue emerald clutched in his wounded hand to blow both theories out of the water.

If (and I know this is about as likely as David Blunkett turning down a quick hand job from anyone called something like Candie) The Big Man himself were to descend (all aglow and looking like a varnished John Peel) and tell you in no uncertain terms that it really was him and yes, it was all real (34AD and all that) and that you, yes you, needed to scream it from the rooftops and devote your life to saving as many souls you could, no matter the ridicule, no matter the anger. This was what must be done. Well, one’s response might be slightly different.

There is no argument against faith. Believing will always be justification enough for your actions. Unless someone can convince you out of believing, their going to have a hard time convincing you what you’re doing is wrong. I find it hard to argue with their reasons for fighting.

That’s not to say I agree, I just find it hard to argue. And I enjoy a good argument.

However, there is still ample space to find fault in their methods.

I personally find it pretty repulsive that people can have such contempt for people’s ability and right to independent thought. A quick skim through the lapsarian opus of that most verbose of Christians John Milton will present you with a clear message that the importance of people comes from their ability to choose faith in God and to follow his teachings. Having no option but to goosestep down the footpath laid by the almighty may have been a damn sight easier, but where’s the challenge in that? We’re hardly deserving of our own personal cloud if we haven’t had to think for ourselves.

Thus the bullying and violence that are the stock in trade of your common-a-garden militant Christian are to me decidedly unchristian not just because ‘blessed are the meek…etc.’ (let’s face it the Old Testament Almighty was nothing if not smitey) but because the logic inherent in their use is to forcibly remove the element of choice. If you firebomb an abortion clinic you remove the possibility of people to make a choice as to whether they use that service or not. This I believe to be wrong. Set out your stall, as convincingly as you can (and if you are the messenger on Earth of an omnipotent creator you should be able to stitch together a decent argument), and allow people the opportunity to choose that option. Give people space for a run up and allow them to make a Leap of Faith.

In other words you cannot lead people down the path to salvation by barricading up the edges.

And this is just one example of a disfigured, dislocated and generally confused ideology that has been warped so many times to fit the specific hypocritical arguments they wish to pass off as real thinking it so barely still deserves the name Christianity.

Take another more specific example, from Tony Wyatt, the man battling to save the life of his two-year old premature child. A man who in the past has had to have security accompany him in a hospital because of his violence towards the staff (that’s right all you lovers of hypocrisy, a pro-lifer trying to damage those people who’s job it is to save lives… but that’s the only trip I’ll take down that path, taking pot shots at the moniker pro-life is like shooting dead fish at the bottom of an empty barrel).

[Tony Wyatt said] he believed in miracles. "If the man upstairs says this person should live, then this person should live," he said

Now, this is a child that not only ‘will never see or hear, walk, sit or eat properly, and will require round-the clock care until she dies’ but who also ‘has never left hospital and has stopped breathing five times. She is fed by tube because she cannot suck from a bottle, and needs a constant supply of oxygen’. Tony wants them to cut open her throat and permanently insert a pipe that will breathe for her. Does any of this sound like the work of a God who wants someone to live?

Or does it sound like medicine keeping alive a tiny ball of nothing but pain.

The same medical science that is so often castigated as flying in the face of all that is natural and healthy is here (for exactly the same reasons) held up as the work of The Divine One. How does that work?

Hypocrisy and brainless rhetoric abound. And I haven’t even touched on the abuse of the bible for these and other (anti-homosexuality being the first that springs to mind) dubious and blinkered causes.

One has to ask the question, when ‘God’s word’ is mutilated to such a violent degree, who is serving whom?