The majority of Christians either condone abortion or weakly support the Pro-life movement by being complacent or hypocritical. They complacently walk past the church volunteers passing out information. They are complacent by their lack of support for Pro-life events. They are hypocritical in their decision to pick and choose what aspects of Pro-life suit their lifestyle.
Abortion is legal in Canada in large part because of the Christian communities’ lack of zeal to oppose it. But are they really to blame? Their ignorance and their lack of zeal is a result of a world that teaches them to think shallowly and keep them deeply distracted.
Now, there are amazing Pro-life groups and people doing a great job at educating and mobilizing. They have been an instrumental voice of Christ for many years. No one should discredit their good work and pure intentions. My concern is all the other Christians who are ill-equipped or unmotivated to defend life. Even those who are educated focus too much on “what” to say rather than “why” it’s true.
When we don’t expose our core belief, we have nothing to stand on but the same Cartesian rationality that our Pro-choice brothers and sisters use to justify their crimes. If our only defence is a shallow moat of personal opinion we shall find ourselves taken over by their barbarous beliefs. A deep well of Aristotelian thought and Christian theology will provide us with a confident argument for truth.
At the forefront is education. Education is interference. This interference plants a new thought into our mind. This new thought can flourish and grow into something greater or can graft itself to our already established ideal and provide stability. However, there are erroneous seeds of thought that can be sowed into the best of gardens. Relativism fertilized with subjective truth has planted weeds in the fertile Christian soil.
The modern world agrees with the fluidity of thought but only if it flows in their direction. While the masses enjoy their smooth ride down the vortex of self-righteous destruction, others have jumped off the luxury ride and are ferociously swimming up the river of Truth.
There is no greater modern current to swim against than the culture of death that devalues the breathtaking manifestation of life. Over the last 50 years, Canadian laws have devolved from life-preventing birth control, to eliminating life in the womb with abortion and finally culminating to ending life prematurely in sickness or old age with euthanasia.
Alarmingly, the waters from the rivers of death have seeped into the Ark of Peter and other Christian lifeboats. The cloak of compassion veils the true agenda of selfishness and personal irresponsibility. Through all forms of media and biased journalism, they have perverted the Christian concept of Corporal Mercy. Spiritual Mercy is now considered an oppressive and non-inclusive abomination that is the enemy of peace.
If we want to right the ship, we will need the Captains and all hands on deck to be acquainted with how the ship was built and how it operates.
If Babe Ruth stopped hitting the ball, a good coach would work on the basic fundamentals of hitting, in the same way he would teach a 7-year-old. Likewise, for Christians to be legendary defenders of life, they need a lesson in the basic understanding of life and its relation to the Holy Trinity.
You cannot call yourself a Christian if you do not believe in the Trinity. Without a firm understanding of the concept of the Trinity and how we are made in Its image, a Christian’s Pro-life defense is left shallow.
What I intend to present in this essay is a much deeper discussion that can be used to educate fellow Christians on today’s most important issue; life. I propose that all contraceptive sex is intrinsically disordered because it removes the image of the Holy Spirit from human relations. By removing the Holy Spirit, you remove love. Opposing abortion while condoning contraception is hypocritical. Abortion is merely contraception that takes place in the future.
Therefore, if you are a Christian that believes in contraception or abortion I hope to interfere with your heretical concept of life. If you are a Christian who believes that all life is sacred, I hope to graft some fresh ideas in support of your already ordered way of thinking.
The Holy Trinity
As the central mystery of our Faith, the Holy Trinity is seemingly incomprehensible. However, God has left traces of His Trinitarian being in His work of creation and Scripture. “Reason, when it seeks persistently, piously and soberly, does achieve by God’s gift some understanding.” (Dei Filius 4: DS 3015)
The Trinity is an extremely complex thought which is why the correlation between the Trinity and the Pro-life movement is rarely drawn. Yet, to fulfill what I believe is the finest argument for the right to life, I shall attempt to present a simple and useful understanding of the Triune God.
God is one being with 3 persons in that one being. An imperfect analogy is that we are 1 being with 3 attributes. One body, one mind and one soul that makes up the one you. In the case of the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit make up the one God. Just as your mind and body can interact separately from each other but are still within your same being, the Father and Son can interact with each other while still being within the same one God.
God is love. The purest form of love is giving. For perfect love to exist there needs to be someone to give your love to. In order for God to truly be love, there requires a person outside of Himself. This person is defined as His Son. A separate person but still the same entity. Another imperfect analogy would be lighting a candle from another burning candle. The original is not diminished. They are separate flames from the same source.
Since they are now separate, love can exist mutually between the Father and Son. This love is not merely an emotion but rather a person that binds the Father and Son together. The binding element of the Triune God is the Holy Spirit which is love. If you remove the Holy Spirit, you remove the love between the Father and Son. If you remove the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son cannot exist. If we agree that God is love, He can only exist in this Triune form.
Man as an Image of the Holy Trinity
When God made man, He created them in His image. “Let Us make mankind in Our image” (Genesis 1:26). The same way that God can only truly exist in the Triune form, mankind can only exist by the trio of a father and a mother producing a child. Without this formula, human beings could not exist.
A triune God, the highest form of love, is made complete by the Father and Son’s love in the form of the Holy Spirit. In the same way, the highest form of love between creatures (marriage) is completed when a man and woman use their reason to mutually surrender to each other and become “one flesh”. The one flesh is not merely a symbolic unity, but the real potentiality of a new creature proceeding from this union. As real as the Holy Spirit proceeding from the love of Father and Son.
When you contemplate how the image of the Triune God is reflected in the human formula for procreation, it is easier to understand why there is a difference between loving relationships open to life which are open to the Holy Spirit, and lustful relationships that aim to contravene life and are closed to the Holy Spirit.
True love is when a man and woman are open to bringing the image of the Holy Spirit into the world through the conception of a child. Just because some people are unable to conceive doesn’t mean they don’t have true love. The openness to life is what is required.
Abortion is merely the extreme spectrum of contraception. But as a Christian, there is no theological difference between birth control and abortion. Having sex with a condom or taking the pill is as intrinsically evil as a late-term abortion.
From the Catholic Catechism 2380 “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil.”
Like all Catholic teachings, they must not be looked upon as mere rules, but rather as reasonable and revealed truths. When we understand “why” the rules are there and how it applies to God’s laws, we are able to comprehend how all the doctrines are interconnected. We can see how ultimately, the end of every doctrine is love.
We hinder the supreme form of love by creating any obstacles for the one flesh to occur. This can be contraception, abortion, masturbation or homosexuality. No Christian would say we should remove the Holy Spirit from the Trinity but that is exactly what they are saying when they agree with birth control or same-sex marriage.
When we remove the Holy Spirit from the sexual act, we remove God’s grace from our lives. “As the Holy Spirit is the bond of union between Father and Son, so too the Holy Spirit binds the creature to the Creator.” (The Holy Ghost, Edward Leen)
Information into Transformation
We cannot allow ourselves to get sucked into the modern world’s contradictions. We must think beyond the surface. We must challenge our fellow Christians to live in accordance to the whole Truth of the Gospel. We must resist the temptation of having false mercy for others and justifying our own consciences.
Our world was populated through a family. It was redeemed through a family. It will be saved through a family. Transform your life by being completely open to life. Teach your children the beautiful depths of the Faith. A faithful family is a spiritual army that exemplifies that peace and happiness come from struggle and sacrifice.
Have a look around. The world doesn’t need your convenience. They have that covered. Take the bold leap that will transform your family and the world.
We should never refrain from pushing for legislative change but Truth will never prevail through force. The only way life will win is if those who believe in it, create an abundance of it. When those who have passed the reproductive age sacrifice their golden years to help the young family just starting out. When we collectively support teen Moms and turn their mistakes into miracles.
We will never convince the blind to see. They are blind. But we can prescribe a solution for those who have foggy vision. That prescription is light. When we be what we want them to be, only then will everything become clear. Once the Holy Trinity comes into focus, it will be this era of death that will fade into history rather than the millions of unborn souls.
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Gospel of Luke
Truth Changes Not 