By: The Rev. Dr. W. Ross Blackburn
There is a cultural caricature of Christian pro-life work, which claims that we love babies but don’t care about mothers. Or that we care about babies before they are born, but not after they are born. That claim must be made in the face of facts, and can be demonstrated quite easily, as seen here. Pro-lifers care much about babies and mothers—in fact it is precisely because Christians love their neighbors that we care at all about the unborn. However, we would also be unwise to dismiss the critique out of hand, for caricatures generally contain an element of truth. After all, caricatures are exaggerations, where a particular feature, which does really exist, is writ large so as to distort the picture.
Paul’s words get to the heart of what it means to follow Jesus: “have the mind of Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant….” (Phil. 2:5-7). We see this everywhere in the Gospels, as Jesus, before he was crucified, took a basin and a towel and washed the disciple’s feet, or made plain to his disciples that “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
To the extent to which the cultural caricature described above reflects reality is perhaps beside the point. Our love for life, particularly the vulnerable, can be measured practically, not through what we say we believe, not through the stands we may take, but by service. And in our so serving, God’s love for life, from the least to the greatest, is made plain.