Jesus Was Pro-Choice

Another Election Day has passed and Republicans once again find themselves inexplicably shocked that a majority of Americans don’t support their fanatical desire to control women’s bodies.

You would think continued rejection would force them to pause and reassess their plan to turn A Handmaid’s Tale into reality, but like a crestfallen child they can't seem to take “no” for an answer.

To be fair, the sort of honest self-reflection required in this moment is all but impossible when you see yourself on a mission from God.

Which is what the Pro-Life™ movement is.

It’s a religious crusade.

Invented by the Moral Majority as a wedge issue to drive evangelical Christians to unconditionally support the Republican Party, the Pro-Life has proved wildly successful at the ballot box…at least until the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade and the proverbial dog finally caught the car. Republicans are discovering to their apparent horror that women actually don’t like being told by Republican politicians what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

Much like Republicans don’t like being told who they have to bake a cake for.

But I digress.

It’s hard to see reality when you think you’re on a mission from God, especially when you wage that crusade inside a hermetically sealed right-wing ecosystem where people believe any insane thing that will keep their fears stoked and their biases confirmed, like how women are supposedly getting to the moment of birth, suddenly having a change of heart, murdering their babies after they’ve been delivered.

Which, and I cannot stress this enough, is not a thing, never has been a thing, and never will be a thing. Women do not get to their third trimester of pregnancy, let alone due date, suddenly change their minds and abort their perfectly healthy babies. If women are having third trimester abortions it’s because something has gone horribly, tragically wrong and there is no chance of life for their very wanted baby, the fetus has already died, or there is some serious threat to the life of the mother.

But religious crusades have a nasty habit of ejecting reason from crusaders minds. The give license to the most deplorable parts of our selves, freeing us to believe the unbelievable without pause as we transform into cold, callous demagogues in the name of God and in a tragically ironic twist, forget the fundamental tenets of our faith.

I’m talking specifically about Christianity.

Because Jesus was pro-choice.

No, I don’t mean Jesus was pro-murdering babies, but if you think being pro-choice is about in utero bloodlust, I’m sure you stopped reading this post long ago or never stopped reading it the moment you say the headline.

But that headline isn’t empty clickbait.

Jesus was absolutely, undeniably, unequivocally pro-choice.

Because being pro-choice isn’t about “killing babies".

Being pro-choice is about not forcing your own ideals, theology, or principles onto others. It’s about allowing others to practice their God given freedom to choose what to do with their own bodies and lives. That sort of freedom to choose was at the very heart of Jesus’ ministry. That’s not to say Jesus didn’t have ideals, principles, or a particular way of life he thought people should follow. He absolutely, undeniably, unequivocally did.

But he never ever forced anyone to take up their cross and follow him.

It was always, always, always a choice.

Christians seem to have forgotten that freedom of choice, particularly in America which is particularly ironic given how many and how often American Christians like to shout about freedom, particularly religious freedom. As American Christians we idolize freedom for ourselves, but recoil at the idea of anyone else having the freedom to live their lives as they see fit.

It’s not just they height of irony, it’s deeply, fundamentally, definitionally anti-Christ.

Christ came to set us free, not enslave us to partisan politics.

That doesn’t mean you can’t be a Christian and oppose abortion on theological grounds. You absolutely can. Heck, I’ll even lend you a hand and direct you to the Didache, one of the oldest teachings of the Church - older even than the Bible - that explicitly condemns abortion.

But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter if you think abortion is a sin or murder or healthcare.

As Christians, our calling is to preach the good news, not force others to conform to our theology.

Which is why debates about when life begins or what the Bible has to say or any other theological argument are irrelevant in the context of public policy. You can believe with all your heart that anyone who gets an abortion is going straight to hell and you can post all over social media why you think the Bible says that’s true, nevertheless your deeply held religious convictions don’t give you the right to force those convictions onto others.

Particularly if you claim to be a Christian.

Because Jesus was pro-choice.

He invites people to follow him, welcomes strangers to the table, and goes where he’s invited.

He never ever forces Gentiles, Romans, Jews, or anyone else to do what he says.

In fact, he even turned people away from trying to follow him when they weren’t ready to do the sorts of things a follower of Jesus is called to do. And when he could have called down legions of angels to save his life and overthrow the government, he chose to die instead.

Paul echoed this refusal to force one’s faith onto others in his fist letter to the church in Corinth when we wrote “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.” In other words, even if Paul thought the world outside the Church was lost to sin, it wasn’t his job or that of the Church to force their will on others or expect them to conform to his sincerely held religious beliefs.

Of course, that’s not to say Christians don’t have a long history of forcing our sincerely held religious beliefs onto others. From crusaders and conquistadors to caesars and presidents and countless tyrants in-between, Christianity has a long, terrible, and indefensible history of forcing others to conform to our faith. 

What we see today in the Pro-Life™ movement is little more than the continuation of Christian colonization, this time of a woman’s body. It’s a sort of perverse Manifest Destiny that believes it is God’s will that every fertilized egg in America be carried from conception to crib no matter how much damage is done along the way. Nevertheless, while these modern day conquistadors of the Pro-Life™ movement may have a long historical tradition of forced conversion to draw from, forced conversion is the way of Caesar, not Jesus 

But let me again be clear: I am not calling for any of my fellow Christians to change their beliefs about abortion or when life begins.

What I am calling for, however, is for my fellow Christians to stop trying to force their beliefs onto others, lay down their crusader swords, and follow the way of the servant Jesus instead the way of a conquering bully. To be a people of the cross is to refuse to force our will and beliefs about how life should be lived onto others. Which is why being pro-choice is entirely consistent with the Christian faith even if you personally oppose abortion because Christianity is founded on grace and freedom and the refusal to force others to conform to our will.

The overturn of Roe V. Wade is not a victory for the Christian faith.

Nor is it the ushering in of the kingdom of God.

It is the decades long culmination of born again conquistadors who have exchanged the way of Jesus for a lie.

It is anti-Christ in the truest sense of the word and should be denounced by anyone who identifies as a Bible believing follower of Jesus.

Because Jesus was pro-choice.

Some of this post was adapted from a previous post…because we keep having the same conversation over and over again.