The tipping point

I seem to be having a lot of 'Aha!' moments at the moment. I'm listening to a lot of preaches while I'm driving, which probably explains it, although my 'Ahas' are never quite what the preacher is talking about. I guess there's no accounting for the weirdness of my brain.

Occasionally I listen to 'Talksport' radio station, and you do get the feeling that a lot of the people who call in are angry. Whether it's an unsuccessful football manager, an untrustworthy politician or someone who doesn't mow their lawn enough, the callers want to see 'justice done'. Heads must roll! The feeling is that people should get what they deserve, and no better. There's not much grace on talksport.

There's not much grace in the world at all. It's hard to forgive someone who has made you suffer, however small a thing it might be. And if they aren't sorry, just forget about it. But without grace, car journeys end in road rage, relationships break down, parents disown their children, insults end in fights. A group of kids clashes with another group, driven by the need to 'get even', every act needing to be avenged, back and forth, being pulled further and further down as though by gravity. The world seems to be in moral decline, but nobody knows what to do about it.

I remember years ago hearing that when CJ Mahaney was asked "how are you?", he replied "better than I deserve." At the time I thought it was a good sentiment, but perhaps a bit over the top. It stuck with me though. Now, having mixed that with an awful lot of John Piper, I realised that 'better than I deserve' IS grace, the key to everything.

I never really understood why God made the world. I was taught that he was totally happy in his own company, and that he wasn't in need of anything that we could give. I was told that it was because of His grace, but I didn't really understand it. Surely it wasn't worth His effort, if we don't give Him anything except an awful lot of trouble?

But my new thought, that grace means 'better than I deserve', made something stand out to me. We DO give God something he didn't have before. We give him the opportunity to show grace! To say that we exist 'because of God's grace' misses something I think. We exist so that God CAN show grace. The Father can't show grace to the Son, because the Son is deserving of every good thing the Father can give. But for us, being created by God out of nothing, we obviously hadn't earned anything.

Grace is part of who God is, so to have no outlet for it limits the expression of His glory. For God to bless us with a universe to live in, all the amazing things He put in it, the friends and families we have, it's all grace. And most of all for Him to share His infinite glory with us tiny humans really is amazing grace.

Gods grace is even bigger than that though. The human race fell from that privileged position that God had made us to have. By living in a way that says we find other pleasures more glorious than God, and by trying to put ourselves at the centre of our lives, we separate ourselves from Him. We're given over to the eternal consequence of our arrogance. But He showed how amazing His grace really is, by giving up his glory and becoming human, to be punished and die for our failings and rescue us from our fate. Then He gives us eternal life, new bodies, an endless universe to explore, no sin, sickness or death, and Himself, an infinite God to treasure.

So it's no wonder that treating each other better than we deserve stops the downward spiral. Grace lifts us to places we could never reach by ourselves, it's the reason that God created everything, the reason He gave us life. We're made in God's image, so to cut grace out of our lives is to cut off a vital part of who God made us to be.

Logical ponderings on an anti-cultural pro-choice culture

I just read an article describing one way in which unborn human lives have been ended. I dont think that particular procedure happens in the UK, and it's now banned in the US. Unfortunately the accepted methods are probably more gruesome, just perhaps less immediately and absurdly shocking. My first impulse was to drive into Brighton and start throwing bricks at Wistons Clinic, but instead I thought maybe I should try to write something to clear up in my own mind why I think it's wrong.

If you watch pretty much any action film you'll see a variety of creatively disturbing ways in which baddies get what they deserve. In our culture it seems to be accepted that untimely and horrible deaths should only ever be suffered by the most evil of villains who've committed terrible atrocities.

Is it fair then to infer that a terminated fetus was an evil villain? No, obviously that's ridiculous. You couldn't even convict them if 'existence' was a crime, based on the principle of diminished responsibility.

So, if their existence isn't a crime, then the atrocity they've commited must be forcing an inconvenienced mother to give birth to an unwanted baby? Having to face the consequences of your actions is a terrible injustice right? Well, no. We'd all expect a murderer to go to prison as a consequence of their actions.

Ok, but what if the woman had no choice in the conception, or the unborn fetus would be severely handicapped if delivered? Since neither circumstance is the fault of the fetus, a death sentence is unjust, as they haven't committed any crime for which they should be punished. But I'm assuming that the law should protect a baby inside the womb the same as it does after birth. Can it really be legal to kill a baby based purely on it's location?

Some people say that a human in the womb isn't really human, or they avoid calling it a baby because of the connotations of that. But at 24 weeks a fetus can be terminated purely for convenience, and there is no physical difference between a 24 week old human inside the womb, or outside after birth. Maybe we shouldn't think of a baby's 'delivery' but of it's 'deliverance' from a lawless prison, where it has no human rights.

So, I really don't see how the 'right to choose' even meets our culture's moral ideals. Could a person be so passionate about the right to choose, that they are completely unmoved by the details of the procedures involved? Do people go through the whole process refusing to think about it at all, avoiding any details of what actually happens?

I know that there are a lot of difficult and complicated circumstances, which I would find incredibly hard to deal with. But in the light of the facts, whatever the situation might be, I just don't understand how people think that abortion is an option.

Why on Earth would anyone read this blog?

Not that I think anyone would want to (or even necessarily should) read this, but occasionally I need to get some of my thoughts out of my head. I have a vague hope that they'll make more sense in type than they do in my brain.

I'm more of a sculptor than an improviser, so I'll happily spend an hour trying to get a paragraph to behave itself the best I can. I like the idea of writing things as accurately, concisely and understandably as possible. Having said that, I should probably point out that concise means 'short and clear'.

I've never previously felt much of a desire to read blogs, so I don't expect that anyone will want to read mine. I do think it's possible that some of the things I'm thinking might help someone, or encourage someone, or possibly make someone think "no you're wrong, this is how it really is". I tend to think quite deeply about things, and while mostly that might make me seem like a bit of a tart, I think a lot of people need to stretch their brains to think about more than football, Romania's next top model or what might be for dinner.

If I use any long words it's only because I'm not clever enough to think of the right short ones.