24 January 2013

The Horror of Self

The last lines of Mary Elizabeth Williams' horrifying pro-choice essay:
I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time—even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
As my friend Drew Hunter rightly tweeted--the baby's whole life for the mother's convenient one.

This article is the very epitome, it seems to me, of the horror of Self. It is clothed with smiles and sarcasm, but it is quite close to hell itself--the inversion of light and beauty and rest and shalom. It is not simply putting oneself before another's comfort or convenience or feelings or financial stability, but another's life. It is a real-life horror story: the one (a mother) who exists to nurture and protect and love is transformed into its opposite: quietly killing the helpless out of self-nurturing, self-protection, self-love. This is Gollum. It is unmasked ugliness.

It's truly sobering to ponder the fury that will descend on those who publicly call for their children to be passed through the fire and sacrificed to the god of Self. Yet even now all need not be lost for Mary. 'A life worth sacrificing,' she concludes. There she says, honestly and unflinchingly, what abortion is. The heart of abortion is a mother saying to her child, Your life sacrificed for me. The heart of the gospel is the Lord saying to us, My life sacrificed for yours. God's sacrifice of his Son means that her sacrifice of her son need not be the eternal banner over her life. Her repentance will mean God has done for her in his Son, out of love, what she has done for herself to her son, out of hate. And she and I will stand together, equally amazed at the grace lavished upon, and needed equally by, each of us.

No comments: