The following essay, by Doug Mainwaring, originally appeared at Public Discourse: Ethics, Law and the Common Good and has been reprinted with permission. The original post can be viewed here >>
This world does not need men to selfishly take whatever we want, especially if the price is the welfare of our children. Our children don’t need superheroes—just quiet, unsung, ordinary, everyday heroes who answer to the name “Daddy.”
When I was taking my first few steps out of the closet in the late 1990s, a guy who called himself Tex offered me a short version of his life story over drinks at a Dupont Circle bar. The conversation took an unanticipated turn: he explained that his current partner had moved halfway across the country, leaving behind an ex-wife and kids. Tex would sometimes answer the house phone (this was before cell phones) and would hear a small voice cautiously ask, “May I please speak to my Daddy?” This was his partner’s eight-year-old daughter calling from somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Tex said that it troubled him deeply that his partner’s daughter had to ask permission of a stranger in order to speak with her daddy.
When I think of this little girl, my thoughts drift to folks like Alana Newman and others who have anonymous sperm donors for fathers, many of whom have daily asked that same question in their hearts. May I please speak to my Daddy?
When I started speaking out about the dangers of same-sex marriage for children, I found it difficult to get proponents of genderless marriage to engage in intellectually honest one-on-one discussions. Then I realized: at least half the people who wanted to clobber me with bumper sticker slogans were products of broken marriages.
In early 2013, following my participation in a panel discussion, a young man accused me of being unfair to gays, lesbians, and their children. So I took a chance and asked him point blank: “Did your parents divorce when you were a child?”
He was a little stunned by the personal question, but he answered, “Yes.” The smugness left his face.
“Did you live with your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see much of your father?”
“No. I almost never saw him.”
“Did you miss him? Did you wish you could be around him more?”
“Yes. Of course,” he answered, with a bit of wistfulness.
“Did your parents’ divorce increase your happiness—or your sadness?”
“Sadness.”
“So your parents dismantled your home and set up two new structures that put their needs first, not yours. In fact, they were structures guaranteeing your continued unhappiness. You learned to live with it, because as a child you had no control whatsoever over their actions, but these new structures weren’t necessarily built with your best interest in mind.”
“Well, no. I didn’t get to vote on the matter. I was a kid.”
“Exactly. So why would it be different for children of gays and lesbians who are denied either their father or mother? Do you really think two moms or two dads is exactly the same as having both mom and dad around to love and care for you? Seriously? Would having an extra mom around the house really have satisfied you, or would you still have an unanswered yearning in your heart for your Dad?”
“I see.”
“Then why would you want to condemn other children to be fatherless? Or motherless?”
He got it. He didn’t like it, but he got it—and then he walked away. I have no idea if he changed his mind, but at least he had finally actually heard and listened to an opposing point of view—one that resonated with him.
As I walked away, I thought to myself, “To be intellectually honest, I can’t keep speaking publicly against the dangers of genderless marriage without also simultaneously speaking about the objective evil of divorce for kids.” Divorce is an exponentially larger, far more pervasive threat to children than the prospect of gays raising children without moms and lesbians raising children without dads. I sighed. There is a lot to undo and set straight.
The Prodigal Dad
After my wife and I had been divorced for a few years, it was not unusual for her to call and ask me to drive to her house because our youngest son was out of control. When I would arrive, I found turmoil. He had gotten angry about something, and that had triggered a rage completely disproportionate to the issue. He would yell and scream and kick, then isolate himself in his bedroom. No trespassers allowed. It was gut-wrenching to witness this. Thankfully, he would calm down after a while and return to normal.
His rage would, in turn, trigger discussions with my ex-wife. What were we going to do about his behavioral problem? Did he require medication? Did he need to be spanked? Did he need psychological help?
After this happened a few times it became abundantly clear to me exactly what he needed. Our son did not have a behavioral problem. He needed just one thing: he needed his parents to get back together and to love each other. The slicing and dicing of our family had thrust unbearable stress on this four-year-old’s tender psyche. His Dad and Mom were the culprits responsible for this, yet we were approaching this as if it were his problem.
Our little boy bore no blame, but I sure did.
It took a few more years for my ex-wife and me to fully come to our senses. In the meantime, our kids came to live with me. This was not a solution, it was simply a stopgap means of de-escalating an uncomfortable situation. While this solved some problems, it created others and remained a wholly unsatisfying answer.
To justify remaining divorced and maintaining two households, we adults were enforcing a charade, demanding everyone else around us—especially our own children—pretend that our selfish pursuits and our inability to “work things out” were just fine. In reality, we had done nothing more than slough off our problems and dysfunction on our kids. We were alleviating our own stresses by heaping them on our children.
Wonderfully, after a dozen years, we finally dropped the pretense and are once again husband and wife, married with children. There has been a lot of healing since then, some of which has been a complete surprise. And we’ll never know what additional potential difficulties our kids have been spared.
A Lesson from Hollywood
Never before in history have children been born with the explicit purpose of being deprived of either a mom or a dad. Yet children who are brought into this world to satisfy the wants of gay and lesbian couples enter the world in exactly this way. They live with the knowledge that one of their biological parents will remain forever an enigma, a phantom.
Until recently, children were viewed as a pure gift from God. Now new laws undefining marriage are producing the sad result of undefining children as well, reducing them to chattel-like sources of fulfillment. On one side, their family tree consists not of ancestors, but of a small army of anonymous surrogates, donors, and attorneys who pinch-hit for the absent gender in genderless marriages.
Though it may seem a strange source, the 1998 Disney movie The Parent Trap (a remake of the 1961 classic starring Hayley Mills) can teach us a lot about kids growing up with two gay dads or two lesbian moms.
In the movie, two girls who look remarkably alike, Hallie Parker and Annie James, bump into each other at an exclusive New England summer camp. They soon discover that they are twins who were separated shortly after birth, and they concoct a scheme to switch identities and trade places. Each so desperately wants to meet her missing parent that she is willing to change appearance, hairstyle, mannerisms, voice, and accent and to move to a foreign country just to have a few surreptitious, stolen days with the mom or dad for whom she longs.
Hallie lives with her dad in California wine country in a beautiful hillside mansion with a swimming pool and stables. She has a handsome dad who is a fabulously successful vintner. In short, she has everything—but she still yearns for the mom who has been denied her. Meanwhile, Annie lives in a mansion in a posh London suburb. Her beautiful mom is a world-famous dress designer. She has servants to wait on her and a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce at her disposal. Yet Annie likewise yearns for the dad who has been denied her.
Both these girls lead enviable fairytale lives. But viewers watching this film, the majority of whom enjoy far less material wealth and security, feel sorry for both girls, because each is missing a parent. This irony is precisely the point of the movie.
It’s interesting, too, that Hallie’s aunt lives in the home and serves as a sort of surrogate mother figure, while Annie’s maternal grandfather lives with her and her mom, serving as a paternal figure for Annie. Even though both these wonderful, upbeat, loving single-parent households have a closely related, caring family member of the opposite sex present, a Grand-Canyon-sized hole persists in Annie’s and Hallie’s hearts.
In the movie, adults are responsible for dividing children. In the case of children produced for genderless marriage, adults are responsible for depriving them. Deprivation is permanently, irrevocably etched into the hearts and souls of human beings created for genderless marriages. Children who are engineered for gay marriages face impoverished lives from the day they are born, as two men snatch a baby from their rented surrogate’s womb, denying their child perhaps the only opportunity he or she might have had to experience a mother’s embrace. This missed opportunity is as close as their child will ever have come to touching someone who is, sort of, their mom.
As she grows older, her yearning for mom will be dismissed, hushed, laughed away, and not taken seriously. After all, dad sees no need for a woman in his life. Why should his little girl or boy? To yearn for a mom becomes an insult to the wifeless man or male couple raising her. Better to suffer in silence than risk upsetting dad or dads by bringing up the greatest of taboo subjects.
Each one of us needs to thoroughly think through the unintended, unconsidered consequences that lurk—or are purposely obscured—behind our acceptance of genderless marriage, and more importantly, our society’s continued shrug of the shoulders over both divorce and single-parenting. We adults yawn when it comes to these issues. Children everywhere have a different response: they cry themselves to sleep.
When It Comes to Fatherhood, Men Need to Be Men
Men who divorce, men who marry other men in order to raise children, or who anonymously sell their sperm—all follow in Esau’s footsteps. Except it is not our own birthrights we are trading for a mere bowl of soup. It is our children’s. We do so callously, selling their greatest treasure—growing up with their biological parents, with an intact biological family—very cheaply.
This world does not need us men to selfishly take whatever we want, especially if the price is the welfare of our children. Men are supposed to do the opposite: men are meant to protect their children from unhappiness, loneliness, and other threats. Real men don’t victimize their own children for their own benefit. They protect, they shield, absorbing stress and hardship rather than deflecting it onto their children. Men stand in the breach.
When it comes to fatherhood, our culture needs men to be men. For some, that may mean relinquishing certain dreams or our own yearnings. More and more, our culture is dominated by men who are self-interested and cowardly. C.S. Lewis would tell us we are a generation of men without chests.
Pope Saint John Paul II informed us, “Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love” (emphasis his). During this current age, marriage, family, and even gender are undermined in every conceivable way, and fatherhood in particular is under relentless, violent attack. It is up to us men to courageously fight back.
Our children deserve better. They don’t need superheroes; just quiet, unsung, ordinary, everyday heroes who answer to the name “Daddy”—not spoken over a phone, but whispered into our ears as they safely and contentedly rest in our arms.
The World Evangelical Alliance’s (WEA) newly launched Peace & Reconciliation Network (PRN) is co-hosting an Eastern European Conference on Peace, Reconciliation and Social Justice in Chisinau, Moldova, on May 17-22, 2017. Focused specifically on the unique context of CIS1 countries, the conference aims to establish a regional network that enables participants from different nations to together address the needs and challenges of their region.
Co-sponsored by Micah Global and INFEMIT Europe, the conference invites Christian leaders from the Baltics, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Central Asia with some 150 participants registered so far. Speakers include Micah Global International Director Sheryl Haw, Dr. Chris Wright (UK), Dr. Peter Kuzmic (Croatia), Dr. Ester Petrenko (Latvia), Dr. Fiodor Raichinez (Ukraine) and Dr. Johannes Reimer, WEA’s Director for Peace & Reconciliation.
“As Christians, we are called to be agents of peace and reconciliation. The Bible is full of stories and instructions where God calls us not only to be reconciled to Himself but also among each other. Jesus saying the peacemakers are blessed and will be called ‘sons of God’ is just one example,” Bishop Efraim Tendero, Secretary General of the WEA, commented and added: “Conflict is the root cause of so much suffering: poverty, loss of life, forced migration, and more. Lack of education and opportunities due to prolonged conflict situations also robs people of their hope for the future and makes them vulnerable to human trafficking and exploitation. Therefore, if we as believers can contribute to restoring peace and help accomplish true and lasting reconciliation, we will also have prevented other suffering as a result.”
Speaking about the specific Eastern European and Central Asian context of the conference, Dr. Johannes Reimer who heads up the preparations states: “The Evangelical Alliance movement and the movements towards unity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the past have only had limited success. The launching of an Eastern European network for Peace and Reconciliation and Social Justice creates a unique opportunity to foster unity and joined action of evangelicals in the region. At the same time the region is facing numerous ethnic post-Soviet-made tensions. Evangelicals in the region and the WEA movement in general are able to contribute to finding creative solutions strengthening both, the Church in particular and society in general.”
The WEA PRN has only recently been relaunched under the leadership of Dr. Reimer who has been working with the WEA as Commissioner for Peace & Reconciliation to Russia/Ukraine since 2014 and brings extensive experience in the field.
At a strategy conference in the Netherlands earlier this year, its five-pronged T-R-A-I-N strategy was affirmed as foundation for rolling out regional, national and local peace networks. TRAIN stands for Teaching of peace and reconciliation processes, Restoration in communities post-conflict, Assisting with resources and personnel, Initiating peace alliances, and Networking for knowledge and resource transfer.
“To bring peace and restoration we need to equip local and national players with new capacities, so that they are able to engage with their community in unrest. TRAIN not only helps to assists actors for peace and restoration but also to initiate alliances where there is no peace initiative existent. It uses resources from the global network to teach and to establish centers to train them,” Dr. Reimer comments.
Commissioner Christine MacMillan, Associate Secretary General for Public Engagement whose portfolio includes the PRN, said: “We as Christians have a Savior depicted and named as the Prince of Peace. Addressing conflict he walks into chaos with gifts of forgiveness, truth and healing. Our Peace & Reconciliation Network is gaining the skills and intention to enter darkness with conversations that explore peace and discover reconciliation.” > To learn more about WEA’s peace & reconciliation engagement, visit: wea.peaceandreconciliation.net
> To contribute to WEA’s peace & reconciliation work in general or the upcoming Eastern Europe conference in particular with a gift, click here Picture: Dr. Reimer speaking at a peace & reconciliation conference co-hosted by WEA and its Ukrainian partner “Bearer of Peace” in Kiev, Ukraine earlier this year.
1 CIS stands for Commonwealth of Independent States, the majority of which are former Soviet Republics.
How Will Your Church Participate in #WorldRefugeeSunday on June 18 & 25?
Over 65 million people have been forced to flee their homes in what has become the biggest refugee crisis that the world has ever known. Today, 1 in every 113 people worldwide are forcibly displaced, the majority of whom are women and children. The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) calls on churches to observe World Refugee Sunday this coming June 18 or 25 and participate in prayer and action, responding in practical ways to God’s call to ‘love the stranger as yourself.’ Using the hashtags #WorldRefugeeSunday and #RefugeeHighway, churches can share about their activities on social media and inspire others to join.
“World Refugee Sunday gives us an opportunity to learn about the realities and needs of refugees, to pray for them and with them, and to consider how we can practically engage with refugees,” said Bishop Efraim Tendero, Secretary General of the WEA. “Together with the Refugee Highway Partnership, the European Evangelical Alliance and other partners, we have prepared a variety of resources to help churches and individuals participate and begin to make a difference in their own community.”
“God has given us a mandate to love the alien as we love ourselves (Leviticus 19:34). I am encouraged to see a growing number of churches worldwide leaning into this divine calling to actively seeking the welfare of refugees by offering both practical assistance and a supportive community,” said Tom Albinson, WEA Ambassador for Refugees and Displaced People.
“God has always called His people to be a blessing to the nations. The Church is now facing a great opportunity to do just that. In the same way God used refugees to be a blessing to others, including Joseph, Moses, Ruth, David, Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel, Jesus, Philip, and others, the Church will find blessing as we seek the welfare of strangers today,” he added.
Commissioner Christine MacMillan, WEA’s Associate Secretary General for Public Engagement who heads up WEA’s Refugee Task Force, challenges churches and believers to also reflect on a refugee’s situation on a personal level.
She said: “We as Christians are often overheard to be saying: “I go to church.” Finding ourselves in church on World Refugee Sunday, may have us contemplating ‘church going’ as only a starting point. When some 65 million people wake up every day, what would we overhear them saying? Factors indicate their experience could be summarized as: “I am going further away from my home as place, security and community.” So where do our journeys intercept? For too many their journeys are unending and so for the Church may a named Sunday become an unending determination to welcome strangers as friends coming home.” Share with us what you and your church are doing on World Refugee Sunday 2017 using the hashtags #WorldRefugeeSunday and #RefugeeHighway! Find resources such as:
– the Refugee Highway Map – stories of refugees in the Bible – videos, banners & posters – and more!
Speaking from his apartment at Vatican’s Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse, Pope Francis gave an 18-minute talk at the TED 2017 Conference. He touched on the need for “togetherness” during a time of political upheaval all over the globe.
TED’s international curator, Bruno Giussani, observed that Pope Francis’s rhetoric was “a clear reference to the increasingly sectarian and hate-filled political space.”
Expounding on this year’s TED conference theme, the 80-year old pontiff touched on topics including climate change, the immigration crisis, global inequality, and the prevailing despair about the world’s future.
Translated from Italian, here is the complete transcript of Pope Francis’s 2017 TED talk.
Good evening, or, good morning, I am not sure what time it is there. Regardless of the hour, I am thrilled to be participating in your conference. I very much like its title—”The Future You”—because, while looking at tomorrow, it invites us to open a dialogue today, to look at the future through a “you.”
“The Future You:” the future is made of you’s, it is made of encounters, because life flows through our relations with others.
Quite a few years of life have strengthened my conviction that each and everyone’s existence is deeply tied to that of others: life is not time merely passing by, life is about interactions.
As I meet, or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: “Why them and not me?”
I, myself, was born in a family of migrants; my father, my grandparents, like many other Italians, left for Argentina and met the fate of those who are left with nothing. I could have very well ended up among today’s “discarded” people.
And that’s why I always ask myself, deep in my heart: “Why them and not me?”
First and foremost, I would love it if this meeting could help to remind us that we all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent “I,” separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone.
We don’t think about it often, but everything is connected, and we need to restore our connections to a healthy state. Even the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancor that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a fight that I carry within me, a flare deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it goes up in flames, leaving only ashes behind.
Many of us, nowadays, seem to believe that a happy future is something impossible to achieve. While such concerns must be taken very seriously, they are not invincible. They can be overcome when we don’t lock our door to the outside world.
Happiness can only be discovered as a gift of harmony between the whole and each single component. Even science—and you know it better than I do – points to an understanding of reality as a place where every element connects and interacts with everything else.
And this brings me to my second message. How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion. How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us.
How wonderful would it be if solidarity, this beautiful and, at times, inconvenient word, were not simply reduced to social work, and became, instead, the default attitude in political, economic and scientific choices, as well as in the relationships among individuals, peoples and countries.
Only by educating people to a true solidarity will we be able to overcome the “culture of waste,” which doesn’t concern only food and goods but, first and foremost, the people who are cast aside by our techno-economic systems which, without even realizing it, are now putting products at their core, instead of people.
Solidarity is a term that many wish to erase from the dictionary. Solidarity, however, is not an automatic mechanism. It cannot be programmed or controlled. It is a free response born from the heart of each and everyone. Yes, a free response!
When one realizes that life, even in the middle of so many contradictions, is a gift, that love is the source and the meaning of life, how can they withhold their urge to do good to another fellow being?
In order to do good, we need memory, we need courage and we need creativity. And I know that TED gathers many creative minds. Yes, love does require a creative, concrete and ingenious attitude. Good intentions and conventional formulas, so often used to appease our conscience, are not enough. Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the other is not a statistic or a number. The other has a face. The “you” is always a real presence, a person to take care of.
There is a parable Jesus told to help us understand the difference between those who’d rather not be bothered and those who take care of the other. I am sure you have heard it before. It is the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
When Jesus was asked: “Who is my neighbor?” namely, “Who should I take care of?” He told this story, the story of a man who had been assaulted, robbed, beaten and abandoned along a dirt road. Upon seeing him, a priest and a Levite, two very influential people of the time, walked past him without stopping to help. After a while, a Samaritan, a very much despised ethnicity at the time, walked by. Seeing the injured man lying on the ground, he did not ignore him as if he weren’t even there.
Instead, he felt compassion for this man, which compelled him to act in a very concrete manner. He poured oil and wine on the wounds of the helpless man, brought him to a hostel and paid out of his pocket for him to be assisted.
The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of today’s humanity. People’s paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money, and things, instead of people. And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves “respectable,” of not taking care of the others, thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road.
Fortunately, there are also those who are creating a new world by taking care of the other, even out of their own pockets. Mother Teresa actually said: “One cannot love, unless it is at their own expense.”
We have so much to do, and we must do it together. But how can we do that with all the evil we breathe every day?
Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, to compassion and to our capacity to react against evil, all of which stem from deep within our hearts.
Now you might tell me, “Sure, these are beautiful words, but I am not the Good Samaritan, nor Mother Teresa of Calcutta.” On the contrary: we are precious, each and every one of us. Each and every one of us is irreplaceable in the eyes of God. Through the darkness of today’s conflicts, each and every one of us can become a bright candle, a reminder that light will overcome darkness, and never the other way around.
To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn’t lock itself into darkness, that doesn’t dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.
Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. It is like some invisible yeast that allows the whole dough to grow, that brings flavor to all aspects of life.
And it can do so much, because a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness. A single individual is enough for hope to exist.
And that individual can be you. And then there will be another “you,” and another “you,” and it turns into an “us.” And so, does hope begin when we have an “us?” No. Hope began with one “you.” When there is an “us,” there begins a revolution.
The third message I would like to share today is, indeed, about revolution: the revolution of tenderness.
What is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future. To listen also to the silent cry of our common home, of our sick and polluted earth. Tenderness means to use our hands and our heart to comfort the other, to take care of those in need.
Tenderness is the language of the young children, of those who need the other. A child’s love for mom and dad grows through their touch, their gaze, their voice, their tenderness. I like when I hear parents talk to their babies, adapting to the little child, sharing the same level of communication. This is tenderness: being on the same level as the other.
God himself descended into Jesus to be on our level. This is the same path the Good Samaritan took. This is the path that Jesus himself took. He lowered himself, he lived his entire human existence practicing the real, concrete language of love.
Yes, tenderness is the path of choice for the strongest, most courageous men and women. Tenderness is not weakness; it is fortitude. It is the path of solidarity, the path of humility.
Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: the more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.
There is a saying in Argentina: “Power is like drinking gin on an empty stomach.” You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance, and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you, if you don’t connect your power with humility and tenderness.
Through humility and concrete love, on the other hand, power – the highest, the strongest one – becomes a service, a force for good.
The future of humankind isn’t exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies. Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility. But the future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a “you” and themselves as part of an “us.”
We all need each other.
And so, please, think of me as well with tenderness, so that I can fulfill the task I have been given for the good of the other, of each and every one, of all of you, of all of us.
Thank you.
His Holiness Pope Francis Bishop of Rome Pope Francis is the Bishop of Rome and the Head of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Labour will not be introducing a private members bill on euthanasia” Andrew Little MP, Leader Labour Party.
MEDIA RELEASE FEBRUARY 11, 2017
For more information, see the Right To Life New Zealand Inc Press Release on Scoop.
British Actress, Comedian, broadcaster, Liz Carr, known internationally for her work opposing assisted suicide as a disability campaigner as well as her role in the BBC forensics drama, Silent Witness, has been in Melbourne, Australia for the last few weeks with her show: Assisted Suicide: The Musical.
Part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Liz’s show is incredibly funny as it is poignant. Simply put; it is a great night out designed to make people think about the issue of assisted suicide. Pegged by Liz as a ‘Ted Talk with show tunes’ the show is a rollicking feast of songs in the great tradition of show tunes interspersed with Liz talking to the audience about her experiences and concerns about assisted suicide.
John Counsel summarized well in his review:
For me, the lasting impression was of how reasonable Liz’s arguments are. There’s no dogmatic, in-your-face demand to accept any specific position. Yes, there’s plenty of confrontation and strong language… but it’s not directed against anything except entrenched, predominantly-emotional stances that simply won’t stand up to rational examination. And she covers just about every imaginable angle. The overwhelming take-out from this 90-minute entertainment is just how ill-considered and irrational most of the pro-suicide arguments really are, and how rational and reasonable the alternatives are. It’s about LIFE, not death. And it’s about showing better solutions for LIVING with dignity.She also skewers popular pro-suicide buzzwords like “choice”, “dying with dignity”, “mercy killing”, etc and presents a cogent case for people with disabilities, against a clever tapestry of the stark realities experienced in countries and states around the world where assisted suicide is already legal. It’s a sobering wake-up call, delivered with clinical precision, couched in terms that can only be considered rational and lucid — yet disarmingly kind and intensely human.
Each night in the auditorium a lonely, empty chair faces Liz and the cast during each performance.
A sign on the chair reads: Following an invitation from Liz Carr and Company – RESERVED – Premier Daniel Andrews The chair has remained empty.
A cynic might conclude that the empty chair and the sign itself are something of a ‘trick-of-the-trade’; a vaudevillian artifice to add some extra dimension to the performance. To know Liz Carr would be to instantly dismiss such accusations. After all, the show is all about bringing information and experience to the debate which includes all politicians and certainly the Premier of Victoria. As Western Australian disability advocate, Sam Connor told the South Australian Parliament last year, ‘We don’t have loud voices; we don’t have unlimited funds; we don’t have glossy campaigns; we don’t have articulate public figures…and that’s why you need to listen harder because we are the people that are going to die as a result of this legislation.’ That is one reason why Liz Carr’s show is so important and why behaving like the proverbial ostrich is both disrespectful an dangerous.
Other Members of Parliament have seen the show and others also joined with their colleagues to hear Liz give a briefing in Parliament before the show commenced. Not all will have had an open mind on the subject, certainly; but to their credit they heard Liz out. And if informed consent is to be the hallmark of access to assisted suicide legislation, then surely giving up 90 minutes one evening to become informed about the issues that many in the disability community hold in this matter isn’t too much to ask? As Liz told Victorian MPs recently:
Opposition to these bills is usually marginalised as being religious and that’s very useful to do if you don’t want to listen to it, but actually if we want to introduce a bill like this, we have to listen to all sides of course, and we have to not diminish their view.I have met with disabled people all over the world in this issue. Why does it involve us? Because it’s very easy to shut up disabled people, and go this is not about you. This is about terminally ill people. In the public perception, in the media, and in medical terms there is such a fine line between disability and terminal illness, that we become one in the same.
Nor is Liz’s attempt to engage Premier Andrews about trying to embarrass him into coming. Liz has contacted the Premier’s office with an invitation; she has invited him again and again on social media, on national television and in the pages of the local newspapers. This is about genuine and necessary engagement with the issues; about an informed decision.
Readers will instantly understand that the Premier is an important figure in such debates having the ‘yeah or nay’ on what is debated in the parliament and what debate time is allocated. Moreso for Daniel Andrews in this instance because the move towards an assisted suicide bill expected to be introduced later this year was his call, with his endorsement and his support.
How can any polity make such grave decisions about life and death without hearing the concerns of communities who have skin in the game? A ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude or a claim to be ‘too busy’ or worse, apathy or prejudice further marginalises those whose life experience is often precisely about marginalisation, discrimination, lack of opportunity and not being listened to. Again, as Liz observes:
Legislation is therefore unsafe already, because not everybody already starts out as having equal value under the law or in the medical profession or in public perception. I remember Stella Young talking about this a lot: can we have death with dignity, until we have dignity in life?
In Australia where every major infrastructure project requires an extensive (and expensive) environmental impact study that underpins development with assurances that our flora and fauna, waterways etc. are protected from harm, isn’t it only reasonable that any threat to human life and flourishing be treated with equal or greater weight? Isn’t it just and proper that we consider the risk; any risk of wrongful death a bridge-too-far just as we did when we banned capital punishment?
Legislation is always about winners and losers; about those who benefit and those who might be disadvantaged; but rarely is the disadvantage so severe as to be about life itself.
And so the empty chair remains as a powerful and poignant metaphor. Not good enough Mr. Andrews! Go looking for the ‘small voices’ and not simply the squeakiest of wheels. That’s a different story and one that must be heard.
BY DR. MICHAEL SCHLUTER AND TIMO PUTSCHINSKI WEA Business & Ministry News
The following points were areas of discussion at the Congress of Christian Leaders and part of a newly released discussion paper. They were then emailed to the wider body of the WEA to provide feedback so that they can develop these points further.
Have evangelical business leaders internalised the mindset of contemporary Capitalism?
1Live too fast. More is more. We are always busy (even if “it is for the Lord”). To be a workaholic is not judged a sin.
BUT time is the currency of relationship, and Christians believe in a relational God. God made the 7th day as a day of rest, to protect families and low-income workers (Ex. 20:8-11, Deut. 5:12-15); he commanded that the land should rest every 7th year (Lev. 25:1-7); and he arranged rest for every 50th year too (Lev. 25:8-13). These commands are shadows of what is to come (Colossians 1:16). Christians should honour the Lord by expressing the principle of rest in ways appropriate to their situation, and in accordance with their own conscience (Romans 14:5), always showing particular care for the marginalised in society.
2Accept debts as a normal part of buying a house, buying cars and running a company. And why not? To enjoy life, and to be part of a market-based consumer culture is not wrong.
BUT doesn’t the Bible say that we should not owe anybody anything (Rom. 13:7)? Isn’t debt a picture of sin and thus something to be avoided (Matt. 6:12)? Isn’t the relationship between a lender and a borrower toxic – the borrower is the slave of the lender (Prov. 22:7)?
3Build up savings through pension funds over which we have little knowledge and no control. Everybody else does the same so it must be alright. After all, we don’t have time to track every investment we make and it is important to spread the risk.
BUT doesn’t Jesus teach that to take a return without responsibility is the same as reaping where we haven’t sown, and the sign of a ‘hard’, or ‘disengaged’, person (Matt. 25:26-27)? Supposing our pension fund money is put into a company in the porn or betting industries? Can we justify letting our money be used in this way on the basis that we did not know that this was happening? Is ignorance an adequate excuse?
4Seek job promotion even when it means moving town or city, and uprooting spouse and children, so we can say we have used our talents well.
BUT doesn’t the bible also teach the importance of long-term, committed relationships which involve a commitment to church, neighbours and community? Is it possible to honor our parents adequately if we move so that we live nowhere near them any more?
5Trust in insurance policies and government provision to look after our elderly parents.
BUT doesn’t the bible teach that we should honor our mother and father, which includes financial provision (Mk. 7:9-13)? And doesn’t Paul also say that those who fail to provide for their immediate relatives have denied the faith and are worse than unbelievers? (1 Tim. 5:8).
6Believe that, because companies have limited liability, companies should be allowed to leave debts unpaid to staff, suppliers and other creditors if they go bankrupt. Wasn’t this part of the implicit contract when employees took those jobs and suppliers provided those goods? As when Enron went bankrupt, shouldn’t shareholders be allowed to be paid out something even when employees are left unpaid and are losing their pensions? They should have known that limited companies don’t pay those debts if they go bankrupt.
BUT doesn’t the Bible say “the wicked borrow and do not repay” (Ps. 37:21) and “The wages you failed to pay the workers … are crying out against you” (Jam. 5:4)?
7Accept pay differentials between the highest and lowest paid employees in a company of 500 to 1 so that an employee has to work 500 years to earn the pay of their boss. Surely this is a reflection of the labor market where wages are set through supply and demand. The invisible hand of the market ensures that justice is done.
BUT didn’t God create all people equal before him? Do such wage differentials deny in any sense the underlying equality in the value of every person? While it is difficult to draw the line in any particular place, doesn’t the constraint on wealth differentials in biblical Israel, e.g. through the ban on interest (Deut. 23:19-20) and the system of land distribution (Josh. 18:8-10), and the Jubilee provision (Lev. 5:8-13) suggest God’s concern that wealth differentials do not get too extreme?
8Look first and foremost for the financial benefit of an investment. Isn’t it right to make as much money as possible from the capital we have so that we can use the surplus we make for the work of God’s kingdom?
BUT didn’t God create all people equal before him? Do such wage differentials deny in any sense the underlying equality in the value of every person? While it is difficult to draw the line in any particular place, doesn’t the constraint on wealth differentials in biblical Israel, e.g. through the ban on interest (Deut. 23:19-20) and the system of land distribution (Josh. 18:8-10), and the Jubilee provision (Lev. 5:8-13) suggest God’s concern that wealth differentials do not get too extreme?
9Avoid paying tax by using every possible legal loophole because as Christians we are able to use our money more effectively to help other people than the government does. Surely Christians have no obligation to pay more tax than the law requires them to.
BUT doesn’t Jesus teach that his followers should pay to Caesar what is due to Caesar (Matt. 22:21)? Doesn’t he also teach that it is the intention of the law rather than the letter of the law that matters in God’s sight (Mk. 3:1-6)? Doesn’t Paul also say “if you owe taxes, pay taxes” (Rom. 13:7)?
10Believe that the purpose of a company should be defined entirely in terms of financial returns to shareholders because they have provided the capital which enables the company to operate. Maximizing returns to capital ensures long-term growth and thus future job opportunities for the unemployed.
BUT is there anywhere in the Bible where owners of capital (or land) are given such privileged status? Doesn’t the command to love our neighbor translate into active involvement and consideration of other stakeholders who are key to a company’s success – such as customers, suppliers and employees? If shareholders are to be the ultimate beneficiaries, should they not be held responsible for the decisions a company makes? Is it right to have a system of absentee owners, who get reward without responsibility?
The American Revolutionaries back in the 18th century had a slogan in their fight against Britain: “No taxation without representation”. A Christian maxim for business life today might be summed up in a new slogan:
No reward without responsibility
No investment without involvement
No profit without participation.
The Authors…
Dr Michael Schluter (UK) worked in his family business before becoming an advisor at the World Bank in East Africa. Since 1982, he has founded his own non-profit organisations for example, the Jubilee Centre which aims to strengthen biblical principles in society. He is the founder and leader of a campaign that is committed to the preservation of Sunday as a day of rest and he has led several major international peace initiatives. Schluter is the author of several books e.g. ”After Capitalism – Rethinking Economic Relationships” and he is a world-renowned speaker
Timo Plutschinski (Germany) is an evangelical theologian, strategic business consultant and a passionate networker. He is leading the Business Coalition of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and belongs to the wider WEA Leadership. While pastoring a local Baptist Church in Hamburg Timo is eager to (re-)define the relationship between business and church and the relevance of Christians in today´s postmodern society. In further functions Timo is also Board Member of the Congress of Christian Leaders, Partner of MIC Corporate Finance and Fellow of the Olivet Institute for Global Strategic Studies.
WEA Media Release
