The Shape of Prayer . . . The Shape of Liturgy

"Note that we began, not with moral problems and ethical dilemmas; we began with prayer. . . . We are a people whose moral lives are shaped liturgically. Our ethics is a by-product of our worship" (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life, 47).

Unifying Approach to Life: 'Is this wisdom or folly?'

"But it [Book of Proverbs] is not a portrait-album or a book of manners: it offers a key to life. The samples of behaviour which it holds up to view are all assessed by one criterion, which could be summed up in the question, 'Is this wisdom or folly?' This is a unifying approach to life, because it suits the most commonplace realms as fully as the most exalted. Wisdom leaves its signature on anything well made or well judged, from an apt remark to the universe itself, from a shrewd policy (which springs from practical insight) to a noble action (which presupposes moral and spiritual discernment). In other words, it is equally at home in the realms of nature and art, of ethics and politics, to mention no others, and forms a single basis of judgment for them all" (Derek Kidner, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries: The Proverbs, 13).

Doctrine and Morals - Worship and Worldview

According to Scripture, Christian worship and Christian worldview are pop riveted together by the Holy Spirit. "But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23-24).

Lex orandi est lex credenda et agenda. (The rule of prayer is the rule of belief and of action.) Worldview (i.e., beliefs, morals, actions, etc.) flows from worship. Worship determines worldview. This means you cannot have Christian morals (truth) without Christian worship (Spirit-led-doctrine-and-practices). A society that attempts to separate the two is doomed.

Consider this lengthy excerpt by John Piper (quoting William Wilberforce) on the relationship between Christian doctrine (worship) and Christian morals.

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"William Wilberforce is famous for his lifelong, and finally successful, battle against the African slave trade. It stunned me, when I recently read his one major book, A Practical View of Christianity, that his diagnosis of the moral weakness of Britain was doctrinal.

The fatal habit of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight, and as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment (A Practical View of Christianity, ed. Kevin Charles Belmonte (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), p. 198).

"Even more stunning was the fact that Wilberforce made the doctrine of justification the linchpin in his plea for moral reform in the nation ...

...RESULT FROM THE MISTAKEN CONCEPTION ENTERTAINED OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY. They consider not that Christianity is a scheme "for justifying the ungodly" [Romans 4:5], by Christ's dying for them "when yet sinners" [Romans 5:6-8], a scheme "for reconciling us to God--when enemies" [Romans 5:10]; and for making the fruits of holiness the effects, not the cause, of our being justified and reconciled (Ibid., p. 64. The SMALL CAPS is his emphasis.).

"... Many public people say that changing society requires changing people, but few show the depth of understanding Wilberforce does concerning how that comes about. For him the right grasp of the central doctrine of justification and its relation to sanctification--an emerging Christlikeness in private and public--were essential for the reformation of the morals of England" (John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ, 24-26).

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First Things: June/July 2012 - Life Too Inconvenient for Life - Poisonous Seed Indeed

I have subscribed to First Things for a couple years. Editor R. R. Reno pens the opening, editorial article "The Public Square" in the hard-copy publication. In the June/July 2012 publication, in "The Public Square" under the heading "Life Too Inconvenient for Life," Reno writes:

The Journal of Medical Ethics, an altogether mainstream, peer-reviewed scholarly publication, recently published an article justifying "after-birth abortion," a locution authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva use to describe killing newborns whose parents don't want them.

"Children with severe abnormalities whose lives can be expected to not be worth living" can be "terminated," as the Groningen Protocol in the ever-merciful Netherlands currently allows. Then the authors follow the ruthless logic of the pro-abortion position to its conclusion. "If criteria such as costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy," they observe, and if we can't give a cogent explanation why a fetus suddenly becomes a person simply by passing through the birth canal, "then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn."

If we can kill a healthy child in the womb for a whole range of reasons, then why not in the hospital nursery? Why not abortions "after birth"?

At first I thought the article was meant as cutting humor. The clattering machinery of the simplistic syllogisms seem positively Swiftean, a satire of our present-day moralists. Want to kill newborns? OK, OK, give me a minute or two, and I'll give you the arguments.

But no, the editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics apparently think that these sorts of arguments should be taken seriously. They will of course say that the journal is committed to "stimulating discussion" and "airing controversial views." What's the harm in thinking it through? Aren't free exchanges like this good for us? Doesn't it help us refine our moral arguments and perhaps overcome our irrational responses of disgust and moral dismay?

In 1920, two distinguished German professors published an argument in favor of euthanasia. The argument turned on the clam  that there are some lives unworthy of life. Giubilini and Minerva use that haunting phrase, perhaps unaware of its origins. And they extend it. Their argument for "after-birth abortion" gives us permission to destroy newborns who aren't unworthy but are inconvenient.

As Jonathan Haidt observes, our moral culture is shaped primarily by emotion. Very few people reason out moral truths. Most of us have gut reactions. The fixed points in our moral universe are the deeds so heinous we can't imagine performing them. And I can't imagine killing a newborn. Which is precisely what Giubilini and Minerva and the editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics want us to coolly entertain as a real option.

Lebensunwerten Lebens: life unworthy of life. The idea expanded the German imagination, and in 1939 the Nazis gassed 75,000 mentally ill and handicapped Germans. They were burdensome, inconvenient, and an impediment to their goal of racial purity. Soon they focused their attention on another impediment, whose victims are counted in the millions.

There is nothing remotely original or philosophically sophisticated about Giubilini and Minerva's pedestrian reasoning. The editors' rationale for publishing their article advocating "after-birth abortion" was to break new ground, to "expand" our moral imaginations, to "problematize," as progressive professors like to say. That's what the distinguished German professors did in 1920. That's what our professional ethicists are doing today.

St. Paul teaches that we will reap what we have sown. This, dear readers, is a very poisonous seed indeed [Emphasis CCS].

Pro-God = Pro-Reality = Pro-Life

The Church is Pro-God, Pro-Reality, and Pro-Life.

The Church believes in God, in truth, in reality--"We believe in one God . . . maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible"--the Church believes in God and creation. And this belief is the foundation for a Pro-Life ethic. Social Justice for the unborn (life-in-the-womb) must be rooted in this grammar--God is the sovereign creator of heaven and earth, of that which is seen and unseen, and He alone creates and defines this (all) reality.

That being the case, what does the Creator say about in utero? Is He silent about the reality of the life of cells multiplying in a womb? Hardly--See Exodus 21, Psalm 22, 139.