I did it MY way. Kathryn Judson at Suitable for Mixed Company pointed me to this FIRST THINGS blog post by Wilfred McClay arguing that what we have is not a culture of death or a party of death but rather a significant group of people who do not understand what life is nor from whom it is derived nor what their purpose and response in life is to be.
“To say that we do not kill them (the helpless, the unborn, the elderly) because they have a right to life is not to explain why we have a responsibility to care for them, and love them, and why we fail ourselves when we fail to acknowledge that responsibility and seek to offload it onto others. An ailing elderly parent has the right not to be killed, but he does not have the “right†to be loved.
Yet it is one of the central tasks of our humanity that we care lovingly for him and not merely be instructed by the law that we must resist killing him. Rights-talk does not necessarily give rise to responsibility-talk.”
“Right to life,” then, is fine as far as it goes, but we also need to show why we as humans have a responsibility to care for and love those around us—whether they are meeting our needs in return or not. I think it is wonderful when I hear the parents and family members of disabled persons tell about how much love and joy they have received from their special needs child, but what if it were not so? What if the disabled person or the elderly relative is difficult, demanding, and draining? Do we not still have a duty, unpopular word that, to care for and love that person with a disability that runs deeper than physical handicaps, a disability of the heart or of the mind? That’s an easy statement to make, or write on a blog, but oh, so hard to live.
I believe, not only in the right to life, but also in the reponsibility to love those to whom God has called us. Actually, I’m not sure this concept can be explained or understood or lived fully apart from a Christian philosophy of self-sacrifice. However, I see people living responsible love every day. I have a relative who cares for her crabby mother-in-law because my relative is responsible. I have several friends who have adopted children, not because they can’t have children (not a bad reason for adoption), but because they feel called to care for those who are without parents. I know people who stay married because they made vows, and sometimes the love and joy come back. Sometimes not.
Where does the sense of responsibility and duty to serve come from, and where does the strength to actually do it come from, if not from the Holy Spirit? Even with God’s help, I find it difficult to love some people. Without supernatural intervention, it would be impossible.
This reminds me of a powerful piece I read once by Henri Nouwen about the body of Christ and why we need the disabled to be part of that body–their presence requires Holy Spirit gifts like mercy and service that God meant to be used in that way. It surely gives one a more fully orbed view of what constitutes life/quality of life!
Thanks for picking this up and running with it.
I’m not a Christian, yet I have a deep sense of duty. (perhaps not surprisingly, I’m a committed Kantian) And, FWIW, I’m equally fascinated by the question of from where duty arises. It’s really kinda simple (1: I want to be a good person; 2: a good person does action n; C: I have a duty to n), it still kinda blows my mind when I think about it too hard. At any rate, isn’t duty an equally rare concept in many Christian circles? (see, eg: prosperity gospel; Christian consequentialism [‘be good to go to heaven’; or more commonly ‘love comes back to you in some form or another’]; and Christian eudaimonia [‘being good produces a loving person, which is a desirable state of affairs’]).
A stronger criticism can be found in the writings of the early Hegel: Christianity isn’t a religion of duty (he was writing against Kant), it’s a religion of love. Strictly speaking, it’s a religion of virtue, and not of duty. It being Hegel, it’s more complicated than that (and I honestly can’t remember how he differentiated the two, although I remember it made sense at the time). It’s in his Early Theological Writings if you’re interested. And who wouldn’t want to casually read Hegel? heh.
Casually Reading Hegel sounds like the title for a memoir —or a band. I’m wondering where your deep sense of duty comes from? Genetic? A species survival instinct, ala Darwinism? And how do you know, apart from a Creator who communicates his will, what your duty is? Why do you want to be a good person? Do you still want to be a good person when no one else is looking and when it’s not pleasant in the short term or the long term?
I agree that in many “Christian” circles the emphasis is on whaat I get out of a relationship with, what’s in it for me. I would argue that these off-shoots of Christianity are just that, off-shoots, not Biblical Christianity. Jesus called people to die to themselves, to take up a cross and follow Him. He also promised abundant life and joy, but these are by-products of the process and not always evident in every circumstance.