seeking something more

So you know when it’s that time in winter, when everything metal or super fluffy shocks you? Or sometimes when even touching people shocks you? And then you’re like hesitant to touch anything lest you get shocked?

I’ve now gotten static shock from holy water three times. So now every time I’m about to dip my fingers in the holy water, I sort of hesitate.

So I’ve been Catholic all my life, and yet the fact that prayers are actually answered is some strange and wonderful thing of which I am still somewhat suspicious.

I tend to avoid arguments and debates. Not only am I not good about debating, I also hate the tendency for debaters to demonize the other side. For the most part, my opinion is that most ordinary people want to do the best, whatever the best thing may be, and so we must argue not against people but against wrong opinions and bad arguments. Another bad tendency for debates is for one side to misunderstand the other side.

Now, I do not claim to completely understand the point of view of those who support abortion or those who support a woman’s right to abortion despite personal views that abortion is wrong. However, I do think that many people who are pro-choice misunderstand those who are pro-life. To remedy that misunderstanding, if only a little bit, is the point of this post. My purpose is not to prove that abortion is wrong (even though I believe it is wrong). My purpose here is to try to portray my point of view about the issue of abortion so that others may see what it is like to look through pro-life glasses.

The most important thing to understand about most of us who are pro-life is this: we believe that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being. The only purpose we have for being pro-life is to protect life. I am not going into arguments of when life starts. That is a conversation you may have with me in another post, in another time, and even better, it is a conversation you may have with the many other pro-life people here. But do try to understand why pro-lifers are so passionate about the issue of abortion. Whether or not you believe a fetus is a human being is not the issue. The issue is that we believe that a fetus is a human being.

Now, that might sound closed-minded but do be patient with me. Let’s go back to the time when slavery was still legal. Back then, many Southerners believed that blacks were not fully human. Those who believed slavery was wrong however did believe that blacks were human, human like the rest of us and having the same rights. Do you think the abolitionists really cared all that much that the Southerners believed that blacks weren’t human? Do you expect them to “respect the Southerners’ opinion of what constitutes human life”? You probably, and hopefully, don’t. This is because this very serious issue is not about the Southerners’ opinion of what a human life is. It’s not about anyone’s opinion of what human life is. It’s about what human life really is. The issue lay in settling this one question: are blacks human or not?

That is how we who hold the pro-life position feel like. We’re not arguing against women’s rights just as abolitions were not arguing against states’ rights. Maybe you think that our position is more about trying to protect an organ than trying to protect our life. That’s still an advancement from thinking our position is about suppressing women’s rights. I think the truth is that when people who are pro-choice debate with people who are pro-life with their main positions going around women’s choice, that they’re just missing the point. We don’t think women’s rights are the issue. We think human rights are the issue. We think that a woman, or any other human being, can do whatever they want with their body as long as it does not involve endangering or killing another human being.

Now go forth and argue about whether a fetus is human or not. Any other argument will really do little to persuade us.

(Source: nicoosuxx)

One of my greatest frustrations in life is this concept about loving your neighbor. I mean, I’m kind to most people. I’m tolerant of people. I’m generally an agreeable person.  But being kind or tolerant or agreeable is not what love is. It’s a bit of it, perhaps, but only a very small bit.

My frustration is increased even more by the fact that I’m an introvert and avoid most people. I really don’t know a lot of people. By effect, I don’t really have many people to share this confusing thing called love. I mean, I guess, I can love people I don’t know in person, but that makes my problem even more complicated. How do I love people I have not seen or talked to? Do I end up just loving my conceptions of them, or can I really love them from afar? I know that we as the Church are one body, and distance is only some physical thing that is weak against our spiritual union. That is not my problem. My problem is that it’s hard to for me to separate abstract things from concrete things.

Last semester, just for fun, I read C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, and one of the things that I noticed is Professor Weston’s loyalty to humanity. This does not result in any goodness. As other characters from the book pointed out, Weston would happily sacrifice humans for the sake of this abstract concept of “humanity.” However, as Dr. Peter Kreeft said in one of his lectures. God doesn’t command us to love humanity. He commands us to love our neighbors. He doesn’t command us to love abstractions or concepts. He asks us to love real people with real faults and real value. He asks us to love each man and woman and child, not some vague idea in our mind of society. I was also reminded of this fact, of the need to love humans instead of humanity, when reading Centisimus Annus, or at least reading the first few paragraphs of it. John Paul II here over and over states that a big problem in modern society is that we tend to think of men as simply cogs in a machine, as simply parts of the State. That’s not what humans are according to God. According to God, each human being is someone made in His image, made with profound dignity, made so that one day he may share in the happiness and love of his Creator.

I don’t want to fall in that trap. Nice doesn’t cut it when you’re a Christian, and humanity has little value when you forget to value each human. Only love suffices and even overflows, and that I can only learn from God.