Pro-Life.
Saw a bumpersticker today while I was out on my errands: God is
Pro-Life.
Setting aside for a moment the dangerous lunacy of assuming that God is on your side, I was struck by a more pressing problem with that statement: it's obviously demonstrably false.
God isn't simply "Pro-Life." God is Pro-Everything.
God loves the little children; new-born babies staring wide and surprised at the world. He watches, like you do, their little hands, how they move, the way their muscles work and flex under the skin. He loves the little miracle of each breath. And still he smiles when their young mothers, knowing nowhere else to go, abandon their burdens in dumpsters and public toilets.
God loves little gray kittens rolling in the dust, soaking in the sunlight, stalking tender little birds and feeling them struggle and die between their teeth. God loves hand-drawn Valentines, young couples sharing hot chocolate on a cold winter night, drive-by shootings, and three-year-olds with big red balloons.
God loves the thirteen-year-old girl, lying awake and untaught and bleeding for the first time, who wonders if she's dying and is too scared to ask anyone. God loves the young boy, three years later, her first lover, who pushes the girl down a flight of stairs and hopes she'll miscarry.
God loved the Rape of Nanking and the building of the Sistine Chapel. He smiles when soldiers use bulldozers to bury their enemies, many of them still alive and pleading, in mass graves; he smiles when a child first tastes ice cream, when a young girl takes her first wobbly ride alone and defiant on a bicycle, when a young man feels the shock and wonder of his first orgasm. He listens with patience and love to each prayer a new mother whispers over her sleeping new baby, each prayer thought in that last everlong second before the electric chair switch is thrown.
God loves every Space Shuttle flight, every little sattellite, every single perfect ballistic arc a bullet traces in the air on its path toward a cheating heart.
This is the world He made. Every last little piece moving silently and flawlessly, clockwork unseen, keeping time in accordance with His plan.
Life and death, world without end, God loves it all. How could it be otherwise?
Setting aside for a moment the dangerous lunacy of assuming that God is on your side, I was struck by a more pressing problem with that statement: it's obviously demonstrably false.
God isn't simply "Pro-Life." God is Pro-Everything.
God loves the little children; new-born babies staring wide and surprised at the world. He watches, like you do, their little hands, how they move, the way their muscles work and flex under the skin. He loves the little miracle of each breath. And still he smiles when their young mothers, knowing nowhere else to go, abandon their burdens in dumpsters and public toilets.
God loves little gray kittens rolling in the dust, soaking in the sunlight, stalking tender little birds and feeling them struggle and die between their teeth. God loves hand-drawn Valentines, young couples sharing hot chocolate on a cold winter night, drive-by shootings, and three-year-olds with big red balloons.
God loves the thirteen-year-old girl, lying awake and untaught and bleeding for the first time, who wonders if she's dying and is too scared to ask anyone. God loves the young boy, three years later, her first lover, who pushes the girl down a flight of stairs and hopes she'll miscarry.
God loved the Rape of Nanking and the building of the Sistine Chapel. He smiles when soldiers use bulldozers to bury their enemies, many of them still alive and pleading, in mass graves; he smiles when a child first tastes ice cream, when a young girl takes her first wobbly ride alone and defiant on a bicycle, when a young man feels the shock and wonder of his first orgasm. He listens with patience and love to each prayer a new mother whispers over her sleeping new baby, each prayer thought in that last everlong second before the electric chair switch is thrown.
God loves every Space Shuttle flight, every little sattellite, every single perfect ballistic arc a bullet traces in the air on its path toward a cheating heart.
This is the world He made. Every last little piece moving silently and flawlessly, clockwork unseen, keeping time in accordance with His plan.
Life and death, world without end, God loves it all. How could it be otherwise?