Love, Freedom, Universalism...and Abortion.

In his blog post today, Richard Beck has offered a beautifully accessible and compelling case for universalism in the form of a critique of Rob Bell's "conditionalism" (the idea that God's offer of salvation is unlimited, but whether all are saved depends on the free response of creatures). Really worth checking out if you are interested in the topic.

Beck's essay is so nicely done that I'm inclined to let it speak largely for itself. But since his essay bizarrely dovetails with the class discussion I had today about Judith Jarvis Thomson's essay, "A Defense of Abortion," I can't help but say a few words about that connection.

Thomson makes a distinction in that essay between the question of what you ought to do and the question of what you have a right to do. There are some things we ought not to do--it would, in Thomson's words, be "indecent" of us to do them. But we might still have a right to do them.

Thomson's distinction here led to a class discussion about what it could mean to have a right to do something that, morally, you ought not to do--especially if it's not merely a legal right we're talking about, but some more basic right that is invoked to justify the legal right. In what sense can I affirm your right to do what it would be horribly indecent of you to do? I can't mean that your choice is a matter of moral indifference, so that either choice is morally "alright." So what, then, could I mean?

The basic idea seems to be that, in some sense, the choice should be yours. The choice should be left up to you. But what, exactly, does that mean? Does it mean I've violated your right if I try to talk you out of it? If I point out that it would be an indecent thing to do? If I seek to persuade you not to do something so terrible?

(I'm not implying here that the choice to abort is necessarily indecent here, although it might be. Thomson certainly doesn't think abortion is always indecent. But she thinks there are choices which are indecent which we nevertheless retain the right to make. So let's have in mind a different choice: Suppose your sister is dying and urgently needs a bone marrow transplant. You are the only one who can provide it. But to save her life means being out of comission during the championship baseball game that you finally have a chance to play in. The choice, we might say, should be yours. But many, I think, would regard the decision to play the game and let your sister die--assuming this was a certain outcome--as the wrong choice to make. Seriously wrong.)

In our class discussion, we generally agreed that there was a difference between persuasion and coercion, and that the right to make a choice is more clearly a right to be free from the latter than from the former. Of course, there may be efforts at persuasion that are pursued in deeply intrusive ways--I may, in effect, force you to put up with my persuasive diatribes, shoving my opinion down your throat so relentlessly that the persuasion becomes coercion. The message becomes, in effect, "Unless you choose as I want you to choose, I will hound you relentlessly."

And, clearly, one can be coerced into being subjected to persuasive efforts one would rather not hear. In short, there are legitimate question about how to draw the line between persuasion and coercion, or about when persuasion is as problematic as coercion. The line here is not neatly drawn. But still, there is a difference.

We also talked about species of coercion. If I make it clear that I don't want to associate with you any more if you make that indecent choice, is that coercive? Presumably it has a different status than putting a gun to your head or telling you that I will inflict financial ruin on you if you choose to let your sister die. But still, might it not qualify as coercive?

On the one hand, it seems I have certain rights about who I will and will not associate with. And it may be only fair to let you know how I will exercise those rights if you choose in ways I find detestable. We might think you have a claim on making a fully-informed choice, aware of the consequences for such things as friendships. If I just can't spend time with a person who would choose to play in a baseball championship rather than save their sister's life...well, shouldn't I have the right to tell you that, even if I acknowledge that the choice between playing the game and saving your sister is yours to make?

Then again, telling you something like that may be manipulative or even coercive, a way of intruding illegitimately into your choices. One might imagine that a great deal depends on context. In any event, there may be a difference between threatening a cost if you make the "wrong" choice, and letting you know what I will do if you make that choice, where what I will do is something you won't like. Not every case of the latter is necessarily a case of the former.

These were the sorts of things we talked about in class today. And what is the lesson that my class drew from this discussion? Well, there were more questions than answers, I think. But I would guess that the following constitutes one small point of consensus: To say that the choice should be yours is not to say that others--others who care about you and your choices--must abandon you to your choices, so as to ensure that you operate in a social and personal space completely free from others' thoughts, feelings, and convictions.

And here is where my class discussion about what it means to have the right to choose merges with Beck's line of thought.  There is, obviously, room for discussion about the concept of freedom at work in Beck's argument, his idea that what you care about has a more basic status than what you choose. But even if you lean towards a more strongly libertarian view of freedom than Beck seems to have, there is something to be said for Beck's conviction that the kind of God affirmed in Christian theology would never merely abandon us to our choices--especially not when those choices are rooted in confusion and ignorance and deeply misguided priorities.

It is possible to let a person make choices without abandoning them to their choices. It is possible to be involved, and involved in a loving way, even though there are difficult boundary issues, even though the line between persuasion and coercion--or between stating intentions and making threats--is sometimes hard to draw. Consider again the case involving the choice between a playing a championship game and saving your sister's life with a bone marrow transplant, but now imagine that a loving parent is on the scene. Would staying out of your choice be the most loving thing? Could she still respect your freedom while urgently pleading with you to make the life-saving choice?

And what about a choice more akin to what is at stake in salvation--a more choice without a time limit and more clearly about one's own fate, one in which the resources to turn away from a destructive path remains available. Imagine an addict and a loving parent who cares deeply about the addicted child, who has resources that can help break the addiction. Is the parent violating the demands of respect for freedom by staging an intervention?

There are difficult boundary issues here, lines between respectful persuasion and coercion, between manipulation and loving confrontation. But a God of love who knew the heart of every creature would, it seems, be uniquely situated to maneuver those complex boundaries, to preserve the balance between loving involvement and letting people choose.

Love does not walk away, even if it does not coerce.