It has taken me a month, but I am finally
getting around to recapping the March for Life.
I can almost sum up the whole of it
in one word
...impotent.
Let me put this in perspective. I was blessed to have the opportunity to go to Malawi in August. While I was there, I was overwhelmed and moved to tears by the sense of community that I felt. There was a bond of unity, unmatched in my experience, that I felt with people whom I had known for only two short weeks. My arrival felt as though I was being embraced by family I hadn't yet communed with. My departure felt as though my heart was being ripped from my chest as I left people whom I realized had become a part of me.
One would think that an event where tens of thousands of Christians rally around a common cause would evoke those same feelings.
Not.
So.
Granted, some of my dissatisfaction probably arose from the poor flow of the event and the anti-climactic lead up to the March itself.
Those things being noted, I felt no real sense of community or unity at the event. Instead of ~250,000 people rallying around a common cause, it felt like ~250,000 people showing up at the same place to push their own take on a semi-shared agenda. (I must say that I was encouraged by the fact that I saw no individuals holding destroyed fetus signs. Although, there was a ghastly display of a series of eight or so giant 10'x5' posters that had been brought in by a non-profit that will go unnamed.)
The students that I took with me left largely unaffected by the event itself as well. It in no way drew them into the cause, pushed them to think about the issues at hand with a critical eye, or challenged them to internalize the event as a whole. Disappointing? I think so.
The best thing that happened was that I was able to have a discussion with the guys about the most faithful response to the abortion issue and moral issues overall.
So will I do this again? Probably not. Not because I'm not Pro-Life. I am. But because I think that for the most part, I disagree with the premise of the event. It seems to me that we are making our government and it's law an idol. We put our faith in changing the law, so much so that we forget about the people we are trying to affect. Let's rethink our strategy. Let's reorient ourselves around the relational nature of the lives we live. Let's believe that God is able to change the world through His people and not the government that we, in error, have placed our faith in.
