It’s dusk on a cold winter’s day in the Roman province of Cappadocia. What year? Sometime in the 360s. With a crisp air that suggests snow is coming, a young woman walks purposefully through the nearly deserted town streets to the local garbage dump.
But her goal isn’t just to throw away trash; it’s a matter of life and death.
These dumps were the equivalent of modern recycling centers and were not just places to dump rubbish, broken crockery and various other waste items that had outlived their usefulness. In addition to collecting rubbish, they were also designated places to dump unwanted young children, most often girls.
Why should one keep an extra child to feed, especially in times of famine? And what is the use of girls when a dowry has to be paid when they get married? They are nothing but a waste of resources.
This practice of “exposing” infants was not unique to Cappadocia, but we tell you about this woman because we know her story. Her name was Macrina, and in the mid-4th century, as a young woman, she decided to dedicate her life to Christ. As part of this mission, she never married and began rescuing abandoned infants, mostly girls, from rubbish heaps and adopting them as her own.
After all, isn’t caring about grown men and women who are hurt, displaced, and who would otherwise be lost to death also a sign of respect for life?
We know about her priesthood because two of her brothers, Gregory and Basil, became famous church fathers, and Gregory even wrote the Life of Saint Macrina, recounting the profound influence his sister had on his own priesthood.
Macrina’s act of mercy is an example that Christians today often use to talk about how early Christians had a strong respect for life, even though the culture of their time was not one that respected life.
Rescuing and caring for abandoned babies is one obvious and important way to be pro-life in a countercultural way, but is it the only way? Can we say we are pro-life if that’s all we do?
Now consider another example, which is perhaps even more surprising from a 21st century perspective.
While traveling on the outskirts of a strange town, a man stops to talk to a woman he has never met. She appears to be in pain, though she doesn’t say so directly. But the man is able to understand, listen, and respect her in a way that no one else has been able to before.
On another occasion, we hear of this same man visiting the home of two single sisters and a chronically ill brother. The two were social outcasts, and a family of three single adults was unusual and a cause for public controversy. During one visit, he responds to the sisters’ call to visit, and finds that the brother has died and been in the tomb for three days, but he miraculously brings him back from the dead.
What mercy is this?
Of course, the man in question is no mere human: it is Jesus, God incarnate, who was born and lived as a human for over 30 years before being crucified to atone for all the sins of mankind.
A careful reading of the Gospels reveals that during His earthly ministry, Jesus spent a lot of time helping the single, the sick, and the hurting in various ways. Jesus never had the opportunity to rescue a baby from a rubbish heap, probably because the Israelites had not adopted this pagan practice. However, there is no denying that Jesus respected life in all that He did.
After all, isn’t caring about grown men and women who are hurt, displaced, and who would otherwise be lost to death also a sign of respect for life?
While writing my new book, I had the opportunity to think about a comprehensive Christian pro-life ethic.Mothers, Children, and Polities: Ancient Christianity and the Reclaiming of Human DignityMy overall argument is that the devaluation of mothers and children in post-Christian societies bears a striking similarity to the attack on the value of women and children in the pre-Christian pagan world.
Because humans are made in God’s image, every human is precious in God’s eyes.
Attacks on the lives of vulnerable people, whether by direct harm to their lives (such as abortion today or abortion, infanticide, and genocide in ancient times) or by potentially indirect harm through verbalizing their worthlessness, are symptoms of a larger culture that does not respect human beings.
In such a culture, anyone can eventually be deemed worthless, useless and deserving of death – something that is becoming more and more common in Canada.
Medical euthanasia It continues to expand.
In the Roman world, under the so-called Code of Caesar, the dignity of a person was not guaranteed, but was in the eye of the beholder. As Caesar said,
Sometimes heHis will that a group of people should be destroyed was carried out.
In contrast, Christianity brought something revolutionary to the ancient world, where indiscriminate cruelty to the weak at any age or stage of life was completely unproblematic. In the midst of a culture of death, a culture that considered all people disposable given the right circumstances, Jesus and his followers lived out the declaration that all human beings are precious in God’s eyes because they are made in his image.
So my concern today is that every time we focus solely on saving the unborn (which, of course, is a worthy cause!), we lose sight of the bigger picture in which Christ called his followers to protect life and promote flourishing, thereby challenging the culture of death.
Recent Research
Euthanasia Map It was offered as a medical service to eating disorder sufferers – adults suffering from eating disorders – but instead of being offered treatment they were being encouraged to choose suicide.
While hearing voices chanting the slogan “Abortion is medical care,” and similarly,
Sick people in hospital He offered euthanasia as an alternative to life-saving drug therapy.
But in both cases, we must look at the bigger picture. Poverty has become the leading cause of abortion in recent years. Dobbs Abortions did not decreaseit also People who choose euthanasia.
The “choice” that pro-abortion advocates offer to pregnant women and sick adults who cannot afford medical care is not a choice at all, it’s a farce.
But again, this is nothing new.
In Macrina, in Cappadocia, the parents who chose to let their baby daughter die in the village garbage dump unless someone rescued her, did so because of poverty and hunger: they too felt they had no other choice.
But Christ has always offered this choice, the choice to live eternal life in Him, beginning here and now.
As believers, being inclusively pro-life today means proclaiming and living out this good news to all those around us, whether they are rich or poor, healthy or sick, young or old.
