America: Comfort as the Ultimate Moral Value?

I just watched an amazing video at www.180movie.com. I recommend you check it out if you're remotely interested in American views on abortion. It was interesting viewing it from the place of living in another culture, as a couple of things stood out to me in stark contrast to the culture where I live:

• the discomfort on people's faces when they were forced to examine logically their views on abortion,
• the almost automatic reasons that people give to justify abortion (rape, can't care for the baby, etc.).

Yes, it seems as though we've been well-educated by our society to give the answers that make us most comfortable about taking the lives of unborn infants, without really examining what we're doing or saying. What was it that Socrates said: "the unexamined life is not worth living?" Interesting comment on which life is not worth living: the baby's, or the one who says it's OK to kill the baby for our own comfort without really examining that position?

This I'm sure comes as no shocker to many of you who are still living in our post-modern culture every day and being bombarded with these messages. But to someone who has lived for some time now in a Roman Catholic country that truly has yet to enter post-modernity, it was a shocking reminder of Americans' willingness to sacrifice anything on the altar of their comfort.

Costa Ricans as a whole have no doubt about the existence of God or moral absolutes of right and wrong. They don't walk around with illusions that they are "good people" who will obviously go to heaven. If anything, they walk around with a fear of God that if they mess up bad enough tomorrow (and they suspect that they will, because they're realistic) and then die, they'll wind up in hell. Many really haven't grasped the amazing nature of God's grace toward them, and have no assurance of salvation as a result. Their worldview can be summed up in the following equation: I sin + God's mad = trouble for me! We found this was a recurring them among the youth at camp, and realized that we need to hammer this theme in our teachings for this year.

Unrelenting guilt has its own unique set of challenges, but one benefit is that there really exists a FEAR of doing wrong. Many of them wouldn't sacrifice their conscience for their sake of comfort, which seems to have become very easy for many Americans. (I'm speaking in generalities here: obviously there are many lovely Americans who fight against worship of their own ease, and there are many Costa Ricans that do understand God's grace and live a life free from condemnation in Jesus).

Let me give you a real life example: One of the people that I cherish and admire most in La Carpio is my friend Ceci. The abortion video made me think of her because she's a classic case that would be used in the States to justify an abortion. She was abused and raped by her stepfather for years, starting at the age of 9, I believe. At age 15, she was pregnant by him. In the States, this situation equals abortion for many, without guilt or judgment. Ceci had her baby (Tania).

She has had so many challenges along the way: having to tell her mom what happened, "breaking up her family" with the departure of her stepfather, being a single mom, the shame of people knowing who the father of her child is, difficulties with attitudes of her family members toward Tania and mistreatement of Tania due to her origins. All of these things are super-uncomfortable and could have been avoided with an abortion. But she has bravely faced them all, and more. I am so touched to see how she cares for Tania and obviously loves her greatly. She has overcome the greatest temptation of all in the situation: to blame Tania for her own existence, or for Ceci's added difficulties in life. So who is more "reasonable": poverty-stricken Ceci who has come to grips with the fact that Tania didn't choose how she came into the world and shouldn't be punished for it, or the well-educated upper-class girl in the U.S. who is willing to kill someone who didn't cause her situation in order to hide it?

I don't know if she ever considered abortion in her heart of hearts (it's illegal here, but you can still find a hack to do it), but what strikes me is that Ceci doesn't worship her comfort. She lives an uncomfortable life in many other respects, so when faced with one more thing to overcome, she bears up under it without making a plan to escape the discomfort. And do you know what? She has become a strong person, come to know the Lord and to trust in Him through these experiences.

I understand if a girl or woman doesn't want to raise a child of rape, so please don't misunderstand me and hear me saying that everyone in this situation should do what Ceci did. But when I think about all the abortions from this cause and wonder why they don't just give the baby up for adoption instead, I can only come up with one answer: it's more uncomfortable than just "getting rid of it" and keeping your secret. And there we reach the root problem: the primary decision factor is what's comfortable for the girl, not what's right or wrong!

Maybe this is a reason America is weakening: its individuals are simply too worried about their comfort and taking the easy way. The super-development of our culture has led to the elimination of many misfortunes and inconveniences that regularly befall others in the world. When they avoid any insinuation of hard times whenever possible, how can they grow strong? What will refine them? How can they make the hard decisions to do what's right if it doesn't feel good and comfortable to them? Could it be that we fail to develop real character when we skip over so many of life's potential hardships?

Ceci and others in my life here inspire me to check my own desire to be comfortable all the time. I notice it creeping into my life in all sorts of unexpected ways, and I'm confronted with my own desire for ease. Does this mean I should go looking for trouble? No, each day has enough trouble of its own. But maybe when it comes, I should bravely fight through it instead of looking for the quickest way to eliminate it...

Peace, Andrea