Every Life Matters: A Response to Mr. Reno

I’m over at Stand Firm today, swinging wildly in all the directions.

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Rusty Reno, over at First Things, has been digging himself in for the last week, about how the church, and now even the government, should be handling this thing—this thing, of course, being an illness that is sweeping across the world, an illness that one can spread without knowing one has it for up to 14 days, an illness that afflicts the elderly disproportionately to the young and fit, an illness that is filling up coffins across Europe faster than they can be put in the ground.

Mr. Reno starts his latest salvo this way:

Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “I want to be able to say to the people of New York—I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” This statement reflects a disastrous sentimentalism. Everything for the sake of physical life? What about justice, beauty, and honor? There are many things more precious than life.

At this point, I’m pretty sure that twitter stopped reading and indulged itself in one of the most glorious ratios ever witnessed, at least by me. Some of the pithy remarks made were, “So I guess Christians aren’t pro-life now,” “I’m just here for the ratio,” and “Great article, Azrael.” There were also some pretty brilliant gifs. I haven’t checked in this morning, but I will as a special treat to myself mid-day.

Really? Mr. Reno, what kinds of things are more precious than life? This is an astonishing claim, particularly when the pro-life cause continues to make such strides, win so much philosophical ground, get laws changed, raise up a generation of younger passionately pro-life people. There was a pretty great twitter thread a while ago where some pro-abortion person accused the pro-life community of only caring about the baby. What have you ever even done for the woman facing such a devastating “choice” this person asked. And immediately (again, a big fan of the judicious ratio) showed up and ‘splained. So much is being done for mothers and babies, because, dare I say it to a Christian journal, very few things are more “precious” than life. If you don’t have life, you only have, what’s that called? Oh yeah—death.

Incidentally, Jesus also is not a fan. That is why one of the names he takes for himself, one of those amazing I Am statements in John, is not only The Life, but also The Resurrection, because he has the power to restore life to those who have lost it—forever. This is actually the very heart of the gospel, like the reason that Jesus actually came to earth, because humanity had pledged itself to death, thinking that literally everything was more “precious” than the life given by God himself, and so, because we were all so utterly “dead”—I just feel like going full bore on the scare quotes—he came and literally and spiritually and physically and eternally, took our “death” and in exchange gave us “life.”

Interestingly, one of my big problems with Mr. Cuomo is that he has said things in the past like, (and this is a paraphrase), ‘if you’re pro-life you and believe in traditional marriage you have no place in this state.’ That kind of stung. There are a lot of people in New York state who work tirelessly for the pro-life cause, who care about life at every stage, who give money and time and prayer and love and hope to women and babies and even men facing an unplanned pregnancy. So honestly, if there’s one good thing about coronavirus, it might be that these startling words could come out of the lips of Mr. Cuomo, the very one who lit up New York City in pink to celebrate abortion, “If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” My goodness, I’ll be happy too, Mr. Cuomo! I will be so happy. Read the rest here!