Angela (00:02.19)
Hello, welcome. It's August 2024 and things are crazy with this election season. We knew they would be, but it's been really hard. And we've taken the summer to listen to a lot of you in the progress community. And that's what we're hearing. This is really challenging for a lot of reasons. And so I just want to acknowledge that today. You can even stop, take a deep breath.
and acknowledge this is really hard. With that, I wanna say, in my experience, God is doing a new thing. So I've been talking about these issues and wrestling with this for 19 years, crazy, right? It's gonna be 20 years next spring. And I would say this is the most difficult it's ever been to talk about the issues of abortion and unintended pregnancy.
I see pastors going silent on this. I see kids really questioning their parents and traditional views. I see much more divisiveness between the right and the left. At the same time, I see much more synergy and momentum toward people who are discontent with either political side. So I see God in the midst of this.
And you know, I have not been around in other great moves of God. I have to say that, but from what I've read and from commentaries people have made, it's messy. When God starts doing a new thing, he has to start first with his church and convict us of places where we have not been living out the truth, the grace, the love of Jesus, where we have not been reflecting how Jesus is in the world, to our community and our families. And so it can feel like everything's crumbling down.
but that means he's things up because he wants to heal. So I have been spending this summer working on a book. Actually, I'm really excited to finish it up here. Hopefully very soon. I got a gracious extension from the publisher. And because of that, I've just spent a lot of time in my head or listening to different conversations. And maybe that's why I feel more hopeful. I have not been on the ground having tough conversations this summer. So I just want to say that first.
Angela (02:21.102)
I've been more spending time thinking about what's Jesus like? How do we see him interact in the scriptures? And I will tell you all, if you feel discouraged, try that. Try spending time in John 8. Try spending time with Jesus healing, raising from the dead, actually, the widow's son, the widow from Nain. I'm sorry I don't have these.
Scripture references in front of me, we'll put them in the show notes. This is just coming to me as I'm just talking off my head about what's been inspiring me this summer, but it has been sitting in the Jesus stories and how he called Matthew, thinking about how divisive and polarizing Matthew would have been as a person, he was a tax collector. Jesus wasn't afraid of that. He saw something in Matthew, he called him, spending time in that. Zacchaeus, again, polarizing what he did by calling Zacchaeus to him.
The woman who anointed his feet with perfume. Divisive, okay? If you look at what Jesus did, healing on the Sabbath, you know, we could look at a lot of these things through the lens of a very intense cultural moment, political moment. The nation of Israel was under the Roman rule. They wanted to throw it off. They felt like they couldn't even serve God and their law in that Roman rule.
They were divided on how to move forward. were those who wanted to overthrow Rome. There were those who wanted to work with Rome. Like you could argue there are similarities to when Jesus walked the earth and what we're experiencing now. And so when we look to him, he shows us who the father is. He shows us God's perspective, God's kingdom perspective, if you will, into a world fraught with divisive issues. And that's what's been encouraging me this summer, not just reading the stories, but sitting with them.
and asking him what he wants to show me. And I will say, even if these stories are familiar, at least this is my experience, even if the stories are familiar, I will often find something new. It's like God is just waiting for us to sit down on our porch in this nice weather, take a deep breath and let him speak to us. And he does that often through these stories. One of my favorite quotes from Dallas Willard in his book, Hearing God is that,
Angela (04:39.414)
If we wanna understand the biblical record, we need to enter into these stories with the understanding that the experience people had with Jesus is roughly the same experience we would have if we had been there and the same experience we can have with him. And so I wanna start out this podcast saying that above all, I feel hope. It's not to say it's without challenge. It's not to say that some of the people who started out even on this journey with us,
They're maybe not still with us because they have questions about what's going on. Like it's hard, it's difficult. However, I keep meeting more and more people who say to me, I just had this conversation yesterday, this approach resonated so much. I didn't even know how in alignment I was with this until I started reading the ProGrace website. And just this sense even that God had brought us together with this person, with their expertise and ability to help.
grow this community and help expand the message. The fact that when this person encountered the messaging for the very first time, there was this clarity. There was this sense that God was speaking to her and we all felt it in the meeting. And that's what I mean. That's what we're looking for. God, bring us to those conversations where you're already moving, where you're already preparing people to either be honest with us or to listen. We don't need to
state our opinion or try to convert anyone to our opinion or feel like we have to change what's going on in the political landscape. And that's what that's the sense I get when I experienced Jesus in these stories. He was so calm. He was spending every day listening to his father. He was so calm in finding out where he was supposed to go that day, who he was supposed to talk to, how he was supposed to help usher in the kingdom. You know, he tells us in scripture,
that we can have this same type of relationship that when the spirit of truth comes, I know where this is, John 16, because I love this passage, Jesus saying he's going to send the spirit of truth and he will lead us into all truth. We can relax into that. Like this is the posture that we have when we're going into conversations about abortion, that Jesus is not panicked. He...
Angela (06:58.56)
is not able to be trapped. The Pharisees were never able to trap him in these divisive conversations, which as you spend time in the stories, you'll see. And then he promises this connection. He's with us. The spirit is inside us. All we have to do is stop and say, spirit of truth. Wow, what a beautiful name, spirit of truth. Sit with the spirit of truth and ask him to guide us into all the truth. I want to say with that.
that one of the misconceptions we have about truth, and I've seen this literally since I started having this conversation with people, is when we use the words grace and truth, sometimes we think those are in opposition to each other. But if we actually look at the passage where Jesus talked about this, actually Jesus didn't talk about it, it was said about him, the law came through Moses, grace and truth come through Jesus Christ, we'll put this passage in the show notes as well so you can look at it.
Grace and truth are a package that come through Jesus. The contrast there is the law that came through Moses. And I would argue that the way Christians have approached abortion has looked much more like the law that came through Moses. I'm not unaware that that word law has double connotations here, right? That verse is talking about the law of Moses. We know that.
So many Christians, so much of our country has focused on laws around abortion, right? That's the divide. Should it be legal or illegal? If it's legal, I'm pro -choice. If it's illegal, I'm pro -life. There's just no middle ground. There's no way for nuance and everything's about the law. But grace and truth come through Jesus Christ. And that's what we wanna look at. That's the place we want to bring a different kingdom perspective that even when the questions around us are all, should it be legal or not?
We don't actually have to spend most of our time talking about that or thinking about that. We can instead sit and ask for this place of grace and truth that comes from Jesus. So with that, I want to step back and take some of the questions that we've gotten from the community this summer and apply this perspective of grace and truth the best I can to this. And we want to hear from you actually. There's they'll be in the show notes and it's the end of the podcast and email address where you can send us more.
Angela (09:18.392)
questions that I can address in these future podcasts leading up to the election. So here we go. The first question is, how can I have any opinion on abortion without seeming to communicate a political stance? All right, let's back up from this. I was raised that the most important thing for me to do about abortion was to have an opinion on it. I would just like to challenge any of us who were raised with that idea.
to stop and think, is that really the most important thing I'm supposed to do? Have an opinion on abortion and speak it out. Has that really even been helpful? I think about all the decades where I had an opinion on abortion and I had an opinion on it politically. And I would speak that out. And we're almost taught that that's a litmus test of our Christianity. But I didn't actually do anything for those decades. I didn't actually help anyone with this lived experience.
what does it matter that I have an opinion on abortion and speak it out if I'm not really listening to how God wants us to interact with the people with this lived experience? So I just want to let us all off the hook. You know, maybe that sounds concerning to you, but I think for a lot of us, that actually is a big relief. We can take another deep breath. We can lower our shoulders. Is that really what God is asking me to do in this divisive election season? Have an opinion, quote unquote.
on abortion? Or is he asking us to listen and to try and imagine what it would feel like to be someone walking through an unintended pregnancy or an abortion decision? To sit and ask ourselves, what could we be as the church that is totally different than the political rhetoric and divisiveness that's raging out there? What if just for a minute, we didn't even have to worry about
our political opinion, we could think about how does God view the people impacted? So that's my first answer to this question. How can I have any opinion on it without seeming to communicate a political stance? Is develop a lot more thoughts on it besides whether it should be legal or not. And we will have some places in the show notes where we can send you some resources on this. We have an ebook and different things.
Angela (11:41.652)
I would suggest the best thing you could do would be join our transform leaders cohort that's starting early September. We'll also have information on that transform is this will be a four week experience where you get together with other folks in the progress community and you sit with scripture and conversation with each other and your own experience with abortion. And you will leave that with a much fuller understanding of what people are experiencing and how Jesus would want us to be a community meeting them.
And I would say that then is a totally different gift you can bring to your family, to your community, to your church, is that you are looking at this from the lens of what is it like to walk through this. And you're looking at this from the lens of how have people who are experiencing this, how have they viewed the church? How have they viewed me? Has anyone ever felt safe enough to confide in me that they were considering an abortion or they'd had an abortion?
Has anyone felt safe enough to tell me the panic, the isolation, the shame that they're experiencing with an unintended pregnancy? See, this is when we sit in Jesus stories where he was. He was with people. And so when we go out and talk, even with sharing our opinion, let's remember the numbers of people who have this experience. One in four women will have an abortion before age 45. And those numbers aren't really that different.
based on any type of faith background or women without a faith background. That means the numbers are very similar of men who would have had a partner who had an abortion experience. Then you add on top of that people who had unintended pregnancies at either place for adoption or parented. And you're looking at a lot of people that have this experience in their history and we may not even know.
And so I would say that's the first thing when thinking about this, where our opinion is based in who Jesus is, how we interacted with people, and the fact that the person we're talking to may have had an experience or may have a loved one who had an experience. So with that, I would say the best thing to do before we ever speak our opinion on abortion is to ask questions. Ask the person you're talking to, what is their opinion? How is it felt for them to watch this play out in the political realm?
Angela (14:05.016)
How much of this do they think can be solved by politics? And how much do they think the church could provide a better answer? What is their view on Christians and how Christians have engaged in this issue? If they wanted to see anything from Christians, what would it be? I mean, think about the richness of this conversation. And I will tell you from experience that when we ask questions like this, the spirit of truth guides us deeper into all truth.
Right, it's through years of questions like this that I feel that God has given me a much broader understanding, a wide angle lens, if you were, on what's actually happening. See, the opinions we've been taught to communicate are very myopic. They're very focused on should this be legal or not for a person who's experiencing it right now, what should we do for that person? As opposed to stepping back and saying, what type of society do we have?
where so many people feel like abortion is their only option. Why do they feel that way? 65 % of people who have an abortion are already parents. Why do they feel like this is their only choice? know, what is happening in our society? People who are facing this at a time where they're not married or they feel like they're in a place of their career where they're going to lose their career, they're going to lose their scholarships.
What type of society do we have? You see how we could sit in a lot of these questions and have our mind be much more expanded. So our opinion on abortion then can be much more than should it be legal or not. It can be a very rich, robust opinion that includes where we as the church need to repent and where we are uniquely poised to offer the very type of support and resources that people need when they're facing this. So.
That's my answer to that first question. Again, email us if you'd like more clarification on that or want to take that deeper. But yes, I think it's fine to tell someone we trust what our political opinion is on abortion. I do that. I have a very nuanced and complex political opinion on abortion. I just never share it first. And I don't share it with people that I don't have a longstanding relationship with who understand the nuance. But I have a lot of conversations on abortion.
Angela (16:24.119)
And I listen to a lot of people and we can do a lot of that without ever having to disclose our political opinion. I would say I'm going to vote in November. I hope we all are. take my responsibility and privilege to vote very, very seriously. So I am not discounting a political opinion on abortion. I'm just trying to put it in its proper place. It has been overemphasized, overblown to the point that we look more like a political party than we talk, than the family of God.
We need to look like the family of God. We need to look like a united community who wants to be a safe place for people with this lived experience. That, I would argue, is our most important role. And then we have all these other important roles being part of society. But boy, we could sure stand to take a step back from the pressure of feeling like I got to get my political opinion out there and change even my own view of what does it mean to have an opinion on abortion? What's that look like? It should be much more complex than whether or not.
I think it should be legal. Okay. There is another one here that is a question from people who are passionate about abortion, but they either have no personal experience or we hear this a lot from men. There feels like this gender sensitivity. And so what I really appreciate when people ask this question is there is a sensitivity to saying, I have never had this experience. And for men, they're saying, I will never have this experience.
I want to listen first to people with this experience, but I also want to help and be in this conversation, but it feels very awkward. And so I will say I'm a person with no personal experience in either unintended pregnancy or abortion. I'll just tell my story. My story, interestingly enough, is the flip side of reproductive issues. It's secondary infertility. And I learned going through that. had one child three years into marriage, everything was normal and then could not get pregnant again.
That lived experience is where I understood how people in our society can unintentionally be very, very insensitive to how emotional and heavy reproduction can be when it's not going the way we think it should go. So people would say to me, you only have one child. When are you going to have another? And back then, I didn't have good boundaries. I've been through a lot of counseling since then. I would not do this now. But I would disclose to people I had just met
Angela (18:52.694)
something I was walking through that was very painful, you and that would almost traumatize me more in that conversation. And so I have a sensitivity, not from the exact experience, but from something else I walked through. And I would say that's the first place we can go. If we don't have direct experience in this issue, what do we have?
where maybe something is polarized from a political standpoint, or there's a certain narrative in our culture around it, and we've run up against that. And we've realized, wow, people don't get it. People don't get how painful this is. People don't get what it's like to live this. This person is talking down to me from a place of superiority because they have no idea the pain of walking through this issue.
I think all of us can think of something in our life where we have that. And that is the first place to go to have a humble and respectful attitude when trying to walk into these issues and wanting to be sensitive to those with lived experience is that we first come from a humble place of knowing, man, when people give pat answers or they haven't really thought through the ramifications and it's been easy for them and difficult for us, what's that feel like? That will give us the right
amount of caution and humility when having these conversations. I would say the other thing too is what I said before asking questions again, it's not so important that we just are able to have an opinion. It's that we want to seek to understand. want to listen to understand. And this is a place where we can even say, if we find ourselves talking to someone who does have experience, Hey, thank you for trusting me that you have this lived experience. I don't have it.
Or here you'd say, I'm a man and I understand that as men, will never fully understand what women go through. And so I feel very honored that you trusted me with this experience. And you can even ask someone, what would you need from me to be able to have this conversation? Or, hey, if you don't want to have this anymore with me, that's fine. I mean, I think that's part of this too, is allowing people the space to, for us to understand, we want to give them.
Angela (21:10.146)
the open chair to listen to them if they have experience and we don't. And I especially think of this, I really appreciate the men who are in the pro grace community because I find the men that are gathering around this approach are already very humble, are already feeling this and are wondering how they can engage as a man. And so I just want to say thank you to men for that. And thank you for understanding that women have faced a lot of hurt from men.
in this issue on a lot of different ways, right? There's the hurt from men where a woman gets pregnant and maybe she wants to parent with this man and he leaves. And he just says, has an abortion. That happens a lot. That's an incredibly painful experience. Or women feel like there are men making decisions about this or proclamations about it, either from the pulpit or from a legal standpoint. And they have not taken into account at all what it's like for a woman to experience that.
I think a lot of women have experienced that from men. It's very painful. And when a man understands that that's been done and comes to this place of saying, you know, I want to listen to what it feels like to be a woman. And I want to put that first and understand your experience is unique. And I want to see if you think there's anything I can do to help. That's an amazing place. And I have always seen women be very
gracious and wanting to have men in the conversation when they come with that perspective. I would also say if you're a woman and there's still trauma around this, it's okay to tell a man, I don't feel like I can talk to you about this. And again, for men to not be offended by that or put off by that, but just seek other women who maybe are in a place where they can talk about it. And we need to do a much better job of caring for people in our community who've had.
the experience of abortion. This isn't really one of the questions, but I guess I talked about it in the first question, so it's coming up as relevant to all of this. What if we were to start internally in our churches with the people who've had this lived experience? What if we were to start talking about it with grace so that those people feel free to open up and tell their story? Again, I'm going to put a plug in here for the Transform Leaders Cohort.
Angela (23:32.14)
because I used to facilitate the transform content live and it happened live. It's also happening online now that there's in every group, almost in every group it happens. Someone in that group that's going through the content says, Hey, I've never felt safe to share this with anyone, but this was my experience. When we talk about this with grace, when we talk about it from a humble place, our own brothers and sisters who have had this lived experience feel safe.
telling us that this is what they've walked through. And I'm just telling you, there are so many people in our churches that don't feel that safety. And what if that was one of our top priorities this divisive election season, to make our community safe for our own family members who've already walked through this, and to learn from them, and to listen to them, and to find out what they would have needed in our church community to feel supported during that.
I'm actually getting a little choked up here. So I think this is enough content for now. And I just want to sit with what I'm feeling right here.
I think there's a very special place in the pro grace community for people with this lived experience. I know a lot of our pregnancy organization partners, a lot of volunteers and leaders in those organizations have this experience. We need you. You know, on the email address, it's info at pro grace. It's also going to be in the outro. I'd like to hear especially from those with abortion experiences. What do you need from the pro grace community or what do you want us to tell?
the community that you would need from your church, from your brothers and sisters, for you to feel safe, for you to feel seen and heard, and people to understand that when you're walking through this, the politics aren't actually that helpful, that there's an emotional reality going on, there's an anxiety about the future, there's an identity shift you're walking through, and what you need is not someone stating their opinion on whether they think it should be legal or not, but you need a
Angela (25:42.508)
family, a place you could go, a supportive place. Would you let us know what that is? I just want to close by saying I don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but for the last maybe five years now, I get the sense there's a very special place in the progress community in reshaping the Christian response for those with this lived experience. There's some unique role that God wants you to walk out and
You know, maybe the reason I don't know what that is, is he wants you all to hear him and to even let us know what you think that would be. I mean, I'm going to keep asking. I don't want to put any pressure on you, but I just want to give this place of honor, you know, and to say, I'm sorry if you felt like the church wasn't safe. I'm sorry if you felt like your Christian family wasn't safe. We want to be safe now.
And so, yeah, that wasn't planned at all. And maybe that's a good way to close this out is as we have these conversations, top of our mind is Lord, am I talking to someone who's had this experience or Lord, what would I need to be safe for someone who's had this experience? And to understand this is personal, that politics seek to solve a problem that they see in society, but they're never gonna be perfect.
because they're made by humans. And right now we're seeing a lot of imperfection, I would say, in both sides. In terms of they're not working to pass laws, they're not working together to pass laws that would actually provide support for people who are facing an unintended pregnancy. They're so hunkered down in their own positions about whether or not it should be legal that they're leaving a lot undone. And that's where the church can step in and say, we want to do some of those things. Starting with this place of safety.
We wanna listen so we can provide what people need. Wow, if Christians were to enter this election season without posture, that would be amazing. So I hope this has been helpful and I look forward to having this conversation in these next months leading up to the election. Have hope, spend time in the Jesus stories and let us know what you thought about this and how we can better support you.
