He was referring to the controversy over the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. If you were in his position, what advice would you have given those politicians? It’s all too easy to pronounce judgements from the safety of personal non-involvement, as if it were so much more obvious how others should live out their faith in their everyday life and work than how we should ourselves.
Given our tendency to work out what whole-life discipleship means for others, not for us, it’s sobering to reflect that evidently some Christian Labour MPs were prepared to resign rather than vote for the Bill. That they have now been given a free vote should not blind us to the sacrifice they were ready to make on account of their faith.
Nor should we naively assume that this is the end of the matter. A free vote doesn’t guarantee that the more contentious clauses of the Bill will not survive to its second and third readings, which will still be whipped – and even if they are thrown out on this occasion, it is almost certain they’ll reappear in future legislative proposals. The dilemma is not going to go away.
This means that the Christians involved must continue to count the cost of their discipleship. It affects not only MPs but also those working in medical research, who risk their careers when they articulate a biblical view of the sanctity of life and what it means to be human. They are all experiencing the painful truth of Jesus’ statement in Luke 9.23: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’
If, by the grace of God, we are not among them, we must take up our own cross – daily – in giving prayerful and practical support to those of our sisters and brothers who are. What, for example, will we do to provide for the MP whose faith compels them to resign over this or some other moral issue?
And we thought Good Friday was over for another year…
Nigel Hopper
Reproduced with permission: © The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity
