https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=uhvVu9-7iZ0
Hey Jonathan, to keep things light, I’m wondering if you can comment on abortion. Yeah, that always keeps things light. Do you think that there is any way to find common ground on a topic like this which seems to be binary? It appears to be a winner-take-all scenario where one group will inevitably have extreme resentment. Can pro-choice and pro-life people ever find common ground? Should this be one of the most important issues for a Christian to be concerned with? I do not think that it should be one of the most important issues for a Christian to be concerned with. I think that the very fact that we have come to a society that has accepted abortion means that we are really, really far down the road. That our society has broken away from Christianity, has broken away from some of the essential elements of understanding what a being is, understanding what a mother is, understanding what a family is, understanding what self-sacrifice is. All these things we’ve lost, and abortion is a symptom of that. I think that people who spend their time fighting abortion are fighting the symptom. They’re not fighting the cause, and that’s why you’re not going to win that fight. I have nothing against people who are politically active against abortion. But to be honest, I certainly don’t think that it’s the most important issue for a Christian to be concerned with. I don’t think that there’s a way to find common ground on that topic. I do think that one of the problems with abortion, like all the problems of this marginal behavior, or these marginal things that are happening, is that we are trying to make them public and make them publicly accepted. We want to make them legal in every sense of that. We want to make them societally acceptable. There are some things which can never be societally acceptable. There are some things which will always exist in the margins and exist in the secret places. But the problem is that we want to shine light on them and then say that it’s fine. That’s not possible. The idea of if it is possible that there’s a situation where a woman should get an abortion, the official question obviously is no. But then we all know that there are situations, health situations, that there are all kinds of situations where the life of the woman is in danger and it’s not obvious to make a choice one way or the other. I think that those are what we call economia in the Orthodox Church. They are the things that are looked upon in their particular and are not understood as being normative. I hope that answers that question. First of all, I don’t think that we’ll ever have common ground on that and I also don’t think that it’s the most important thing Christians should be focused on.