For prolifers and everyone else, telling the truth is much harder than finding fault. Academia, for example, is filled with brilliant insights, but they are diluted with banal critiques of other professors. Religious and political hypocrisy is so common that even to complain about it feels tedious. Too often in large organizations, saying “no” is always safe and the only risk is saying “yes.”

But telling the truth? In a way that helps people really see and understand, and thus to become good and successful? The wise assume such responsibility only warily.

Consider The Screwtape Letters, by the famous writer, C.S. Lewis, which purports to be a series of letters from an archdemon, Screwtape, to his subordinate demon, Wormwood, advising him on how to shepherd a soul into Hell via trickery, false promises, and the cultivation of prideful indignation. The book has been very popular among Christians of all denominations for the insight it yields into spiritual psychology, the ways in which we make ourselves vulnerable to the work of the Enemy.

But the book was Lewis’ least favorite among his many publications. In part, that was because the writing required him to think perversely, demonically, “like the bureaucrat of a police state or a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

A more important reason is that it leaves the reader out of balance. To know what is really happening in the world, we must see not only the misery, fear, and malice of the world—easy enough to do!—but we must see with the eyes of faith the work that God is doing with us and among us.  As Lewis wrote,

Without this, the picture of human life is lopsided. But who could supply the deficiency?  Even if a man—and he would have to be a far better man than I—could scale the spiritual heights required, what style could he use? For the style would really be part of the content. Mere advice would be no good; every sentence would have to smell of Heaven.

Fans of The Lord of the Rings will remember that Lewis’ friend and mentor, J.R.R. Tolkien, made a similar point with the story of Denethor and the Palantir: Even those at the height of human wisdom can be misled by the Enemy if they fail to discern the work of God. If all you see is the Enemy’s progress, you are deceived.

Prolifers face a related challenge. Part of our responsibility is to find fault—with abortion, for individual families, and with the legalization of abortion, for society as a whole. But to stop there is see only with the eyes of the Enemy. Most of us know that to live with integrity, prolifers also need to find effective ways to support mothers who would otherwise feel pressured toward abortion.

But even this is not enough. Not all abortions are occasioned by mothers’ distress. Some emerge from the broadening callousness of society, an erosion of moral responsibility not only among mothers, but of course also fathers, physicians, educators, legislators, and eventually all of us.

If we want to oppose the more systemic disdain for human life, we prolifers will need to persuade others to treasure it. This is much harder than finding fault with abortion. If we want the world to treasure human life, even and especially under difficult circumstances, we will need to speak of the joy of human life, and live it, in just the same way we expect this of others.

On “Low Sunday,” the Sunday after Easter, many Christians hear how Jesus breathed on his disciples, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” the life and breath of God. Jesus deliberately evokes God’s original creation, when his spirit, or breath, hovered over the waters, and when God breathed life into the original man.

Thomas was not with them for the occasion, and so to persuade him of Life, Jesus appears again—living and breathing, despite the glorious wounds identifying him as the crucified Lord. At last, even Thomas believes.

No essay in the Human Life Review will adequately convey the glory of human life, but a joyful encounter with life, and especially with the Lord of life, may yet persuade us. Babies unborn or newborn, toddlers, children, teens, adults, the elderly—even though all will prove inconvenient in countless ways, each person reveals something of God’s plan for our eternal life shared with each other.

Let prolifers strive for the goal C. S. Lewis believed would elude him: That our every thought and word and action might smell of Heaven. Happy Easter!