“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…”
Ephesians 2:1-2A
Introduction
Recently, Australian news sources have been abuzz with plans for a bill outlawing conversion therapy to be passed in New South Wales. Though I do not think that we have any direct access to what the Australian bill contains, looking at our (New Zealand’s) conversion therapy act passed in 2022 will surely do some good.1 I will briefly provide an overview of the bill in this section, list two objections against our bill in the second section, and then address a deeper issue, namely the fundamental conflict of the Christian Gospel and conversion therapy bills.2
The explicit aim of the New Zealand conversion therapy bill is twofold: to “recognise and prevent harm caused by conversion practices” and to “promote respectful and open discussions regarding sexuality and gender.” A conversion practice is defined as a “practice, sustained effort, or treatment” that “is directed towards an individual because of the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” and which is performed “with the intention of changing or suppressing the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”
Psalm 139:13
It is not a controversial fact that life begins at fertilization.1 For instance, a Princeton University webpage lists fifteen academic sources that support this point. One of the quoted sources clearly states that “fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed”.2 An article from PubMed states that “Biologists from 1,058 academic institutions… assessed survey items on when a human’s life begins and, overall, 96% (5337 out of 5577) affirmed the fertilization view [human life begins at fertilization]”.3 I could go on.
So, the abortion debate is now centred on philosophical considerations. One case study will do. Peter Singer, Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, answers whether he would save a mouse or human being from a fire: in “almost all cases [he] would save the human being”. Interestingly, the reason for this saving is “not because the human being is human” but because “it matters whether a being is the kind of being who can see that he or she actually has a life — that is, can see that he or she is the same being who exists now, who existed in the past, and who will exist in the future”. Singer’s criteria for something that is worth saving involves some kind of temporal awareness. To explicitly connect this answer to abortion, “no newborn baby is a person” because newborn babies do not have “a sense of the future”.4
A few minutes before the dawn of the New Year, I found myself on a steep and crowded street that overlooked most of the Auckland skyline. Most people (I included) aimed phones at the skyline in anticipation. A vague countdown began, and then the vast horizon blossomed with fireworks. I was struck by the sheer number of people fixated on recording, swaying their phones to and fro like wands by which memory and atmosphere could be captured.
The aim of this article is an indictment of modernity. As Michael Ward states: “The incessant spiritual orchestration that accompanies [the universe], that actually constitutes it, and that is normally inaudible, is now also considered incredible. The cosmos therefore comes to be regarded as nothing more than a very elaborate machine when in reality it is tingling with life…'”1 Ward claims that the medieval conception of the universe as a “festival not a machine” is now beyond belief.2 Our world has become disenchanted. In the words of Saturn by Sleeping at Last, we have lost the reality of, “How rare and beautiful it is to even exist”.
“…for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
2 Corinthians 11:14
“On the sledge, driving the reindeer, sat a fat dwarf who would have been about three feet high if he had been standing. He was dressed in polar bear’s fur and on his head he wore a red hood with a long gold tassel hanging down from its point; his huge beard covered his knees and served him instead of a rug. But behind him, on a much higher seat in the middle of the sledge sat a very different person—a great lady, taller than any woman that Edmund had ever seen. She also was covered in white fur up to her throat and held a long straight golden wand in her right hand and wore a golden crown on her head. Her face was white—not merely pale, but white like snow or paper or icing sugar, except for her very red mouth. It was a beautiful face in other respects, but proud and cold and stern.”
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
In this passage, Lewis describes the first appearance of the White Witch. She will be this book’s main antagonist and will reappear in later books (later in publication order, not in chronological order). His description is striking because he describes her face as “beautiful”. She is “great”, “taller than any woman that Edmund had ever seen”, adorned with “white fur”, a “golden wand”, and a “golden crown”. Her face was “white like… icing sugar”, and her mouth was “very red”. This description is almost positive. The first encounter that the readers have with the White Witch is ambiguous. If Lewis had not said she was also “proud and cold and stern”, we might be tempted to consider the Witch a benign queen or a kind benefactor. Or, anyhow, her beauty may entrance us into diminishing her pride, coldness, and sternness. She could not be that bad, after all.
Peculiarly and similarly, the Scriptures also describe what I will call the ambiguity of evil. Evil, of course, is not morally ambiguous. Evil is morally bad, and that is that. But evil is aesthetically ambiguous insofar as it can sometimes allure and other times repulse. Note this aesthetic ambiguity in Proverbs 5, where the immediate focus is on adultery or sexual temptation. Solomon says that the “lips of a forbidden woman drip honey” and that “her speech is smoother than oil” (Prov. 5:3). That is one side of the ambiguity. “[B]ut in the end she is bitter as wormwood, / sharp as a two-edged sword. / Her feet go down to death; / her steps follow the path to Sheol; / and she does not ponder the path of life; / her ways wander, and she does not know it” (Prov. 5:4-6). That is the other side of the ambiguity. Although the forbidden woman superficially possesses sweetness and smoothness, in reality, she is bitter, sharp, and destined to damnation.
