![\"Lifeisgoodbumpersticker\"](\"http:\/\/magazine.nd.edu\/assets\/22395\/lifeisgoodsticker.jpg\" "\\"Lifeisgoodbumpersticker\\"")
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I cannot help it \u2014 I love \u201cJake,\u201d the distilled-to-his-essence stick-figure with a wide, winning grin, never-off shades and a disarming, simple message: \u201cLife is good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, he\u2019s probably, to put it mildly, a bit overexposed. In fact, he\u2019s everywhere. In airport gift shops and upscale shopping malls, on bumper stickers and backpacks, on doggie Frisbees, gold balls and baby bibs, there\u2019s Jake \u2014 deftly managing a sizzling grill, cruising on a mountain bike, relaxing in a hammock, strolling through the woods, strumming a guitar. \u201cLife is good,\u201d he reports through the medium of carefully distressed \u201cvintage\u201d T-shirts. His sure seems to be.<\/p>\n
It would be easy, but mistaken, to dismiss Jake as a knock-off of Harvey Ball\u2019s \u201cHave a Nice Day\u201d smiley-face. The latter\u2019s expression is vacant and phony \u2014 stoned, maybe \u2014 but Jake\u2019s is genuinely happy. The smiley-face is a logo, with no story, plans or dreams, but Jake is the buddy who calls to cajole you into skipping work for a powder-day. \u201cHave a nice day\u201d is a limp, tepid, vague suggestion. \u201cLife is good\u201d is a bold blend of laid-back vibe and affirmation of the cosmos.<\/p>\n
Jake is not just a stylized Crocodile Dundee (\u201cNo worries!\u201d) or Bobby McFerrin (\u201cDon\u2019t worry, be happy!\u201d), who is relieved to report that things aren\u2019t too bad. He\u2019s no slacker-nihilist, shrugging off what comes with a \u201cWhatever, dude.\u201d No, for Jake, life is Whitmanesque \u2014 it is large, it contains multitudes, and he likes it. It is good.<\/p>\n
No doubt, Jake\u2019s success is a tribute to lifestyle marketing, but his is more than a \u201clifestyle\u201d claim. It is, I think, also a theological one, and I like to imagine that he knows it. When God made the world \u2014 the \u201cdome in the middle of the waters,\u201d the \u201ctwo great lights,\u201d the \u201cgreat sea monsters\u201d and \u201call kinds of creeping things\u201d \u2014 we are told that \u201cHe saw how good it was.\u201d Jake invites us to suppose that God\u2019s verdict on bike rides through the backcountry and sausages cooked over fire would be \u2014 indeed, that it is \u2014 the same. No Manichean darkness here: Jake\u2019s spirituality is joyfully incarnational. His world, like Gerard Manley Hopkins\u2019, is \u201ccharged with the grandeur\u201d \u2014 the goodness \u2014 \u201cof God.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a general matter, I am leery of bumper stickers, even ones that tout candidates I support or causes to which I am committed. I would hate to undermine them with a sloppy lane-change, an ill-timed nose-scratch or a long-delayed car wash. My \u201cLife is good\u201d decal, though, seems perfect. It says it all \u2014 or, at least, it says a lot \u2014 and, really, who could object?<\/p>\n
To be honest, however, my sticker has a double meaning. As I see it, I\u2019m not only safely throwing in my lot with Jake, and reminding my fellow drivers of the joys to be found in and through guitars, barbeques and hiking boots. I like to think that I am also proposing sneakily what I suppose I am too nervous to proclaim more straightforwardly (on my car, anyway): Every human person is precious and inviolable, every human person has dignity and worth, and every human person \u2014 old and young, strong and frail, vulnerable and independent, loved and lonely, innocent and guilty \u2014 ought to be welcomed in life and protected by law.<\/p>\n
But am I really saying all that? Maybe I\u2019m kidding myself. Sure, I want to think that Jake and his motto make it easier to invite my fellow drivers-citizens to consider and embrace what others\u2019 bumpers say more explicitly, but is it just wishful, self-justifying thinking to imagine that hearts and minds are moved, pervasively and comprehensively, in the pro-life direction by even a contagiously good-natured cartoon-guy\u2019s pro-\u201clife\u201d catch-phrase? And does Jake\u2019s message really capture, or even map onto, what I and so many others mean by \u201cpro-life\u201d?<\/p>\n
In his 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life<\/em>, Pope John Paul II challenged all people of good will to take on the \u201cresponsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.\u201d Does my display of Jake\u2019s good-natured profession cut it?<\/p>\n Maybe not. The pro-life message, after all, is not \u2014 that is, it is not only \u2014 that there\u2019s a lot of fun to be had in \u201clife,\u201d that we should hope, look and reach for many pleasant experiences. It\u2019s a call to communion, love and relationship, not just to hedonism. The good news that is the Gospel of Life<\/em> is not just that not all of the stuff in the universe is inanimate but is instead teeming with metabolism, reproduction, growth and adaptation. It\u2019s amazing and wonderful, certainly, that so much in the world is alive, and only a crank would refuse to marvel at, even revel in, its dynamism.<\/p>\n Still, \u201cto be unconditionally pro-life\u201d would seem to involve more than standing duly impressed before the workings of DNA<\/span> and photosynthesis. No, the pro-life claim is about us, and not only about the arenas in which we struggle, the contexts through which we move and the stories we construct. It is about the amazing mystery and gift that is the person who lives \u2014 and laughs and cries and prays and plays \u2014 and not only about the no-doubt impressive facts that cells multiply and neurons fire.<\/p>\n The pro-life proposal, what it is that I want Jake to be saying when he revels in the goodness of life, is that the individual human person \u2014 every one \u2014 matters. Each person \u2014 every one \u2014 carries, in C.S. Lewis\u2019 words, the \u201cWeight of Glory.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no ordinary people,\u201d Lewis insisted; \u201cYou have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations \u2014 these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit \u2014 immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.\u201d<\/p>\n The claim that every person matters and has worth might seem unremarkable. Perhaps it is one of those \u201cduh\u201d observations that is not even worthy of a bumper sticker, let alone a pop-culture phenomenon like Jake. It is, certainly, the purported premise of the law and morality of human rights and of our American civil religion (\u201cwith liberty and justice for all\u201d). But can this claim, this premise, bear the weight we ask it to carry? Is there anything to it? What\u2019s so special about us, actually?<\/p>\n My Notre Dame colleague Tom Shaffer has said that every human person is \u201cinfinitely valuable, relentlessly unique, endlessly interesting.\u201d This is true, I\u2019m sure. But what is it, exactly, that makes it true, and not just wishful thinking or a delusion of grandeur?<\/p>\n We profess \u2014 Jake and I, and the rest of our pro-life friends \u2014 that the dying and elderly deserve more, and better, than a chemically hastened, hospital-bed-vacating death, but what makes this true, as opposed to merely squeamish or sentimental?<\/p>\n We affirm that even the commission of the most grave, most horrible crime should not be enough to push the criminal beyond all hope for reconciliation, repentance and relationship, but what saves this affirmation from being so much soft-hearted, excessively expensive fluff?<\/p>\n We insist, flying in the face of a culture that holds out ability and achievement as the criteria for a worthy life, that a severely disabled unborn child is no less welcome, and no less inviolable, than the most gifted prot\u00e9g\u00e9, but why isn\u2019t this insistence mere preening or self-indulgence?<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is man,\u201d the Psalmist asked God, \u201cthat thou are mindful of him?\u201d What indeed. After all, he noted, human beings \u201care but a breath\u201d and \u201ctheir days are like a passing shadow.\u201d More than a few contemporary philosophers would agree with John Searle, who insists that the world \u201cconsists entirely of physical particles in fields of force,\u201d some of which have become organized into \u201ccertain higher-level nervous systems.\u201d We are, in other words, electrified sacks of fluid, meat-puppets in particle-clogged space. What is so \u201cgood\u201d about that?<\/p>\n It is, to say the least, an unsettling question. We are committed, today, to the morality and language of human rights and human dignity. We believe, in Nicholas Wolterstorff\u2019s words, that \u201chuman beings, all of them, are irreducibly precious.\u201d This is true, if a bit wordy for a bumper sticker. But how is it true, and what makes it true?<\/p>\n Many would say that our \u201creason,\u201d \u201cautonomy\u201d or \u201ccapabilities\u201d do the work. We are valuable and inviolable, the arguments go, because of the impressive, inspiring things we do, or at least can do. To be sure, we can do amazing things, we do have characteristics and capacities that set us apart and above so much else that is. But these are not enough. Many of us are broken, disabled, unimpressive; all of us are dependent, vulnerable and incomplete.<\/p>\n The Psalmist, again, gave thanks that he was \u201cfearfully, wonderfully made,\u201d but even a well-designed meat-puppet is, well, just that. Looking through a microscope, one might mistake us for chimps, if not worms. What gives us \u2014 what gives life \u2014 the great worth that we have and that saves our talk of rights, dignity and the sacred from being so much pretty nonsense?<\/p>\n Remember here the children\u2019s book The Velveteen Rabbit<\/em>. A little boy\u2019s toy becomes, over the years, \u201cold and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about.\u201d Eventually the Rabbit is made \u201cReal\u201d by having been loved by the Boy.<\/p>\n In a similar way, Wolterstorff has argued, God\u2019s love for us is what makes it true that we are precious, sacred and have worth. Our dignity is real; it is not just a convenient, reassuring construct. But, it is not achieved, earned or performed. It is freely bestowed and lovingly given. Our human rights do not attach to our own capacities but instead to the \u201cworth bestowed on human beings by that love.\u201d<\/p>\n This is what John Paul II called the \u201cmoral truth about the human person,\u201d that the \u201cgreatness of human beings is founded precisely in their being creatures of a loving God\u201d and not self-styled authors of their own destiny. That in which we so justifiably take pride is also, and always, a call to humility. Not one of us, in the ways that really count and matter, is self-made, and thank God for that.<\/p>\n Life is good, then, and it is because we love and are loved.<\/p>\n That almost does sound like it could work on a bumper sticker.<\/p>\n Richard Garnett is a professor and an associate dean in the Notre Dame Law School. He served as a clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist before joining the Notre Dame faculty.<\/em><\/p>\n I cannot help it \u2014 I love \u201cJake,\u201d the distilled-to-his-essence stick-figure with a wide, winning grin, never-off shades and a disarming, simple message: \u201cLife is good.\u201d Yes, he\u2019s probably, to put it mildly, a bit overexposed. In fact, he\u2019s everywhere. In airport gift shops and upscale shopping malls, on bumper stickers and backpacks, on doggie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4250,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The great worth<\/h3>\n
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