A Theology of Life: Womb to Tomb
“Now choose life…”
Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV)
What usually comes to your mind when you hear the words “pro-life?” For most of us, “pro-life” simply equals “against abortion,” but biblically, “pro-life” encompasses all of life.
Last year I was asked to serve on a new Theology of Life team at our church. Our group’s purpose was to develop a twelve-week integrated Pro-Life “Womb to Tomb” curriculum to be taught throughout our church’s adult Sunday School communities. Our Life Curriculum Team consists of several pastors, parents, and professionals who have worked together to develop appropriate materials for addressing some current important life and cultural issues from a biblical worldview. These topics cover all of life and include:
Gender, sexuality, and identity
Fertility, birth control, infertility, IVF, and abortion
Special needs parenting, fostering, and adoption
Aging, dementia, eldercare, and end of life decisions
Legal issues surrounding wills, living wills, abortion, and euthanasia
Because a faithful biblical definition of “pro-life” is grounded in the Bible’s teaching of man—male and female—as the imago Dei, our Life Curriculum examines how we as Christians should understand, articulate, and defend the implications of biblical truth for the sanctity of all life, literally from “womb to tomb.”
Pastors and seminary professors are tackling the training for our pro-life biblical worldview, gender, identity, and sexuality issues. Christian physicians address fertility, birth control, IVF, abortion, and end of life discussions. Pro-Life lawyers discuss both federal and state laws as they relate to abortion, euthanasia, wills, and living wills. Experienced parents are speaking to the challenges, barriers, and blessings that come with raising special needs, foster, or adopted children. Professional counselors are addressing important aging, dementia, and eldercare issues. Each lesson provides an overview of the assigned topic; is biblically grounded in God’s Word; includes practical applications; and provides additional resources for follow-up.
As a Christian special needs parent who was advised to have an abortion with our last two children, abortion for me is intensely personal. I shudder to think how different our lives would be now if Bruce and I had accepted the medical counsel we were given and chosen to have an abortion with out last two children. How much we would have missed by not having James Bruce and Daniel in our family and lives.
From the beginning of my involvement with the Life Curriculum, I knew that abortion and special needs parenting had significantly impacted, not just my life personally, but my family’s life too. As our Theology of Life materials developed over the last year, however, I slowly realized I’ve personally encountered every cultural issue that we’re addressing, except foster parenting. Now entering my seventh decade, my husband and I are both facing our own aging issues, not just with us, but also with his elderly mother. My Mama suffered vascular dementia before dying at age 92. My brother, sister, and I faced difficult end of life decisions with our Dad after he suffered a massive heart attack and was left in a coma for several weeks. Birdie James’ recent birth has given me a new understanding of both the grief and pain that accompany infertility and the unspeakable joy that has come with her adoption.
All of us are living in a culture that is obsessed with gender, sexuality, and identity. Born as image bearers of God (Genesis 1:26), we must all be able to answer these important questions:
Who am I? (a question of identity)
Where did I come from? (origin)
Why am I here? (purpose)
Where am I going? (eternity)
How do I know right from wrong? (morality)
We might not think that our views on abortion, aging, eldercare, or special needs parenting share a connection, but Samuel James links them together with these words:
“Once you decide some human life doesn’t really matter, it becomes easier and easier to decide that other human life doesn’t either. The tide of logic that bears up the abortion regime also breaks against the lives of the elderly, the mentally ill, the depressed, etc…In so many corners of American life there is an ascendant hatred for those people who need more than self-help lit and positivity seminars.”
James’ words echo those of the late Francis Schaeffer who believed that because human beings are made in the image of God, we possess inherent dignity. Commenting on Schaeffer’s work, Christopher Talbot writes, “Without the imago Dei, he (Schaeffer) argued, human life is cheapened and lacks value, leading to an increase not only in abortion, but also in infanticide, euthanasia, child abuse, pornography, torture, crime, and violence. Schaeffer understood that abortion did not operate in isolation; it opened the doorway to other evils.”
God, the Author of life, commands us to choose life-all life- from womb to tomb.