To celebrate life

Jonathan Lange, Only Humann
Posted 1/23/18

Jonathan Lange column for Jan. 23, 2018

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

To celebrate life

Posted

On Saturday, Jan. 13, I was invited to address the March for Life in Cheyenne. Let me share with you my remarks:

Thousands of people, just like you, embody the quiet strength of the pro-life movement. We do not have megadonors and paid demonstrators or lobbyists. We have a love for people who cannot speak for themselves, and the conviction to make their voice heard.

This year’s theme, Celebrate Life, raises two questions: Why is life worth celebrating? and How do we do it?

First, why is life worth celebrating?

We celebrate life, because it is the purest gift that this world knows. 

Human beings are capable of building and destroying practically anything. In this age of technology, we can build rockets that put men on the moon or deliver nuclear warheads. We can split the atom and create new elements. But we are no closer to creating life than we were when Mary Shelly first imagined Frankenstein. 

Not only can we not make human life, we can’t make the simplest of animals, or the most basic plant. Not only are we light-years from being able to build a single-cell organism, scientists have yet to discover what, exactly, life is. We can watch it come into being, and still not know how it happened.

We celebrate life because the one and only way for a new life to come into the world is for God to give it. Life is the blessed intrusion of the divine. It is an uncontrollable power that comes into our dying world. The one thing that we need above all else, and the one thing we cannot give ourselves.

When you think about life in this way, it’s no wonder that it is under attack on every front. Every single life irrefutably declares that there is a Lord and Giver of Life. Life stands as a challenge to every godless creed and worldview. As godless man claims total control over mind, body and spirit, his utter inability to create life shatters the illusion—daily. 

In the Bible we are told how Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from death, became the target of the priests’ wrath. The very fact that he was walking around, alive, was a living testament to Jesus’ power for life. Lazarus marked Jesus as the very God they wanted to deny. “So, the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well” (John 12:10).

Lacking any power to create life, we can either celebrate and cherish it, or hate and destroy it. 

As in the days of Jesus, so also in our own, the high priests in the halls of power display their power by killing and perverting life that God has made. Incapable of making a single zygote or blastocyst, they have built an industry around playing with them like tinker-toys. Unable to be gods, they take what God alone has done, and twist, dissect, freeze, thaw, reassemble, and kill. 

Neither can the high priests of secular religion keep anybody alive forever. So, they exercise the illusion of control in the only way they can. They kill. The practice of medicine arose to support and protect human lives. Now, by “physician-assisted suicide” it is willfully perverted and used to hasten death.

When we celebrate life, we rejoice in the fact that One who is both more powerful and infinitely more good remains in control. And our celebration stands in stark contrast to the willful rage against the Creator, and the grasping for human control.

So, how shall we then celebrate life?

There are a thousand things that you can do to love your neighbor’s life. They are all important. No one can do all of them, but none of them should be left undone. 

This reality can easily lead us to freeze up in indecision, and do nothing at all. It can also lead to angry arguments about priorities and strategies. These neither support the lives of our neighbors, nor foster a deeper love for one another. There’s a better way.

The Bible says, “Blessed is He who considers the poor” (Psalm 41:1). All love starts here. When we set our minds on the lives of those around us love is set in motion and hearts are informed by fact. So much of the neglect and harm that we see around us results from a cultivated thoughtlessness. 

There are topics that we are unwilling to think about because they challenge preconceived notions. There are people that we would rather not think about, and facts that we would rather avoid. This is scandalous.

To consider the lives of real people will always bring us together and lift us up. One of the most cancerous lies to poison our society is the idea that we should love “humankind,” or “the world,” or “nature.” When these become substitutes and stand-ins for the love of specific, real people, love is replaced by ideology, and persons are swallowed up in vague abstractions.

When you set your mind on the real-world problems of real people, you can be informed and equipped to offer real help and not cookie-cutter solutions. As you make this a regular habit and part of your daily routine, you will notice more and more people. 

Consider the unborn, and also their mothers, their fathers, their siblings and grandparents, their uncles and aunts. Think about the depressed and confused, those in danger of doing themselves permanent harm and even death driven by false belief, and despair. As you notice more details and more specific people, God will work several things in you. 

First, vague theories will take on flesh and blood. You see more clearly when you cease thinking about mankind and start thinking about specific people. Issues that are humanized, are less complicated and — more human! Love for actual living people has the ability to blow away the fog and the confusing rhetoric.

Second, God Himself will fill your prayers with purpose and particularity. That’s a promise. The wider you cast your glance, the more you will be overwhelmed by the world’s needs. This realism creates in us a humility that drives us to plead for help. By all means, ask other people to help. But until you ask the One who does all things, you cannot know the peace of resting in His help. 

Third, God will — sooner or later — also lay on your heart a special task. He will start a fire deep within you and present you with opportunities for service that are unique to you. Each member of the body has a different function. We don’t all have to do the same thing. When God calls you to your unique role, follow. It is a blessed invitation to serve.

Never forget, through all of this, that your consideration of the poor is patterned after God’s own consideration of you. None of us knows the value of life as much as the One who gives us life. All of us live in deeper poverty than we can ever know. 

But Jesus knows. He considers the poor. He sets His mind on you. He prays for you. He gives His life for you. The words of the Psalmist are really about Jesus, because He is the most blessed of all. “Blessed is He who considers the poor.”

Jonathan Lange is an LCMS pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. He can be reached at JLange64@allwest.net. Follow his blog at OnlyHuman-JL.blogspot.com.