Concordia TheoBLOGical Seminary

Plants deserve respect is what a team of Swiss experts say about the dignity of creatures in the plant world. How can this be when people across the world, the born and unborn alike, are treated with less respect and less dignity than garbage to be gotten rid of?

Perhaps this statement will call attention to the tragedy of abortion, but it doesn’t seem likely. It does, however, illustrate for us a point on abortion: Abortion has changed the way mankind views life in general. The abortion ethos has subtly seeped into all of our thinking, Christian and pagan alike, to the extent that we view life and death as a matter of choice. This ethos of choice has deceived us into thinking that we actually have a choice in everything and that nothing rests on the promise and word of our creator. It has so infiltrated our thinking that it has even permeated our understanding of marriage, of procreation itself, of what it means to be free in Christ, and how the law of God still functions for those in Christ. We need to reevaluate our understanding, or misunderstanding, as it were, of where choice and freedom intersect with what God has actually given for his creatures to do and how they shall live.

Perhaps this is a problem unique to American Christianity, which especially prizes choice and freedom. This freedom, however, is not always recognizable in its biblical understanding but is rather in an egalitarian, Jeffersonian understanding. This is problematic because at its worst this sort of freedom upholds individuality over against protection and defense of the neighbor and leads to the chief virtue of choice. In the church, anything that limits freedom and choice is seen as legalistic and, de facto, antithetical to the gospel. This is tragic because it instills and upholds a sense of autonomy within the church, when in fact, Christian freedom leads us into service to our neighbor. It binds us to them in love for them. We are free to love them in that we are freed from having love our neighbors in order to earn love for God. Yet, we are not free not to love them. It is our duty as neighbors.