Valuing Life!

While many are discussing the State of the Union Address, this article will take this moment in time and history to consider the real state of this United States and where things need to change to turn us around and unite us as a Nation. There is so much yet to be learned or understood, as I have regularly written and talked about since my life was turned upside down following the still deadliest school shooting in U.S. history at Virginia Tech on 4-16-07. So far, as of this date in 2014, there have already been 9 school shooting incidents (including one just occurring at Roosevelt High School in Honolulu Hawaii), which puts us on track to have far more than the 28 school related shootings in 2013. On top of that, there was a recent mall shooting in Columbia, Maryland, where three, including the shooter, were killed and five others injured. What is going on with our society and with our values? A large part of the problem is that we are not valuing life as we should!

Did you hear about the recent anniversary of the terrible decision that has led to the loss of millions of lives? Last Wednesday marked the 41st anniversary of that landmark Roe vs. Wade Court decision that has since led to the extinction of around 57 million beating hearts…FIFTY SEVEN MILLION LIVES (far more than the 10-26 million Hitler had killed during the Holocaust)! Scientifically, when a woman becomes pregnant, she is carrying a human life (even from the moment of conception) and the heart begins beating by 18 days from conception (before most women even know they are pregnant). How are you valuing life when you are willing to take a life for what seems to be more convenient or better for your own situation? That is only self-centered thinking for your own life and not valuing life itself. How are you valuing life when you support this “choice” of a woman that ignores the choice of the life she is carrying? How are you valuing life, when you vote and support leaders who do not value the life of the unborn?

What is life anyway? It is not merely what scientists often use to describe it by pointing to the DNA and cell structures. Life is not merely a collection of chemicals and proteins contained in a body. Chemically, all of the DNA structure and makeup of a body is still there at the moment of death, even when the life of that body has departed. Life is something more than the physical. Life is spiritual. Life is something greater that is given to us by a Creator! Life never comes from non-life. One cannot reasonably say that matter alone brought about all of the life that we see and experience. Believing in evolution as the explanation for life and all that we see is only an example of the problem or a root of the problem—not valuing life. Only when we understand that we have a Creator, can we begin to properly value life. Only when we think about who we are and Who our Creator is, will we come to live our life as we should and appreciate all life as we should.

What does this United States need? What can we do to turn around our culture, which is increasingly devaluing life? We can learn to trust the One who came that we might have life (eternal) and that we might live it to its fullest (John 10:10). We can come to realize what our Founders understood and declared—that we “are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We can learn to accept that Jesus Christ is indeed The Way, The Truth and The Life (John 14:6), Who gave His life to offer forgiveness from our sin, that we might have eternal Life. We must be Valuing Life as our Creator has given and entrusted us with!