This past week Barack Obama and John McCain appeared together at Rick Warren’s church for a discussion of their beliefs. Although I was slightly weirded out that the event was hosted by a church, I was pleased that Warren pushed them on issues relevant to evangelical Christians, particular that of abortion.

For me, the topic of abortion is a very central one. One’s stance on abortion reveals a lot about one’s understanding of the value of human life. Period.

HOWEVER, just because you are opposed to abortion does not mean you are consistently pro-life, and that is what I want to discuss today.

To be pro-life is to value all life, across all ethnic and class lines. And while I don’t want to go into all the details of how that might play out, there is one instance that I want to highlight here:

How does one’s pro-life ideology relate to birth control?

Now before I dive into this, let me give you a little bit of background as to why this has been on my mind of late. You see, recently I’ve been seeing a commercial that irks me every time it airs. In the commercial, a woman stands in the foreground describing all that could happen to her in the next 5 years–she could get a promotion, buy a new house, coach soccer, move to Memphis or finally finish a book.

“But,” the commercial continues, “if your plans don’t include having a baby, then consider taking _______. ”

I then checked out the contraceptive’s website, and it’s all about having a worry-free, hassle-free life.

Now is it me, or are a lot of birth control commercials now sounding just like this? There’s another commercial that bemoans the hardship of having to take a pill every day and how inconvenient that can be. Why not simplify your life with a once a month shot? Or an IUD that you NEVER had to think about? Then you don’t have to deal with the annoyance of daily birth control. What a relief!

The language of these commercials is what gets me–worry free? Hassle free? That’s the same kind of thing you hear about vacations, buying a car, ab workouts, or 30 minute meals. But birth control? They talk about time and sacrifice as if it’s a bad thing, but when it comes to family and children, is “quick and easy” really the best approach?

It is clear from commercials like these that the culture has turned birth control into just another instant gratification means to getting the life you want. A baby is not convenient for me right now, so I’m gonna take a little pill that prevents the unpleasantness of an unwanted child.

And herein lies the problem: when we treat birth control that way, we find ourselves using the exact same language as the pro-choice camp. We treat children as being valuable on a conditional basis. Only when they come at certain, predetermined times are we really excited to have them. Otherwise, they can stand in the way of getting what we want on the time line we want it.

All of this is not to say that birth control is in itself wrong. There is something to be said for being responsible–I wouldn’t have unprotected sex with my husband anymore than I would drive without a seat belt. Trusting God doesn’t mean letting the chips fall where they may. There is a degree to which we must take responsibility for our own actions, and be good stewards of what we have.

But our motives for doing so should be distinctly different than the world’s.

And something else to consider–some birth controls affect the lining of the uterus, making it difficult for an egg to attach to the wall of the uterus. In such cases, it is still possible to get pregnant, but we are, in a sense, creating an inhospitable environment for our potential children. It’s like we’re saying, “I’ll take you, but only if you can survive in the hostile environment I’ve created for you.” That’s not exactly a pro-life attitude is it?

What’s more, artificial birth control requires the very least sacrifice and thought on our parts. Natural birth control demands that we be thoughtful and intentional about our bodies and our sex lives, in a way that taking a pill each day does not. When we take a pill, we don’t have to think about it quite as carefully, which I find a bit worrying. If we call ourselves a people who value family highly and want to discerningly protect it, such an instant gratification approach should cause us to pause and examine ourselves.

It is for all of these reasons that I will seriously have to pray through whether or not to take birth control whenever I get married. There are still natural methods of birth control, so if I don’t take a pill or an IUD, then I will certainly practice natural methods until we feel God calling us to intentionally expand our family. But in the meantime I’m trying to discern what it means to practice “pro-life” with my body and in my language about human life.

Please don’t misunderstand me to mean that taking a contraceptive is morally wrong or counter to Scripture, because that is not at all what I mean. There are certainly times when we are not yet able to provide the life that our children deserve, and in those cases I believe that contraceptives are warranted.

But if it’s simply a matter of inconvenience, if it’s a matter of not having the quality of life you would want to have, not being able to afford all the luxuries you would otherwise be able to have, then be wary. I know a lot of people who say, “We can’t afford to have a baby right now,” but in reality, that’s not really true. If they accidentally got pregnant, they would be just fine–they’d just have to cut corners a bit more. So when we find ourselves speaking about babies that way, we must be honest with ourselves and admit that we are talking about children using the same language as the world.

When it’s all said and done, I don’t have any prescriptive wisdom or a concrete answer to give. I honestly and sincerely believe that each couple should prayerfully make their own decision, and whatever position they come to is right for them. But be sure to ask yourselves how your language about that decision differs from the world. Ask yourselves how the orientation of your heart differs from the world’s. Is this an area of your life that you have totally surrendered to God, or are you wanting to hold a tight grip of control on it, under the guise of being responsible with your resources?

To be pro-life is to value life to the utmost, no matter when or how it comes. That is what I offer here, so let us be Christians who live out our beliefs in every corner of our lives, and lifestyles. Please pray about what that looks like in your own life.

I will never forget the first time I saw a documentary on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In case you are unfamiliar with this great defender of the faith, he lived in Germany during Hitler’s rule, and he was one of the only Christians in the entire country to resist the Nazis. In fact, he and a small band of Christians devised an assassination plot against Hitler. They were almost successful in their attempt, but the plan failed and they were all discovered. Bonhoeffer was subsequently executed.

The reason I loved the documentary so much is that it got me excited about my own faith. Bonhoeffer seemed like the equivalent of a Christian super hero–he stood firm against all odds in the face of clear evil. He fought valiantly, in the name of Christ, and he died for a noble cause.

I want to be a part of such a fight, in which the stakes are high and much is to be lost, but I lay down my life because I am a Christian, and that is my calling. I want to be remembered for standing unflinchingly against the powers of evil. I wanna be like Wonderwoman! Except the Christian version (which would probably have sleeves and knee-length shorts).

And I know that I’m not alone in feeling this way. Many women read about the lives of Jim Eliot, Martin Luther King, or women like Perpetua (who I wrote about last month), Christians who all fought and died for the sake of the Gospel. We read about these individuals, and it stirs something deep within us.

It stirs our inner warrior, that part of us that knows we were created to fight mighty battles on behalf of Christ. We are reminded of what our soul has known all along–that our calling is high and the struggle is great, but we will not have lived if we did not wage this war. We want to rise up and be women of valor, to live and die for something bigger than ourselves.

This desire, this calling, is written on the very foundation of my heart. And I know it is written on yours as well.

But what has become of this call to arms? Are we content to experience the fleeting exhilaration of a good sermon or an inspiring story, and then go back to our mediocre lives, never truly tasting greatness?

I think we are. We have become content to settle, and I see this in the way women talk about church leadership. When we discuss our future roles in the church, we do not use that kind of inspiring language. We do not refer to the imagery of epic battles and spiritual warfare. We leave that to the boys.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard women say “I feel called to marry a pastor” or “I want to marry a church planter.” Heck, I’ve said it myself! But it’s not often that you hear women talk about their own calling to ministry, their own desire to start a church where no church has gone before, their own sweeping visions for the Kingdom of God.

But regardless of where you stand on the topic of women in ministry, there is a degree to which women are unequivocally called to plant churches and lead within the church. Why? Because no person can plant a church alone. No person can lead a congregation alone. It takes a team of visionaries, a group of hard workers with varying gifts to pull off such an undertaking.

So even if you feel that only men should be senior pastors, a minister is nothing without fellow church planters, both male and female. You never hear about a solitary pastor starting a church in his apartment by preaching to his living room furniture and his dog. Instead, you hear about a team of individuals, couples, families and singles who begin meeting and worshiping together, all with one shared goal for their community–the spread of the Gospel.

That said, women are definitely called to be church planters. While there are certainly instances in which a woman must work or stay at home so that her husband is freed up to focus solely on starting a church, that is not the only role that women can fill. If your husband is called to plant a church, then you are not merely “the wife of a church planter”–YOU are a church planter! The two of you are likely called to the same purpose, so you’re not simply tagging along for the ride. Your husband needs a co-laborer who will build him up, spur him on, fill in the ministry gaps that he is not gifted to fill. He needs a fellow soldier who will wield a sword alongside of him.

And if you are single and feel called to church planting, don’t just wait around for a husband who feels the same way. Perhaps God wants you to take action now, to jump on board with a team of people who are praying towards the same end. You can lend your time, experience, training, education, and leadership wherever you are. The church certainly needs it.

Regardless of your circumstances, take ownership of the desire that God has written onto your female heart. Men are not the only ones who God calls to be warriors–the moment you committed to follow Christ, you became a part of a cosmic battle in which you are expected to fight. We are all soldiers together, so take hold of the call to which God is compelling you, and take up your sword. The forces of evil will quake with fear and dread if you will only rise up and respond to God’s battle cry. It’s time to fight like a girl.

This past week a couple in Florida was awarded $21 million from a jury citing the “wrongful birth” of their child. Apparently the couple’s first child had suffered from severe birth defects, but because the doctor had misdiagnosed the defects, not realizing they were genetic, the couple had a second child with the exact same problem. The couple then claimed that had they known their first child’s birth defects were genetic, then they would have terminated the second pregnancy. Unfortunately they are now burdened with the full-time care of two handicapped children, instead of just one.

Interestingly, the nature of the case has some legal implications which may prevent the couple from being awarded the full $21 million. In response to the politics surrounding the case, the couple’s lawyer was quoted as saying, “I believe that this case is so powerful and this tragedy was so preventable and is so poignant, that it is the kind of case that should rise above the fray and rise above party politics.”

That statement makes my stomach turn–what exactly is the tragedy here? That a less than perfect child was born? I can’t imagine how that would make me feel if my parents thought of me as a tragedy. Not good, I bet.

Now I have to admit that there is a part of me that sympathizes with the couple. Caring for a child with a handicap costs a lot of time and money, and not all families are financially able to do so. I don’t know the financial situation of this particular family, but I imagine that if they’d known their next child would have the same defects, they would have probably tried to avoid getting pregnant at all. As a result, this misinformation may have very well put them in a difficult situation. But, I still can’t get over the lawyer’s words. A life was created and brought into this world, and even though it doesn’t meet our American standards, I hardly think labeling the child as a “tragedy” is appropriate–a child with a handicap is by no means comparable to natural disasters or fatal car accidents.

So while I sympathize with the couple, the entire situation seems to reflect more on our culture’s view of children than it does the mere circumstances. Just last week I was watching a show on MTV called “Engaged and Underaged” in which a young couple had decided to get married after having a baby together. You can imagine my shock and horror as I watched the young mother listen to her future mother-in-law berate her for having had the baby. The groom’s mother didn’t want the couple to get married, and when the teenage girl explained that she wanted to be married for the sake of the baby, the woman exclaimed, “Well I told you not to have the baby in the first place! Whose fault is that?!?!” (fyi, this was said while the baby boy was sitting right there…clearly a very sweet family moment)

I can’t get over the fact that this woman talked about her grandchild like that. You would have thought she was talking about buying pants that were too tight, or some other material product that we can return if it displeases or inconveniences us. But just like the lawyer in the Florida story, she simply saw this child’s birth as a “tragedy.”

That is the world we live in. Everything in this world is assigned value based on what it can or cannot do for us–even humans. This is clearly the result of massive self-centeredness, but it has frightening implications, because it robs anything of its inherent worth. Taken to the extreme, there are some secular philosophers and ethicists who believe that babies and old people have little inherent worth because of their inability to care for themselves, anticipate the future, or contribute to society. Because of this thinking, some people have concluded that it is not altogether immoral to let such beings die.

And while that example is extreme, we must not deceive ourselves into thinking we are untouched by this part of our culture’s thinking. This mentality has shaped almost every one of us to some degree or another. In any circumstance in which we see fit to sacrifice another person’s life for a greater cause, we are putting a price on their life. We consider their life to be less valuable than the cause itself, a cause that can be war, peace, politics, religion, or simply the American dream. Almost all of us have figured out ways to devalue other people’s humanity if it stands in the way of what we want. Even on a less violent level, women will insult and dehumanize other women that they are jealous of. If a girl is standing in the way of you feeling confident about yourself, then by all means make fun of her, call her a slut, and slander her. Don’t think about the fact that she has a mother and a father, that she has a heart and a soul, or that she was made in the image of God.

This mentality is not, however, the vision of life that we are given in Scripture. Not only are we told that each life has inherent value simply by virtue of the fact that God saw fit to create it, but more importantly, each person and all of creation is made in the image of God. How dare we reduce people to mere statisitcs when we are talking about God’s image-bearers! We may not be at the forefront of the pro-choice debate, but most of us still have a long ways to go when it comes to taking human life seriously–whether it’s babies or illegal immigrants or even murderers, each person is God’s precious child. It’s about time we start acting like it.