Life Curriculum
“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.”
Three years ago, 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 worked together to develop appropriate materials for addressing some current important life and cultural issues from a biblical worldview. These topics 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 including wills, advance directives, abortion, and euthanasia
Grief and living losses
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 all sanctity of life issues, literally from “womb to tomb.”
Pastors and seminary professors tackle the training for our Pro-Life biblical worldview, gender, identity, and sexuality issues. Christian physicians address fertility, birth control, In vitro fertilization (IVF), abortion, and end of life discussions. During our Life and Law session lawyers address current federal and state abortion laws as well as advance directives, wills, and power of attorney requirements. Seasoned parents speak to the challenges, barriers, and blessings that come with raising special needs, foster, or adopted children. Professional counselors address aging, dementia, and eldercare issues. Our series concludes with a final session on grief. 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. How much we would have missed by not having James Bruce and Daniel in our family and lives. As our curriculum developed, I realized I have personally encountered every cultural issue that we’re addressing, except for foster parenting.
My siblings and I faced eldercare and end of life decisions with both our parents. Bruce and I certainly encountered both the chronic sorrow of special needs parenting and the profound grief of losing a child. Birdie James and Poppie’s births have given me a new understanding of both the grief and pain that come with infertility and the joy and great blessing that has come with adoption. Now entering our seventh decade, my husband and I currently face our own aging issues and are “sandwiched” with caregiving for four generations ages 1-98.
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 this quote:
“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…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.”
Sunday was our final summer teaching session with this summer’s Life Curriculum classes. Our teams ended with a wrap up Q&A session. Participants were allowed the opportunity to ask questions, provide feedback, and complete a course evaluation survey. Those evaluations help our team to continue to improve.
Serving on our Life Curriculum team is a great privilege and blessing to me personally. When James Bruce was five years old, his Daddy challenged me to quit praying that God would make him normal and start praying that God would use him for God’s glory. I began praying that prayer more out of doubt and defiance than anything else. It honestly was more like, “OK God, show me what You’re going to do!” And He did! God continues to use James Bruce’s life for his glory even in his death.
We live in a culture of death filled with abortion, euthanasia, murder, and suicide. God, the Author of life, commands us to choose life from womb to tomb.