Caring, not killing, in a throwaway society by Tom Eggebrecht

Word from the Center
Written By LCRL Staff

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We live in a throwaway society. Our culture values the latest gadgets, the newest cars and the trendiest fashions. Don’t like your iPhone anymore? Throw away the old one and spend many hundreds of dollars on a new one. No big deal. Your car needs a major repair? No need to take it into the mechanic. Throw it away and go get a new one. Human life? If it’s not convenient for you, just throw it away and get on with your life.

The latest statistics we have for abortions in America are from 2014. That year 652,639 legally induced abortions were reported by the Centers for Disease Control. Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act was enacted in 1997. Since then a total of 1,545 people have had lethal prescriptions written and 991 patients have died from ingesting these medications.

This may be how the world works, but it’s not how the Church works. The Church is not a throwaway society — quite the opposite. In 1992, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) published the document Christian Care at Life’s End. It’s a long read, but the seminal phrase of the document is this: “Christians aim always to care, never to kill.” Click here to read more.

Tom Eggebrecht is senior pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church in Casselberry, Florida. This article was first published in and is reprinted here with permission of The Lutheran Witness.

 

Be Informed
What should Christians do when it comes to attend same-sex wedding ceremonies? The Rev. Brian Barlow of Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church, Quartz Hill, Calif., explains.

Be Equipped

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Be Encouraged

“As Christians, each one of us should be deeply steeped in God’s Word. That is where the truth lies. We don’t want to be ‘right’ for our own sake so we can boast in our ‘right-ness.’ We should want to be ‘right’ because God is revealing His truth to us, and we have been aligned with His truth. As we labor together in the life arena, let each one of us be so grounded in God’s Word that we recognize God’s truth and speak it in love.” –Barbara Lane Geistfeld

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