Becoming Pro-Burden-Bearing: Valuing Vulnerable Lives Together

Jesus did not come merely to form pro choice believers or pro life believers. He came to form pro burden bearing people. Not pro life, not pro choice, but pro burden bearing. The apostle Paul writes in Galatians chapter two six verse two, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. That phrase, the law of Christ, isn't just incidental. Paul is pointing back to what Jesus himself names as the law of God. [00:46:14] (35 seconds)  #ProBurdenBearing

The kingdom of God is not forming people who merely know how to take sides and be articulate and win arguments. God is forming a pro burden bearing people. People who move toward vulnerable lives rather than away. People who refuse to abandon others. People who make room for inconvenient, quote, inconvenient human beings. People who tell the truth without telling throwing the stones. Perhaps what speaks loudest about the kingdom of God is not the slogans we proclaim, the bumper stickers we have in our car, the things we throw in social media, or the legislative victories we celebrate. [00:53:54] (43 seconds)  #LoveWithoutStones

See the stones, they don't disappear in John eight. They land on him. He drinks the bitter cup. He bears the curse. He passes through death. This is what the God this is what God does with vulnerable humanity. He doesn't stand at a safe distance and say, you guys get it all sorted out and then I'll come in. He enters our vulnerability. He carries what we would never wanna carry. He is condemned so that condemnation loses its power over us. That's the news of the kingdom of God. [00:52:32] (39 seconds)  #JesusTookTheStones

The kingdom of God does not ask us to choose between vulnerable women or vulnerable children. It calls us to become the kind of people where, whom neither must bear fear and shame and isolation or impossible burdens by themselves. But where do we find the grace to become though that kind of people? Go back to that scene in John eight for a moment. After all the stones fall, the crowd disperses. There are only two people left, Jesus and the woman. [00:50:51] (41 seconds)  #NoOneBearsAlone

What kind of people are we becoming when autonomy becomes our highest moral good? What kind of society do we become when women are told, you're free to choose, but you're often left alone to bear impossible burdens? A society may legally protect choice while still fail women profoundly, if many of those choices are driven by fear and isolation rather than hope and support? Sometimes what we call choice is actually desperation managed privately. What kind of people are we becoming when defending unborn life rhetorically with slogans and signs costs us very little personally? [00:43:11] (54 seconds)  #SupportOverSlogans

But as far as I know, according to science, unwanted pregnancies rarely happen apart from male irresponsibility, absence, or coercion. A culture that separates sexual freedom from covenantal commitment inevitably leaves women carrying burdens that men often avoid. And if we are serious about vulnerable life, then men, we have to be serious about what it costs us as men, as community, and as a church. And to the church, the body of Christ, we also must repent, where we have contributed contributed to shame rather than healing. [00:44:47] (49 seconds)  #MenTakeResponsibility

Not because burden bearing earns us something before God, but because it is an expression of love. It is love, enacted, embodied, and costly. Christianity has never understood freedom primarily as freedom from obligation, but freedom for something. It's freedom for love. Freedom to willingly carry one another's weight and participate in one another's flourishing. The pro choice framework reduces freedom to autonomy. My body, my choice, my life alone. [00:47:01] (39 seconds)  #FreedomForLove

We have been formed by more than just scripture. Our views on abortion have followed the same polarizing arc as everything else in our political views, which means if we're honest, many of us come to our convictions, not primarily through prayerful wrestling with scripture together with other Jesus followers, but we come to our positions through political and media ecosystems that have formed us long before we ever come and approach these texts. That's not a liberal problem. That's not a conservative problem. It's a human problem. [00:41:04] (38 seconds)  #EchoChamberConvictions