Thank you, Rev. Michael Mohr, for this thoughtful, pastoral response to the “So Ashamed” post:

Thank you for this article. It got me thinking in particular about two things.

First – we can often say all of the right things in all the wrong ways, and our shame of the way that people say things can confuse us into rejecting the good and correct points they are trying to make. But we shouldn’t let that ad hominem fallacy keep us from seeing the truth they may have to share.

Second – Just because something is better doesn’t make it good. Yes, non-stimulated harvest of oocytes and implantation of single embryos is “better” because that more closely resembles the God-created process, but does “better” necessarily mean “God pleasing?” It is never “God pleasing” to lose even one child from the womb (regardless of the process by which that child was conceived). I used to be caught in that web of deceit woven by the devil that one-at-a-time fertilization and implantation was better, so it must be good and God pleasing. But better doesn’t mean good. The only things we can say with certainty are good are those things for which we have a clear Word of the Lord (e.g. natural conception in the context of marriage). In all else, even when we didn’t think it was sin to begin with or even if we never realize its true nature as sin, we must rest upon the grace of Christ to cover our sinfulness, confess that sinfulness (as we do in the Lord’s Prayer), and receive the blessing of Almighty God for the sake of His Son, Jesus. That is our only hope – not whether our “better” choices were “good” choices.

Rev. Michael Mohr