Pastors Roundtable – Chicago

Calling all pastors in the Chicago area!

We could use your help formulating theological responses to ethical points of contention surrounding in vitro fertilization, embryonic adoption, and contraception. Would you please join us, Katie Schuermann and Rebecca Mayes, for a roundtable discussion of these issues and their effects on all of us in the church? Lunch will be provided by our generous hosts at Apostles Lutheran Church. Please RSVP by Wednesday, March 20th through the Submit a Question page on this website if you plan to attend.

When: Friday, March 22nd
Where: Apostles Lutheran Church, 10429 Fullerton Ave., Melrose Park, IL 60164

Roundtable Schedule:

10:00 AM – Arrive in the narthex (coffee available)
10:15 AM – Matins
10:45 AM – Roundtable discussion
12:00 PM – Lunch

Thank you for your help!

How Long Do I Wait?

Question Submitted: How long does one wait? Every month brings disappointment. Then the thought, maybe next month will be the one. How do you decide to take the plunge and go see your doctor? I have three children. I am ashamed to be asking. I feel like I shouldn’t be so disappointed, but yet, it is like someone is missing from our family. My youngest is over 3 and a half. I saw my doctor a year ago and she thought I was under a lot of stress from moving and hadn’t been consistently “trying” long enough. They did basic blood work and some ultrasounds. Nothing was wrong. She mentioned the word endometriosis, but said the only way to know would be invasive procedure. But, now, I’ve given it that year of documented trying and expensive ovulation and pregnancy tests. I know I ought to be content. But, who is there to share my sorrow with? It is indescribable and I feel selfish and ungrateful. I have not miscarried. I am not barren. I love my kids. I ought to be thankful, and I am…but not enough. I cringe when people now talk to me assuming that I am “done” with having children, as if it is a decision I made. To some in the world they think it is good. Others look at me with their 5 or 6 children and continuous talk about having a quiverfull, and think that I must be “worldly.” I am guilty of having said I “want as many as the Lord gives me,” and yet it is not true. Why is it so hard to accept if I have no more? And when is it not wrong to seek medical help? The doctor said to come back after 6 months, but I haven’t been able to do it yet. I keep hoping maybe next month. Trust the Lord.

My dear sister in Christ, it is so hard to accept the number of children you have now, because children are a blessing from God; and whenever we are not given that blessing, we see all too clearly the Sin which leaves the world and our wombs broken. We know that God created the one-flesh union in marriage to be fruitful, and it hurts and is terrifying whenever our marriage ceases to bear such blessed fruit.

As if our own pain and fear are not enough, Satan and his minions taunt and tease our consciences, trying to make us believe our childlessness is God’s punishment for that Sin. They want nothing more than for us to doubt God’s goodness and mercy toward sinners, toward us. They want us to believe that Christ’s sacrifice was not enough for us, that our childlessness is a needed penance for full atonement. They want us to believe in our own works for salvation, not in the all-saving work of Christ on the cross.

Lord, have mercy and deliver us from doubt and unbelief!

Here is the truth found in God’s Word: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:1, 22-24 [ESV]) We know with assurance that the fruit of our womb is no reflection of our relationship with God in Christ Jesus. It is simply a manifestation of the world’s brokenness as it waits for the Resurrection Day.

You ask me how to decide to take the plunge and go see a doctor? Talk to your husband, your pastor, your trusted loved ones and ask yourself this question: Why do you want to see a doctor? Do you seek relief from an ailment which causes your health to suffer? Do you seek an answer to the puzzle that is your fertility? Do you desire closure after months, even years, of trying to get pregnant? I believe these are all healthy motivations for seeking medical attention, because they simply seek a conclusion and physical relief. These motivations do not require a certain outcome of God, confusing the line between Creator and creation. These motivations keep you in a position to receive gifts from God, whatever those gifts may be.

Remember that it is not wrong to seek medical help for infertility. Healing medicine is part of the daily bread God provides for us, and it is good and right to try to make the body whole. We are free in Christ to undergo diagnostic tests, receive treatments, have surgeries, take medications, and receive help from a doctor for the healing purposes of our flesh. We just need to remember that our freedom in Christ is intended by God to serve our neighbor, not ourselves, so be discerning. There are some forms of infertility medicine that cease to be healing medicine because they potentially hurt or harm our neighbor (our husband and the very children we want to conceive) and thereby break the Fifth Commandment of our Lord. Also, guard yourself against the temptation to serve your own desire for a child when it means trusting the words of your doctor over the Word of God. We break the First Commandment of our Lord when we dethrone Him, the True Creator, in our hearts and replace Him with a make-shift god constructed of our own wishes and desires.

My personal advice? You’ve been waiting a long time, and your heart is aching with the unknown. Go. See your doctor. Find out what you in good conscience can, and be at peace, trusting that God is working everything for your good. And know that you are not alone in the body of Christ, sister.

Now, a quick word to that body of Christ:

We are so cruel to each other in the church. The woman with too many children is judged by others to be an unconscionable rabbit, the woman with too few children gets labeled a personification of the Enlightenment, and the woman with no children is hailed as a contracepting Machiavel.

No doubt, there are women in all three of these categories whose number of children is self-determined by an obedience to some damning, worldly Law, but let’s be good Lutherans and put the best construction on everything. Let’s look at the number of children a woman has been given and rejoice at God’s goodness to her in both His blessing and His withholding. Let’s not judge each other behind hands in whispered gossip but, instead, encourage each other openly by proclaiming the truth in love: God in His wisdom and mercy both gives and doesn’t give the gift of children. Praise be to God!

Mama Bear

I know you’re afraid. I am, too.

We’re going against natural instinct, you and me. We know we’re not supposed to step in between a mama bear and her cub, but that’s exactly what we’re doing when we speak out against infertility medicine which breaks commandments of the LORD. We are stepping in between a mother and the children to which she feels entitled.

And a mama bear’s roar is terrifying.

Yet, we step in, nonetheless, because all children are loved and wanted by God, not just by mama bears. Every child’s value is best seen and understood at the foot of the cross on which Christ’s bloody sacrifice was laid out for them. We love these children, because God loves them; and we don’t want any of them to be valued solely for what they provide for the mama bear or the research technician or any other self-serving individual. We want to protect these precious children from being recklessly created outside of the one-flesh union where they can be graded, tested, abandoned, and destroyed.

Things could be different. We could be proactive in applying theology to infertility medicine rather than reactive. We could intentionally teach and counsel couples to live life under the cross of barrenness rather than encourage them to try every possible means to overcome it. We could speak the truth in love that children are not a commodity to which we are entitled in this life but a gift which God in His wisdom gives and doesn’t give. We could be honest in the Church and admit that God has not promised in His Word to give the gift of children to everyone.

Maybe, just maybe, this kind of honesty spoken in love would help the barren mama bears cope a little better. I know it helps me.

Playing God?

Question Submitted: How do you respond to a woman who is nearing the age of 50 (and her husband is over 50) and hasn’t yet reached menopause and wants to be on the pill, because, although she can possibly still bear children, she feels like at her age she would have a hard time raising an infant (and the risk of Down’s Syndrom is big). She has a family and is perfectly content with the way God has blessed them. She doesn’t want to “play God,” but she also feels like God has given her the wisdom to make a decision to have her family remain as it is. How do you respond to this?

This is not the typical kind of question we usually address on this website, but it is great, nonetheless. The answer even applies to childless women like me, for “the righteous [whether barren or blessed] shall live by faith.” However, since I have no personal experience that can offer empathy to the mother of many children, I have invited a much wiser, more articulate friend to respond to this question, one who understands from personal experience both the blessing and the cross that come with this particular line of questioning. Take it away, Rebekah:

This sounds like a question from my future self. 🙂

I am 34. I have six children and am perfectly content with the way God has blessed me. At every age I have had a hard time raising an infant, just not the same hard time.

The conventional human wisdom of our time tells us that when a woman is older, if she’s happy with the family she has, she should quit. Significantly, contemporary human wisdom says out of the other side of its mouth that an older woman who wants more babies has every right to them (at which point all the arguments for having a child at an older age, such as greater maturity and financial stability, get trotted out without irony). But God in his eternal wisdom never saw fit to tell us how many is too many, how risky is too risky, or how old is too old (if the existence of natural menopause is considered an insufficient answer). All God tells us is that children are a blessing–no qualifications or asterisks. It’s not a trick question He gave us to sniff out unsophisticated spirituality.

The hardships that come with, as the medical profession calls it, “advanced maternal age,” are real. As my friends and I age, it has become clear that motherhood does not get easier, especially in terms of its physical demands. I’m not looking forward to it. My end game could mean a baby who needs a lot more help than my others at a time when I feel like I ought to be heading out to pasture rather than buckling down harder than ever. My final years of fertility could bring with them nothing more than anxious uncertainty and an anticlimactic, empty ending I can only recognize as such after the fact. They could bring miscarriages and heartbreaks I can’t really bring myself to think about. Pregnancies, deliveries, and recoveries are almost certainly not going to get easier for me.

Or the God of all mercy and Giver of all good things could give Old Me yet another son or daughter, made in His image, redeemed from sin by the blood of Christ. There’s a very good chance that baby would be perfectly healthy. It’s a risk only He could make me willing to take.

Rebekah Curtis

Close to Home

Question Submitted: I found your article in The Lutheran Witness, “Why Am I Barren?” very thought provoking. There was one statement in it that I did not understand or catch what you meant or intended. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, a gift from Him, and that good gift is received, NOT MADE MANUFACTURED OR MADE.” [caps added by submitter]

What are you saying with the last phrase? Are you implying that in vitro fertilization brings forth a “manufactured or made” child? And therefore in vitro fertilization is not God pleasing and contrary to His will?

We have grandchildren who are precious gifts from the Lord via in vitro fertilization. Their mother is an OB-GYN doctor who has delivered over 1,000 gifts from God to their parents.

I believe that the Lord answered our daughter’s barrenness with a son and a daughter by the same modern, medical technology that grants His healing and extends lives by kidney dialysis, heart transplants, and chemotherapy which are all “manufactured and made” answers to prayer by the talents and abilities that God grants to people.

I really appreciate that you shared with me the details of your family’s experiences. Praise be to God for the precious gifts He has given you in your grandchildren!

I think we would agree that, as Christians, we interpret all of life in this world in light of Scripture. Therefore, we can know with certainty that all children are exactly what God tells us they are in His Word: a heritage from Him. Whatever controversies surround in vitro fertilization (IVF), the children that are conceived and born to us through such procedures are still a heritage from the Lord. God’s love is what makes any and every child valuable in this life, not the means of parentage. Your grandchildren, without a doubt, are precious treasures who are wanted and cherished by our Lord, so much so that Christ died for them.

I also agree that healing medicine in and of itself is part of the daily bread God provides for us. It is part of how He richly and daily provides us with all that we need to support this body and life. Seeking medical attention where there is infirmity is natural and right. It is appropriate to try to make the body whole as long as it does not break one of our Lord’s Ten Commandments.

Knowing that, we must be consistent and interpret all of life in this world – even IVF – through the light of Scripture, and it is the genetic testing, grading, discarding, and freezing of embryos as well as the selective termination of the multiple fetuses implanted in the procedure of IVF that set it apart from other healing medicines (such as the kidney dialysis, heart transplants, and chemotherapy you listed in your question). We break the Fifth Commandment of our Lord (“You shall not murder”) when we employ any procedure that hurts or harms our neighbor in his body and fails to help and support him in every physical need. This commandment includes children in our wombs and unwanted, discarded embryos.

Consequently, in answer to your question: I feel confident in writing that any procedure which breaks commandments of our Lord is, indeed, contrary to His will, and I do not see how IVF, a procedure which serves the needs of self over the needs of the neighbor, can be pleasing to God. Thankfully, God is pleased with us because of Christ and forgives us of our sin, and He promises to work all things, even infertility medicine, for good for those who love Him and keep His commandments.

If you are interested, I write further about this issue in the posts Is IVF Healing Medicine? and The Bypass Surgery Analogy.

Also, here are a couple resources I recommend from the LCMS website that can better and more fully articulate the controversies surrounding IVF:

What Are We to Do with the Embryos? by Richard Eyer

A Review of Reproductive Technologies by Richard Eyer

I am thankful for the candor in your question, and I do not mean to make light of all that you must feel as a grandfather regarding this topic. Yet, my brother in Christ, we must interpret all of life through Scripture. Know that Christ has died for all sin, and, please, as you read these posts and documents, go talk with your pastor. He is God’s man there for you.

Unanswered Prayer

Have you yet to receive a “yes” to your prayer for a child? Does it feel like God leaves your prayer unanswered?

Our Sunday school class has been studying prayer. This past Sunday, Pastor Schuermann drew our attention to this quote from Dr. Martin Luther on the problem of unanswered prayer:

It is not a bad sign, but a very good one, if things seem to turn out contrary to our requests. Just as it is not a good sign if everything turns out favorably for our requests.

The reason is that the excellence of God’s counsel and will are far above our counsel and will, as Isaiah 55:8-9 says:”For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” And Psalm 94:11: “The Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain.” And Psalm 33:10: “The Lord brings the counsels of the nations to nought; He frustrates the plans of the peoples and casts away the counsels of princes.” Hence it results that when we pray to God for something, whatever these things may be, and He hears our prayers and begins to give us what we wish, He gives in such a way that He contravenes all of our conceptions, that is, our ideas, so that He may seem to us to be more offended after our prayers and to do less after we have asked than He did before. And He does all this because it is the nature of God first to destroy and tear down whatever is in us before He gives us His good things, as the Scripture says: “The Lord makes poor and makes rich, He brings down to hell and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:7).

By this His most blessed counsel He renders us capable of receiving His gifts and His works. And we are capable of receiving His works and His counsels only when our own counsels have ceased and our works have stopped and we are made purely passive before God, both with regard to our inner as well as our outward activities. This is what He means when He says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Therefore, when everything is hopeless for us and all things begin to go against our prayers and desires, then those unutterable groans begin. And then “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). For unless the Spirit were helping, it would be impossible for us to bear this action of God by which He hears us and accomplishes what we pray for. Then the soul is told: “Be strong, wait for the Lord, and let your heart take courage and bear up under God” (Psalm 27:14). And again: “Be subject to the Lord and pray to Him” “and He will act” (Psalm 37:7, 5). (Luther on Romans 8:26, AE 25:364-5)

Effects of Sin

Sin – all Sin, Adam and Eve’s, yours and mine – leaves our world broken, laboring in pain for the resurrection when all things will be made new. Sin leaves even our children broken, and so we miscarry.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Hear from a grieving mother, your sister in Christ:

Have you ever tried to catch a snowflake, anxious to see its intricacies, only to find that it has melted before your eyes even had a chance to focus? Have you ever seen a flash in the sky and turned around just as the last sparkles of a shooting star vanish, only to realize you missed the show? But then there are other times when you’re walking out of a store, late in the evening, tired from the days events, when suddenly the whole sky lights up right in front of you, right over your head, and the shooting star seems so close you could reach up and touch it…and no one else even gets to see it. It’s like it was only for you, and you didn’t even ask for it.

When I think of the baby that just died in my belly before I was even big enough to change into maternity clothes, I don’t think of the melting snowflake…I think of the shooting star that lit up the sky right in front of my face. I did not deserve Anastasia. My sin and status as a fallen creature is so interwoven into my being that its claws reach not only into my own life…but into the flesh of my children. It is evident in Anastasia’s death. It was not just my sin, but our sin. We all share in the sin that leaves us broken, weeping, alone, sick, and sometimes…in despair. We all share in death because we all share in sin, in our sin.

But there’s something else we all share in…our Savior. Anastasia was bathed in the blood of Christ. Her little ears were covered in God’s Word. And her home, for twelve weeks, was the body of one Baptized into Christ and made a temple of the Holy Spirit by God’s gift of Holy Baptism.

The doctors offered to let me have a D&C the day we found out Anastasia had died. But I couldn’t go. I was so overcome with my sin, with it’s effects, that I needed to grieve and confess. I have never wept so hard or long. Then I called a dear sister in Christ and, when she answered, I burst into tears telling her I didn’t even know why I was calling. We wept together.

And in Anastasia’s death, in my sin, I felt dead with her. But Jesus, He was dead too. Not half dead, not a little bit dead, He was dead. He was dead in our trespasses and sins. Have you ever thought about and wondered what those three days must have been like for His followers? God was dead. They were alone. And to add salt to the wound, they had to carry on in the work and physical labor of burial while grieving. And yet they were still alive. God’s power was enough to sustain His creation even when He was dead.

I carried Anastasia for twelve weeks. And then I carried her, dead, for ten days. One of those days was Ash Wednesday. I will never forget carrying her to the front of the church to receive ashes on my forehead. Presenting my other children for ashes felt like I was handing them over to death as well. Knowing that I infected them with the same sin that poured out death on my sixth child was unbearable. We were all being marked with death…but, it was death in the shape of life, even while I carried death inside of me.

And then I went into labor. I labored for five hours at home. I’ve given birth four times at home to our living children and the pain was no less in duration or strength to birth one so small. When she came I scooped her up and I held my snowflake. Twelve weeks with ten fingers and ten toes, two tiny ears and her mouth open just far enough that I could see her tongue and gums. She is God’s tiny miracle, put right into my hands for me to behold. She might be gone now, as quickly as a shooting star, but she was there, she was mine, and I am overcome with God’s mercy, goodness, and love for us sinners before we yet knew Him. The Lord is merciful. He forgives all. And because we are adopted by His grace, we and our children are adopted into LIFE. Death is not the end of Anastasia’s story, or of my or your stories. Easter is coming. Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Melanie Sorenson

Hagar

Yesterday, many of you sent me a link to a CNN story by Elizabeth Cohen:

“Surrogate Offered $10,000 to Abort Baby”

Here we see The Sarah Syndrome gone wild.

1 genetic father + 1 wife + 1 anonymous egg donor + 2 IVF embryos + 1 surrogate birthmother + 2 adoptive parents = 1 child alive, 1 child dead, and 1 social and legal mess

I am afraid of the fact that cases such as these are getting court time. The more court rulings that are made on sperm donor, IVF, and surrogacy cases, the more…I don’t know, I guess the more we formally and publicly despise, defile, and – God help us! – abandon the one-flesh union and adoption as the means of parentage in our country. And so may times the children involved in these cases are treated as property with no individual rights of their own.

We are different from the world, Baptized Christians. Always have been, always will be. Remember that.

Infertility Medicine: An Unregulated Industry

They’ve gone rogue.

The infertility industry not only allows for unreported, anonymous sperm donations and child-freezing but also for the killing of children at the whim of adults (parents, judges, doctors, technicians, etc.).

What about the children’s rights? They basically have none, at least not any that an adult would feel bound to respect, and the children involved have the disadvantage of not being the paying customer in the industry. There are no checks and balances set in place, legal or social, to protect the rights of the children created, handled, and destroyed by the infertility industry.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute explains it this way in an interview with Todd Wilken on Issues, Etc. (November 22, 2011):

“A lot of our social systems have built-in, self-correction mechanisms…[T]he free market where we let people do what they want has built into it a system of property rights protection and a system of competition to keep people from getting too far out of hand. There’s nothing built in to in vitro fertilization and the industry around it that stops people from going too far. Absolutely nothing.”

If there are no checks and balances set in place in the infertility industry, what exactly is powering the frantic steam roller that is infertility medicine? Dr. Morse explains:

“[W]e have sort of drifted into the system that we have now. [N]obody ever sat down and said to themselves, ‘You know, I think it would be a great idea if anyone with money could do anything they want as far as bringing a child into being, whether they have to have a relationship with their child’s other parent or not. We’re going to give legal parenting rights to whoever intends to be a parent, never mind if there’s any biological relationship or anything like that.’ Nobody sat down and thought through and said, ‘Hey, this is a great idea. Let’s do it.’ We just kind of drifted into this position, and the in vitro fertilization industry is pretty much unregulated. People say it’s like the Wild West. Well, that’s actually kind of a smirch on the Wild West, because the Wild West did have some sense of order and some internal sense of right and wrong. And in this particular case, people seem to think that as long as the adults get what they want, they don’t really have to think through what they’re doing to the individual child. And they certainly don’t have to think through what they’re doing to the whole system that everybody is operating within…I think it is really quite appalling that what we’ve got is a system that is being driven by two things…One, it’s being driven by the passions of the infertile woman, and, two, it’s being driven by the greed of the infertility industry.”

(Dr. Morse’s full interview can be heard here.)

In a recent interview on NPR’s Fresh Air (January 17, 2013), science editor Judith Shulevitz shines the light on the fact that we can’t even be sure of the longterm medical consequences to both the mother and children affected by infertility treatments:

“[W]e just don’t know what we’re doing. There just isn’t a lot of data, particularly in America. The good stuff is coming out of other countries where they actually have the information collated in a national health registry. In this country, the fertility industry only reports pregnancy rates to the CDC – the Centers for Disease Control – and we don’t do follow up studies.”

Ms. Shulevitz continues to explain that it is not just a lack of required data which should cause us concern but also the cavalier, consumer-driven mentality which steam-powers an already unregulated industry:

“[W]e’re not studying [fertility] enough. We don’t regulate it enough.[W]e celebrate triumphantly each breakthrough as if it was an absolute good, and we don’t go cautiously enough and I think that’s a problem, and as the age of first birth creeps up more, and more women are going to be availing themselves of these technologies, and I think that we really ought to go carefully.”

(Ms. Shulevitz’s full interview can be heard here. PLEASE NOTE: I neither agree with nor endorse Ms. Shulevitz’s personal views on feminism, birth control, or family planning.)

More than That

So many people say to us, “How dare you speak out against IVF! I have two children/grandchildren today thanks to IVF.”

The difficult truth is that, actually, you probably have many more than that.

We just don’t see these children. We don’t hear of them, speak of them, or even know about them. They are either currently frozen in liquid nitrogen at -321 degrees Fahrenheit, or they have already died from the thawing process, from failed implantation, or from being rejected and discarded for their perceived lack of viability or their perceived genetic “flaws.”

Did you know that there are currently an estimated 600,000 of these children frozen in time? And these children have no legal rights. Well, they have the legal right to be made but not the legal right to keep living.

Lord, have mercy and forgive us.