Growing up in Nebraska is an experience I would recommend to anyone who might, somehow, get a second chance at life. Our heritage was farming, but my dad is a CPA. He wore a suit and went into the office five days a week, six during tax season. Both of my grandfathers were farmers, and I am proud to be a part of that heritage. 

I never planned to grow up and own land, ride horses, butcher chickens, or do the many other activities that encompassed my childhood. However, I did plan to carry on the legacy of the hard work that I learned as a kid. I also grew up in a strong Christian context, of which I am still a part and of which I am still proud. While Christianity has had many failures, I believe that Christianity in its best form is something that I can be proud to perpetuate. A final aspect of my heritage is the dedication to a conservative, pro-life view of the world. I have never really identified as strongly with particular political views as I have with my Christian faith or rural background. But my continued dedication to being pro life, specifically, has always been something to which I have planned to continue to identify. Recent events, however, have caused me to question the heritage I come from and what it really means.

I moved to Wichita, Kansas over ten years ago. It is similar to my childhood stomping grounds in Nebraska in many ways, and I have found it to be a great place to live. I served as a pastor until right before the pandemic hit. I stepped down as pastor because I was planning to move into a more educational setting since I had recently finished my PhD in Theology. After the pandemic began, education as we knew it changed drastically. Universities were in a hiring freeze. I had to rethink my career goals, for the next year at least. 

I saw a posting for a job as a year-long Chaplain Resident at one of the two regional hospitals in the Wichita area. I decided that this could be a great opportunity to serve in ministry during a particularly challenging time that hospitals were facing. I was offered the job. For the last six months, I have served people during some of their darkest moments, as they suffer all kinds of loss. I have primarily worked alone, during the evening/overnight shift. The most difficult times at the hospital were at the height of the pandemic. 

Every evening when I stepped through the hospital doors, I knew there would surely be a COVID death that I would walk through with an unknown family. Would I be standing at a patient’s bedside while they are hooked to a ventilator, unable to respond; holding a tablet to allow their family one last desperate chance to express their love and say their goodbyes, forever? Or would I be standing with a family in the ICU, outside of the room, peering through the glass doors as they say their goodbyes; confirming, once again, that they are not allowed into the room? Maybe I would be reading Scripture, clothed in a thin plastic gown, an N95 mask, face shield, and rubber gloves, an act that I hoped would bring comfort to the patient as they take their last breath, with no family or friends of which to speak?

While those were hard nights, sometimes the days were even harder. I was hearing ideas from a large number of my hard-working, Christian, pro-life tribe that I just couldn’t understand. In the beginning, I thought I understood where they were coming from; but I also thought, once I, a hard working, Christian, pro life, midwesterner told them how so many people were dying from the pandemic, they would surely change their minds. Maybe they didn’t believe the Italians or the New Yorkers, but they would surely believe me. I was wrong. 

I was reminded instead that the economy was more important. It was just the “old and sick people” that were dying anyway. What I grew up learning in the church and what I preached from the pulpit was that money never made anyone happy. I would preach with conviction that the love of money was the root of all kinds of evil, and this message would be received with affirmation. But when the loss of money actually came into question, I was suddenly hearing that maybe we should consider sacrificing the weak and elderly at the altar of the economy. 

How could this be? If it could be proven that an increase in the death of unborn children would increase GDP by 5%, should I consider it worth it? What about 10% growth? Imagine how fantastic 20% would be! It was my conviction that I should never consider money more important than someone made in the image of God. Was I wrong? If I was wrong about that, how else have I been wrong? 

Do I work hard primarily to see the increase in my bank account? I thought I was doing it because it was the right thing to do. Am I only against abortion as long as it doesn’t cost me too much money? Maybe I didn’t understand what the Bible says about the love of money after all? Or maybe my greatest fear of all is true: the fear that I don’t come from where I thought I did. Maybe a hard-working, Christian, pro-life background is not my heritage after all.