But as I progress in life and grow in my relationship with Christ and His church, I find myself moving away from some of the things I felt to be true. Freedom and liberty are still the lenses of the glasses I wear. After all, God has granted us all free will. But I now struggle with certain social issues that dominate the news of today and am starting to question what I thought was the best approach for our nation to take with regards to these issues.

There are two issues that I feel are at the forefront, and we as a nation and as individuals need to address them. The issues are different in name but the same in nature and speak to who we are as a nation. Those issues are women’s rights, specifically abortion, and gun control. Women’s rights dominated much of 2012 with the healthcare mandate of contraception and what was made of the candidates’ views on them during the election process. We also experienced horrific events involving gun violence, with the Sandy Hook massacre being the most notorious.

How I tie those two issues together is this: value of life. How do we value life? It is no shock to me that we as a nation suffer from tragedies such as Sandy Hook; we have lost our value for life. We no longer see life as a gift. We no longer see life as a blessing that God has given to us only to be offered back to Him in thanksgiving. We no longer have love for life. I can say all this because of what we as a nation allow, the killing of innocent children. I’m not referring to the poor children who died in that elementary school, I’m referring to the thousands upon thousands of children who are killed through abortion each year.

That may sound controversial to some, and there are others who will tell me as a man I cannot speak about what a woman does with her body. But what I’m referring to is not about a woman’s choice; I’m referring to the lack of love we have for life. When you think about love, one of the greatest loves there is in this world is the love that a mother has for her child. When we as a nation accept abortion, we are negating that love, we are negating our value for life; we as a nation are saying that it is ok for a mother to kill her child. When we can be accepting of that, how can we be perplexed by one individual killing another individual or group of individuals, child or adult, who are strangers to them?

This may sound like a loose tying together of two issues, but I disagree. They are two prominent issues today, and both revolve around the same premise, how do we value life? Guns are not the problem, we are the problem. When we start to revalue life and see it through the eyes of God, where every person is made in His image, then we can truly start to attack the problem at hand.

I used to be one who thought you vote with your wallet and let people live as they want to live, in freedom and liberty. But as I grow, I see that the social issues are even more important than any monetary or fiscal policy because they speak to who we are as a nation. When we value life, it will carry over into every aspect of our nation: how we treat our children, how our children respect their elders, how we treat the poor, how bosses treat their employees, how coworkers treat each other, how we treat those we pass by in the street, how we treat each and every person. As the proverb says, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sins diminish tribes.” Hopefully we as a nation can learn to live in righteousness again.