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Christian author and speaker John Stonestreet often says that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. Perhaps in no arena is this more evident than in issues of life and death.

Yesterday on the blog we introduced the bad idea of Lebensunwerten Lebens, a bad idea originating from German in the early 20th century. According to Lebensunwerten Lebens some life is unworthy of life. We saw how this bad idea led to millions of victims as the Nazi party adopted its twisted logic and applied it to the mass extermination of people whose lives were not considered worthy of life, from the mentally and physically handicapped, to political opponents and the so-called ethnically inferior.

Sadly, the idea of Lebensunwerten Lebens has outlasted the Third Reich. Its demonic logic continues today, often dressed as an angel of light. Countless millions of lives have been destroyed by the holocaust of abortion. Many of those lives were taken simply because the unborn failed a prenatal amniocentesis test, leading his or her parents to determine this was a life unworthy of life. Euthanasia has grown in popularity over the past few decades as more and more people have demanded the right to die on their own terms. Once they believe their lives are not worthy of life, they demand a painless exit.

Christians should know better. The first two chapters of Genesis remind us that life is a gift from God. Genesis 2:7 says, “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

Why did God breathe life into Adam and Eve? He wasn’t lonely. He didn’t need someone to love. The Christian doctrine of Trinity teaches us that God existed eternally in a loving, relational community of Father, Son and Spirit. God created because He overflowed into life. Like a husband and wife’s love for one another overflows into new little lives to love, the Father’s love for Son and Spirit overflows into created life.

And this life is a good gift. Seven times in Genesis 1, God looks at what He’s created and calls it “good.” James 1:17 tells us that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

It is not a person’s so-called quality of life that makes it worth living. Every human life is precious, not because of its quality but because of its source! Life is a gift from God. There is no human life that’s unworthy of life, because all humans are created in the image of God.