What is Man?
Tags: abortion, marriage, humanity
Psalm 8:
1 O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is Thy name in all the earth, Who hast displayed Thy splendor above the heavens! 2 From the mouth of infants and nursing babes Thou hast established strength, Because of Thine adversaries, To make the enemy and the revengeful cease. 3 When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him? 5 Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God, And dost crown him with glory and majesty! 6 Thou dost make him to rule over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet, 7 All sheep and oxen, And also the beasts of the field, 8 The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, Whatever passes through the paths of the seas. 9 O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is Thy name in all the earth!
"What is man," the Psalmist asked long, long ago. His answer was exuberant: "Thou has made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty!" The answer that is being given today is not so clear. Then as now, there is no more important question for our civilization to answer than this one.
Is human life special? May humanity be differentiated from the animals and the rest of creation? Is man unique, and is his life sacred? The traditional answer is yes. The universal opinion of our biblically shaped culture until just a few years ago was that man alone of all the creatures was made in the image of God. The imagio dei defined our distinctive hegemony over and superiority to the rest of creation. Few questioned that human life was to be preferred to other forms of life, whether plant, insect or animal. Our criminal laws assume that human life has great value and cannot be harmed without serious consequences. Still today, most people instinctively know that the value of the life of a human infant is superior to that of a fly or cat.
But of late this view has been seriously challenged. A modern, humanistic alternative has begun to rival the traditional Christian position. Its proponents answer the above question decidedly no. Human beings differ from the rest of creation only in degree, not kind. Preference for the human species is branded bigotry: "specism." Human life is not so sacred, ethicists argue, that in times of duress it cannot be terminated, as in the cases of unwanted pregnancies, birth defects, or terminal illnesses. The "sanctity" of life must give way before the principle of the "quality" of life. If an existing or "potential" life will only breathe and not enjoy a "meaningful" quality of life, then that life may be terminated, it is argued. Worse yet, if an existing or "potential" life may compromise the quality of life of those now living (e.g. can't afford to feed the baby; can't afford the medical bills of the elderly), it may be terminated.
Though the proponents of the modern view hate to hear it said, both positions are "faith" convictions, and as such are not empirical and unprovable. The statements that "human life is sacred," and "human life is not sacred" are both statements of religious conviction. One cannot prove that either is true. Finally one can only say, "I believe" that human life is thus and so.
Thus the current crisis in our nation is a religious crisis, inevitably. The cultural war is a religious war. It pits those who hold to a transcendent, absolute, revealed, Christian standard of morality against those who hold to a humanistic, relative, and rationalistic standard. Hanging in the balance is the right to determine the kind of nation America will be. The winner will determine whether our race will see itself as a loving family with God as its Father and definitive rules for the household, or as Malcolm Muggeridge might have put it, as a herd, governed only by instinct, to be bred for the sake of the collectivity.
For this reason, the question "what is man" is the question which we face and the hinge on which the future of our civilization turns. The abortion issue is the current focal point of this broader debate. It is the battle that will determine the outcome of the culture war. Everything rides on this single issue, as the following questions illustrate.
Marriage And Intimacy
First, are heterosexual monogamous sexual relations the only morally valid expression of our sexual nature, or only one of many equally legitimate options? For centuries biblically shaped cultures such as our own have given legal and social preference to heterosexual, monogamous marriage, and have legally discouraged other arrangements. Divorce, illegitimacy, and homosexuality were all stigmatized, if not outlawed as a consequence. But of late we see enormous pressures to normalize single parenting, to sanction homosexual marriages, to permit homosexual and lesbian adoptions, and even allow the artificial insemination of lesbians. Today, children (who have no say) are being raised without a father or mother. What previous generation saw as a fundamental right denied only by an act of God (i.e. the death of one parent), is now seen as optional. Deliberately, intentionally, we are bringing children into the world who will never have a mother or father.
The philosophical hinge on which this revolution turns is naturalism. What is man? Human beings are animals. There is nothing special about them, and as a consequence, there is nothing special about the act that brings them into being. There is no higher meaning to be placed on in the sex act. It has no mystical element. It is purely physical and animal. As with animals, mating can be a transient, happenstance thing. Children, like Bambi, can be left to be raised by their mothers, or by the herd. Fathers are expendable. Sex and even life itself involves no obligations.
It is difficult to overstate the crudity of today's popular culture. Casual sexual encounters, leaving little to the imagination, dominate our public airwaves. Dialogue between the sexes, as portrayed by the media, consists of a string of suggestive comments, loaded with double entendre. Twisted, deranged sex is regularly sensationalized by talk shows and "made-for-TV" movies. In our schools, sex education is now being taught in the first grade. First graders are being taught about alternate lifestyles. First graders are taught to be open-minded about homosexuality, lesbianism, and AIDS. Children are being taught about their right to sexual expression, and equipment designed to make it safe are made available not at the porn shop, not at the liquor store, not even at the pharmacy, but at the public schools.
The hinge on which all this turns is the question, "What is man?" If man is an animal, then let him copulate like an animal, propagate like a rabbit, and leave the litter to the herd. Let him even do worse than animals, and kill his offspring, even while in the womb. But if life is sacred, then the act that creates life is sacred. If then the sex act is sacred, then let society promote the limiting of its expression to the permanent bond of one man and one woman, and stigmatize all the rest. Stigmatize? Yes, because of the value of human life. That newly created human life must be nurtured in the environment that is healthiest for it, the security and stability of heterosexual, monogamous marriage. And woe to the society that doesn't so restrict it.
The Family And Children
Second, do children once born belong to the family, or do they belong to society and the state? The traditional and Christian view has always been that children and parents are bound together by covenant and blood. To parents belongs the right to train, discipline, and educate their children according to their own convictions. To families belongs the right to bequeath to their children the family religion, values, trade, and property.
The modern, humanistic view sees the family as a convenience, existing at the pleasure of the state. The ties between parent and child are seen as a nuisance, and expendable. You may remember the scene from "The Deer Hunter", when the Khumer Rouge propagandist drew a picture of a family for the assembled village and then crossed out he parents. Because families are a great reservoir of traditional values, they are a barrier to the humanist's vision of progress. For them, the claims of the family must be secondary to that of the state. The state has the right, even the obligation to educate children in a way that is good for the whole of society. Children likewise have rights superseding those of their parents. Family property should be confiscated at death through inheritance taxes, and redistributed to society as a whole. The ties between parents and children are seen as being without significance.
Again the hinge is, "what is man?" Are we like animals, for whom the bonds between parents and offspring are weak, transient, and temporary? If so, then abortion, infanticide, and statism make sense. But if family connections are the most important of all; if the family is the primary institution, from which all others gain their legitimacy; if the family is the God-ordained institution within which children are to be nurtured and trained, then woe to that society that tries to rear its children communally. Are we a herd? Or are we a family, with a heavenly Father, in whose image we are made, and whose children we are?
The Value of Human Life
Third, is human life from conception sacred and inviolable or ordinary and expendable? The Christian answer is not debatable. Both Scripture and tradition speak with one voice. The Christian position has always been that human life is sacred and abortion is forbidden. Even looked at from the position of science, there is really no debate. From conception, a new human being is formed, having the complete and utterly unique complement of 46 chromosomes. The product of the union of human sperm and egg is (to state the obvious) human. It is not plant, animal, or mineral. It is human.
The pro-abortionists rarely attempt to prove that the conceptus is non-human. He doesn't have to. He already argues that human life itself is but animal life and is expendable. So what if it is human. Human life deserves no special consideration.
Modern humanism has produced, as a consequence of this "animal philosophy" a number of powerful movements in our society. We have an "animal rights" movement, that opposes experimentation and development that harms animals. By what right, they ask, do we prefer human life to laboratory rat life, or the survival of lumberjacks to the spotted owl? We have an "environmental" movement, the extreme elements of which seem to prefer trees and bushes to human life. We have a fetal research movement which favors the harvesting of fetal tissues and fetal organs. We have an euthanasia movement and the reality of infanticide, advanced through utilitarian arguments about the quality of life. Malcolm Muggeridge, in an article entitled "The Humane Holocaust," noted that "it took no more than three decades to transform a war crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazi-ism to adopt the very practices for which the Nazis had been solemnly condemned at Nuremberg."
The hinge is, "What is man?" If man is an animal, then the utilitarian philosophy will predominate. If all human life is not sacred then none of it is. The unwanted unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped newborn all become expendable. We will begin, as C. Everett Koop has warned, to "Slide to Auschwitz."
This past year a young seminary student at Reformed Seminary in Orlando and his wife conceived twins, which tragically turned out to be what we used to call "Siamese," joined at the heart and liver. The remaining months of pregnancy were an agony of unresolved questions and fear for them. An army of experts examined and reexamined the developing baby girls. Finally they were born in December, and for 20 days they struggled to survive. On the 21st day they were separated surgically, as one, Mary Elizabeth had begun to fail. Unexpectedly the surviving baby, Sarah Katherine, the stronger of the two died the next day. Immediately the questions began to be asked by many who knew them. Why did it happen? Shouldn't the tragedy have been stopped earlier? Wouldn't it have been better to have aborted them early, so that the family would not have had to suffer so long? Isn't this a good example of a time when abortion should be performed?
No, I don't think so. Why not? Because however tragic their situation was, the twins were not animals. They were human beings with eternal souls. By leaving the timing of their life and death in the hands of God, where it belongs, their humanity was not despised, but respected, as was the humanity of all other handicapped persons as well. What good came of it? During their few short days the girls were loved. This is as much as any of us can hope for. Mother Theresa picks up abandoned infants literally out of garbage piles just for the sake of loving them for a few hours before they die. They will enter eternity with a feeling of something other than alienation and rejection. This is no small thing, because we are dealing not with animals but with human beings made in the image of God who need to be loved with the love of Christ.
"But our technology keeps the dying alive long after they should have been allowed to die, robbing them of their wealth and dignity," it is argued. Yes, but death never has dignity. It is a curse on sin, and inherently undignified by Divine design. Nevertheless it is true that we are not required to preserve life forever artificially. Koop says there is a difference between preserving life and prolonging the process of dying. It is okay to die naturally. But it is never permissible to take a life actively or to starve a person to death purposely, or allow the incoherent to dehydrate. Why? Because we cannot compromise the sanctity of even a single human life without compromising the sanctity of all human life.
Abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are often seen as means of solving a given individual problem. The argument may even be made, that on a given occasion, one or more of the above did resolve a difficult situation. Aunt So and So was taken off the I.V. and dehydrated and died over a three day period. The problem of Auntie's six month long coma was solved. The problem is, the sanctity of human life was also compromised, and so in the process of solving one problem a million others were created, a whole holocaust worth of problems. Now medical practitioners have shifted their focus from saving lives at all costs (exactly what you want doctors and nurses to be thinking about) to looking at the options. Now we're saying we are competent to decide who will live and who will die. It is better that some should suffer for an extra week, or month, or year, than that people acting as little gods should make arbitrary decisions about life and death, according to the prevailing winds of public values. We are not now and never will be competent to make these decisions. Woe to that society which will not leave these things in the hands of God who alone has the right to give life, and take it away.