Every Single Life

When my children were toddlers, they would bring me a picture they had drawn. Sometimes it was a picture of me (allegedly), sometimes of something else, sometimes just a collection of random scribbles. We even have a video of one of our children proudly showing us how they could draw a picture with their eyes closed! So adorable.

The pictures themselves would never hang in an art gallery, but they would be put up around our house. Their value came from the love that went into them from their creator. On the surface they may seem worthless, but each one was priceless.

Let’s never forget that human life is a miracle. Every human life is a miracle. Every human life is a gift. Every human life matters. On the surface life might seem worthless – even meaningless as the writer in Ecclesiastes would say. After all, all flesh is like grass and the grass withers and the flowers fade (Isaiah 40:6-8). Life may seem meaningless, resulting in the survival of the fittest mentality and a god-complex government deciding whose life carries the most value depending on the current prevailing winds.

But as humans we are different from the rest of creation. We are the only part of creation that has been made in the image of God. We reflect something of His glory in a way that no other part of creation does, or is even capable of. Indeed, all of the spiritual realm looks down on the multifaceted wisdom of God that is shown through his church and discovers more about God (Ephesians 3:10).

One time I was at a youth camp in Ghana. I met a 12 year old boy there who told me that he had never heard God speaking to him. We prayed together but he still hear nothing. The next day, during the early morning devotions, he stood in front of the whole group and told of how he had begun reading his Bible at Genesis 1. He noticed that when God created the light he spoke and it came into being. When God created the trees he spoke and they were created. When God created the animals he spoke and they were created.

He then went on to say, ‘but when God created us he put his hand in the dust.’ God got his hands dirty when he made us, such is our intrinsic worth to our creator. (As an aside, apparently this boy was often receiving deep revelation from the word – we had discovered the primary way that the Holy Spirit would speak to him!)

It is this value on human life that western society has, until recently, treasured. It is why Christians were among the first to adopt unwanted children (picking them off the rubbish heap in Ephesus), care for the disabled, and fight for the unborn. It’s why Jews in the law were to take care of the stranger living among them.

Every life matters – regardless of health outcomes, culture, societal value or anything else.

Every life is to be celebrated.

Every life is to be valued.

Every life is to be treated with love & respect, from conception to death, because every life is made in the image of God. Therefore we defend the widows, the orphans, the vulnerable, the oppressed, the depressed, the mentally unwell, the addicts, the homeless, the criminals and the workshy, not to mention the wealthy, the young and the good-looking.

If you do not take this pro-life view, then what is the alternative? That every life does not hold intrinsic value, instead there is a hierarchy of values.

This would be the evolutionary model (as opposed to the creationist one): Life is about survival of the fittest. If you are not strong enough to survive then we should kill you now to reduce your drain on limited resources and make for an easier life for those in the prime. You must demonstrate your worth to society comparative to others. This may be being loved by others, wanted by family or because your provide a net financial benefit to society.

Can you imagine reaching the age of 70 and having to have an annual appointment with your GP to justify your existence if you want to use any of the resources of society. After all if you would just leave the planet, a young professional family could have your house and make more money for the system.

Such talk is morally repugnant of course, but it is the logical extension of a rejection of the intrinsic value of life. If life itself is not the value then we must make value judgements. Who deserves life, who deserves death. Such is the roots of slavery, the holocaust and mass killings under communism. These ideologies led to the killing of citizens deemed unworthy of life. They were not progressive, they were not compassionate, they are viewed as the epitomy of evil.

I fear the recent move towards assisted suicide in the UK, while intended as an act of care, is actually a dangerous assault on the intrinsic value of life.

And so we stand up for life – for the life of the unborn from conception, for the elderly and for whoever else a secular ideology may target next in their attempt at ‘compassion,’ which misses the core facet of compassion – that EVERY life has intrinsic value.

Now all we need to do is introduce many others to their creator, so that they can find fullness of life.