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The Values and Respect of Human Life
Does human life have any value when people are being killed without restraint? Is saving a human life worth any cost to society, or is it better to let people die in situations where saving them is simply too expensive? If so, aren’t we letting people die for economic reasons? Aren’t we putting profits before people? Let’s explore the issue without hysteria.
Most people would say that human life is a precious thing, and exterminating it by force is evil. Most would also say that a (non-human) animal’s life is less valuable, and most (if they are pushed to consider it) would say that the value of a life is based on the intelligence of that creature. Intelligent creatures (like a dog, chimps, or dolphins) are more valuable than unintelligent creatures (like flies, cockroaches, or earthworms).
This gives us a clue about the nature of humanity which makes it valuable – a human’s intelligence, but it also raises uncomfortable questions. Are the lives of more intelligent humans worth more than non-intelligent humans? Is the life of a severely brain-damaged human with apparently less intelligence than an ape less valuable than that of an ape?
In fact, it has more to do with empathy than with intelligence. People empathize with other people, they empathize with dogs (because they make good pets), with dolphins (because they always seem to be smiling), and with apes (because they are physically so much like us), but generally do not empathize highly with insects or worms.
Interestingly, this echoes much racist behavior in the past. The notion that ‘they don’t feel pain like us’ was used to justify all manner of actions that would now be considered atrocities. A more politically correct education teaches that we should empathize with all races equally, and many people are careful to ensure that their stated aims reflect this.
When we talk of values of human life, let us look at the values God Himself, who created human beings places on it. “For your own lifeblood, too, I will demand an accounting…and from a man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an account for human life”. Here, God demands reverence and love for every human life. Man’s energy comes from God; it is his gift, his image, and likeness, a sharing in his breath of life, God, therefore, is the sole Lord of this life: man cannot do with it as he wills. The above quote was a command of God to Noah after the flood. The biblical text is concerned with emphasizing how the sacredness of life has its foundation in God and in his creative activity: “For God made man in his own image”
The fact remains that, human life and death are thus in the hands of God, “In his power: In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind”, exclaims Job. “The Lord brings to death and brings to life, he brings down to Sheol and raises up”. It is also stressed that He alone can say, “It is I who bring both death and life”. But, God does not exercise this power arbitrarily and threateningly but rather as part of his care and loving concern for his creatures. If it is true that human life is in the hands of God, it is no less true that these are loving hands, like those of a mother, who accepts, nurtures, and takes care of her child.
The inviolability of humans came as a result of its sacredness. This is written from the beginning in man’s heart, in his conscience. The question: “What have you done?” Here, God addresses Cain after he has killed his brother, Abel, and interprets the experience of every person: in the depths of his conscience, man is always reminded of the inviolability of life – his own life and that of others – as something which does not belong to him, because it is the property and gift of God the Creator and Father.
The commandment regarding the inviolability of human life reverberates at the heart of the “ten words” in the covenant of Sinai. In the first place, that commandment prohibits murder. “You shall not kill”. “Do not slay the innocent and righteous”. But, as is brought out in Israel’s later legislation, it also prohibits all personal injury inflicted on another. Of course, we must recognize that in the Old Testament this sense of the value of life, though already quite marked, does not yet reach the refinement found in the Sermon on the Mount. This is apparent in some aspects of the current penal legislation, which provided for severe forms of corporal punishment and even the death penalty. But the overall message, which the New Testament will bring to perfection, is a forceful appeal for respect for the inviolability of physical life and the integrity of the person. It culminates in the positive commandment which obliges us to be responsible for our neighbor as for ourselves. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”
The commandment, “You shall not kill”, included and more fully expressed in the positive command of love for one’s neighbor, is reaffirmed in all its force by the Lord Jesus. To the rich young man who asks him: “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus replies, “If you would enter life, keep the commandments”. And he quotes, as the first of these: “You shall not kill” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus demands from his disciples a righteousness that surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, also with regard to respect for life. “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill, and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment’. But, I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment”
By these words and actions, Jesus further unveils the positive requirement of the commandment regarding the inviolability of life. These requirements were already present in the Old Testament, where legislation dealt with protecting and defending life when it was weak and threatened: in the case of foreigners, widows,
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