Set this spirit lifting and deeply humanizing event against the efforts of many in our culture to devalue anyone that is broken in any respect. How many doctors counsel aborting children with birth defects because of the cost to their parents, and indeed to the taxpayer? How many neglect or reject those among us who even push us to the point of boredom? How many of us have little time for our elderly? We are a culture of critics, and our criticism is almost exclusively leveled against those we perceive to be below us. And yet our Lord was clear, “whatever you have done to the least of these brothers of mine you have done unto me.” It is an axiomatic statement. No Christian, touched by the gospel of grace, can be dismissive of the least of these! At the heart of this grand display of compassion is an idea: that these people, regardless of IQ or levels of dependency, are resplendent spiritual beings, bearing upon them the stamp of the image of the author of all life. That is why we have every responsibility to see that they are born, loved, and honored!
Tonight reminded me of a lesson from Dr. Pyne at Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Pyne had a child with special needs. He said that the image of God is not a collection of attributes, such as autonomous will or moral agency or intelligence; it is a uniqueness, a holiness, to human creation! It was really a profound point. You will not find some line of demarcation between animal attributes and human attributes. It is a qualitative spiritual unity and not a quantitative set of attributes at nominal and definitive levels. One cannot, according to any Christian understanding, arbitrarily set the IQ level of what counts as being human. One cannot arbitrarily set the level of independence, or even moral reasoning. Being human is something more fundamental, indeed more simple, than the infinite variability of attributes. If indeed one is to erect a set of measurements, then we have two important questions that emerge. First, why that set? And second, on whose authority are we to accept that set? In the end, something like respecting a person with disabilities comes down to philosophy, yet again. We are right back to first principles. What is the ontology (the reality) of the human person? In other words, what does it mean to be human? And second, on whose authority, or on what basis, do we define "human" as we do?
These men and women are Image-bearers, meaning simply that they were born by human parents into the human family, which God established to be animated by the neshmah, the spiritual dynamism that separates mankind from the animal world and makes us a special expression of the Triune God. That is the Christian basis for treating these people with the utmost dignity.
But our culture, to the extent that it is beguiled by secular thought, is materialistic and nominalistic, and as such they reject the notion of the Image of God. Most people do not seem to be aware that they reason in a secular manner, but their normal reasoning betrays their first principles. For example, the typical person speaks of "quality of life," meaning that if one were to lose one's ability to do various functions, then life would no longer be worth living. It is not a carefully worked out maxim, but once the principle is granted, then one can easily see it applied to people with various birth defects. What is their quality of life, and how do they affect the quality of life of those saddled with the burden of caring for them?
Those who are most consistent with secular reasoning on the point are people like Princeton ethicist Peter Singer. He makes it clear that the newborn human baby is not functionally different than most lower mammals. It demonstrates no special--see if you recognize this term now--attributes that would distinguish it from a goat or a yak. It is just a totally dependent biochemical organism. As such, it can be killed at the whims of those who deem it below some arbitrary set of defining attributes. The only thing puzzling about this claim (besides the fact that it is appalling) is that other godless people find it appalling. It is perfectly consistent with an atheistic worldview.
There are plenty of intellectuals thinking in this way, and it is horrifying to see so many reasoning consistently according to a materialistic worldview. For example, a recent article in the Journal of Medical ethics by lead scientist Julian Savulescu argued that, “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.” There it is, that important word, "properties." But why stop at infancy? Why not look at those who suffer brain trauma later in life and see if their "properties" are up to Dr. Savulescu's capricious and wholly subjective assessment of value? What about many of our elderly?
The core problem we face today is that we delve into ethical questions and ethical positions prior to clearly stating the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions from which these positions arise. We have a culture that loves to make philosophical pronouncements without doing the hard work of thinking philosophically!
Here is a wonderful test: Anytime a fellow traveller insists that you care about some ethical matter, like Peter Singer's position, always begin with the core philosophical considerations. Ask them if human consciousness is incidental to the universe or not. Ask them if it is transitory. If it is, then ethical considerations are clearly meaningless. Ask them if moral authority is obligatory or universal or subjective or relative. It makes a universe of difference if morality is nothing more than a set of linguistic epiphenomena created by animals capable of enshrining their passions in language! If we are just animals adrift in a vacuous black ocean, then we, and our language, are no more dignified than bioluminescent algae, both making some bold and random display, which means in the end precisely nothing!
But the Christians gathered on February 9th to celebrate these fellow human beings believed deeply that there is a God who created humankind in His image. God didn't make these people broken, but rather is the God who has shown compassion on our deeply broken race. The God of the Christian faith is not remote or indifferent to human suffering, but instead has joined us in our suffering, suffered as none of us could suffer to restore us to God, and continues to minister to us in this broken world. He is the God who is near in our suffering, and makes our suffering finite through the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the hope of the guests at Night to Shine, but it is also the hope of the rest of us, because we all are broken in sin, in desperate need of a savior. Indeed we all have special needs, and that is why we should care as we have been cared for!
Those who are most consistent with secular reasoning on the point are people like Princeton ethicist Peter Singer. He makes it clear that the newborn human baby is not functionally different than most lower mammals. It demonstrates no special--see if you recognize this term now--attributes that would distinguish it from a goat or a yak. It is just a totally dependent biochemical organism. As such, it can be killed at the whims of those who deem it below some arbitrary set of defining attributes. The only thing puzzling about this claim (besides the fact that it is appalling) is that other godless people find it appalling. It is perfectly consistent with an atheistic worldview.
There are plenty of intellectuals thinking in this way, and it is horrifying to see so many reasoning consistently according to a materialistic worldview. For example, a recent article in the Journal of Medical ethics by lead scientist Julian Savulescu argued that, “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.” There it is, that important word, "properties." But why stop at infancy? Why not look at those who suffer brain trauma later in life and see if their "properties" are up to Dr. Savulescu's capricious and wholly subjective assessment of value? What about many of our elderly?
The core problem we face today is that we delve into ethical questions and ethical positions prior to clearly stating the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions from which these positions arise. We have a culture that loves to make philosophical pronouncements without doing the hard work of thinking philosophically!
Here is a wonderful test: Anytime a fellow traveller insists that you care about some ethical matter, like Peter Singer's position, always begin with the core philosophical considerations. Ask them if human consciousness is incidental to the universe or not. Ask them if it is transitory. If it is, then ethical considerations are clearly meaningless. Ask them if moral authority is obligatory or universal or subjective or relative. It makes a universe of difference if morality is nothing more than a set of linguistic epiphenomena created by animals capable of enshrining their passions in language! If we are just animals adrift in a vacuous black ocean, then we, and our language, are no more dignified than bioluminescent algae, both making some bold and random display, which means in the end precisely nothing!
But the Christians gathered on February 9th to celebrate these fellow human beings believed deeply that there is a God who created humankind in His image. God didn't make these people broken, but rather is the God who has shown compassion on our deeply broken race. The God of the Christian faith is not remote or indifferent to human suffering, but instead has joined us in our suffering, suffered as none of us could suffer to restore us to God, and continues to minister to us in this broken world. He is the God who is near in our suffering, and makes our suffering finite through the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the hope of the guests at Night to Shine, but it is also the hope of the rest of us, because we all are broken in sin, in desperate need of a savior. Indeed we all have special needs, and that is why we should care as we have been cared for!
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