Image of God

Are you worth more than an animal?  Actually the question is not as far-fetched as it sounds in today's culture. Human life was highly valued at an earlier time in our nation's history because of the influence of Christianity and its view that humans are made in the image of God. All human life was highly valued as a result. To attack the concept of the image of God being made in the life of an individual was to attack God himself. To our founding fathers this was one of the essentials guaranteed in our constitutional form of government. Life, liberty and property were considered absolute rights for all Americans which the government was established to protect. In fact, the right to life was considered an inalienable right which the government could never take away from any citizen because it was a right solely given by God. The only exception was the death penalty for a murder who took the life of another human being made in God's image. The state was authorized to institute the death penalty on a murderer because of the high value God placed on every individual made in His image. We can thus see that our nation's early leaders considered life sacred because God's image was a part of all human beings and must be protected by the state.

However, as time progressed the influence of Christianity waned. Our nation and its people became more secular and the value of human life was not held to be as sacred and worthy of protection as it was in our nation's earlier history. In our era human life is now even being equated with the same worth as animals. Today, one can regularly watch commercials on television that support the rescue of abandoned and abused animals. At the same time, the life of human babies is not even considered as valuable as these animals since our Supreme Court has ruled babies in the womb cannot be considered human. There are no commercials to save these babies and if anyone tried to air a commercial like this, they would immediately get legal resistance from many groups within our culture. 

The value of a human life took a dramatic downward trend when the Supreme Court ruled that babies are not humans that deserve the right to be protected by the state. Abortion accelerated the loss of the value of human life within our culture. At an earlier time in our nation's history the Supreme Court made a similar ruling regarding the lives of black slaves in our nation. The court ruled that black slaves were to be considered as chattel property and not human beings worthy of the protection by the state. Black slaves had no rights as human beings and suffered greatly during this era of our nation's history. It took a civil war to correct that moral evil decided by our Supreme Court.

The image of God within human beings has been a very emotionally and legally charged issue. This is because how a nation's laws define the nature of a human being and human life will determine how an individual is going to be treated by the government. Christianity has a very high value for all human life, even the life within a woman's womb. Secularism does not value human life as highly, and in some cases, even equates the value of animals on the same level as that of human beings. This poses a real challenge for the Christian since the Bible teaches that God holds both people and nations accountable for the shedding of innocent blood. Christians are charged by God to look after those who cannot defend themselves from the actions of those who abuse and murder them. 

Many Christian leaders have punted on this issue and just ignore it, just as many did during the slavery era. This throws the issue back on to the individual Christian and how they need to address this problem from a biblical perspective. How this issue is resolved may tear both the nation and churches apart much as it did during the civil war era with the slavery. Either way, how our culture defines life and human nature will have public policy ramifications in the near future on everyone. Christian leaders ignore this issue at their peril since they will be held accountable to God for how they deal with it.