On the Value of Older Life
by James Carvin 10/14/04

My last article on stem cell therapy brought on the following comment from one of my readers, a pro-Kerry Christian:

As a person whose background is in moral theology my instincts are to reply to the two obvious moral issues - first on the issue of abortion and the age of accountability - second on the issue of the war in Iraq as to whether it is just. Here I'll consider the first issue.

What happens to aborted babies? Do they wind up in heaven? I don't know. You may have an opinion. To stick with things I can know about I always look first to what I can already know with certainty. And then I see if I can draw any conclusions from it..

First, I am here right now. And so are you. That I know. But under the supposition that I am my DNA, that I should have ever been at all was very improbable. I consider my personal unlikelihood when I think of the DNA which identifies me. I could only be me if my parents met and conceived me at the precise time they did. It was only one sperm and one egg, out of all the trillions of trillions available on earth at the time I was conceived, that made me.

From a strictly scientific perspective, this fact was also true for my mother and for my father. And for all four of my grandparents and for all eight of my great grandparents and all sixteen of my great greats and all thirty two of my triple greats and so on and so on. The point being that if I am to be identified with chemical make up, by DNA, the odds of my being here as me are so poor that there is no number man has a name for to describe it.

Yet I am here as are you. Why? How?

I suggested in my latest article on stem cell research that this was a matter of the impartation of a soul into a human chemistry at some point in time. I said that we didn't know when that point in time was.

I thought that was a pretty honest answer. I didn't resort to quoting the Bible to bring it back to the point of conception, as many do. In fact, I made no attempt to bring it back to the point of conception at all.

What I did do was say with clarity that we ought not to risk killing what might be a person lest before God it be murder.

Having said that there follows another question that people seldom ask. What exactly is wrong with murder? Why is it wrong? Different people offer different responses. Here are a few:

But then what about the improbability of our being? Ahhh. What a wonderful question. God demonstrates his power in this. He doesn't make us wait for eternity to be born. (Think about it. We would still be waiting to be born if he made us wait. It would never happen). Instead, he pushes all eternity past to the side just for us. He demonstrates his power over time in this. And he also demonstrates his personal attention to us.

We sometimes think of the world as spinning around a star, which floats around in a galaxy. And we think of ourselves as being very insignificant in the universe. We thought ourselves intelligent when we disproved Copernicus. But the truth of the matter is that the universe actually does revolve around us after all. Not just the world, but time itself. This is done in the power and personal attention of Almighty God. This is what our infinite improbability reveals about God. No Bible is required to know it. Just a little rational thinking.

We approach the issue of accountability and what the sin of murder is actually about when we can move from the issue of who God is to the issue of who we are and what the purpose and design of our lives are.

When we see that God values us with so much strength that he moves all of eternity past to the side for us just so we might live then we get the first inkling of how much we are loved. And we also get a sense of the limitlessness of his power and ability to think. We see his power demonstrated in his ability to overpower time, and even an infinite amount of it. We see his ability to think demonstrated when we consider that he controls it for us, and for every soul he creates. God thus reveals himself as all-wise, all powerful, and tremendously interested in the souls he creates, in "you" and in "me."

We might then ask the question of whether God is perfect. I know that religions have traditionally said that he is. But my question is whether pure logic dictates that he is. Does it follow that if God is powerful enough to control time and wise enough to pay attention to me personally along with you and everyone else, and to design souls, whatever those may be, that he is perfect in the absolute sense of the word.

Well, he is certainly capable of thinking about it. Even I am able to do that. But beyond that, we see that he is all powerful and all wise in terms of maintaining all of time and matter. Still farther, there is the issue of how he got here. Was he created at some point? If so, then how can he be controlling time? As a controller of all time it makes sense to see that he stands outside of it. As the controller of all matter that he is uncreated.

All powerful, uncreated creator, sustainer of all things, intense lover of mankind. Whether God is perfect in the absolute sense or not is not revealed by this in itself. But there is enough here to take it a few steps farther. We might, for instance, ask what God would do if he loved mankind beyond measure and was all-wise? Would he, for example, attempt to communicate with mankind? Or would he just leave us alone?

It is rather absurd to think that God would go to all the trouble of creating our souls and pushing all of eternity past to the side so we didn't have to wait for life only to have nothing more to do with us. Even as a sinful people we know we benefit from a little guidance from the wise. It can thus be assumed that God desires to communicate with us so that he may provide us with guidance.

But how would we distinguish the voice of God from our imagination? In what form would he speak?

When a person takes the position that mankind has been evolving for millions of years the answer to this question is obfuscated. Evolutionists take the perspective that the Word of God, whether it was by the prophets or in a compendium called the Bible, only came into being since recorded history began. While that might sound like a long time, it would mean that the Word of God had only been available to a tiny fraction of mankind since man began to appear on the face of the earth.

Of course, nothing of what I have said so far comes from parchments. It comes from the common experience of living despite the improbability of it. Much can be concluded about God from nature. So it could be said that God's communication has been available to man from the beginning of human awareness. But here I am referring to some more direct and specific guidance. This is probably the first time you have ever heard theology coming from any such thing as a "infinite personal improbability." I am talking about something like the Bible, or before that, the prophets.

To save space I'll skip over the debate about evolution. Suffice it to say that in the Biblical world view, the Word of God has been available to mankind ever since the world was created. But as to evolution, think about the following. if God is controlling time for individual souls, soulless bodies from the past may be irrelevant. God creates worlds for souls. Souls were not created by the world. Relevant history may have only begun around six thousand years ago, coinciding with recorded history. It is fruitless to speculate about anything prior to that.

A well known part of the world of recorded history, is the Bible, which in many parts too coincidental to be coincidence, is unique as a sacred text due to the fulfillment of hundreds of prophecies. Prophecy is important because when it is accurately fulfilled it demonstrates either wisdom or supernatural power. This it does. But the subject of much of that prophecy regards the Messiah, who is also called the "Logos." The "Logos" refers to the reason, or logic of God. The reason or logic of God becomes flesh, according to the Bible.

In Christ we find the ultimate in humanity and the communication of divinity. We find it in the time of humanity in which history is recorded. Could there be a more effective time? We find him fulfilling hundreds of prophecies. Thus God proves that he has communicated to us and through Christ Jesus. And what he reveals to us in Christ Jesus is the unity of God and man, as well as the unity of God and God, as triunity.

This Christ offered an invitation to unity with the father that was like the unity that Jesus had with the father. And in this is found the purpose of mankind - to be united with God as Christ Jesus is united with God, to be like Jesus.

Jesus reveals himself as having a unique will from the father. He conforms his will with the will of the father by achieving human maturity. He radiates the wisdom of selflessness and selfless service, commanding us to love and showing forth in this command the love of the father for his creatures.

The purpose of us souls is thus to love God and love one another even as we are loved, to be accountable for our own will, bringing it into conformity with the will of God. In order to do this we will have to have access to the very divine life of God so that it is no longer us but Christ in us. No striving of our own can accomplish it. It is too great. There must be a very great struggle of the will in this life on account of sin. But the Holy Spirit moves us and we are indelibly related to God as we encounter him and are changed forever. Such is the sealing of the Holy Spirit. We are never the same. This is God's purpose for our lives. It is so we might encounter him. And it is so he can fill us and we can have our being in him and in his love.

Now if God is perfect, as the Bible elsewhere indicates many of the attributes of perfection, then he has no need of mankind. He is all-sufficient. Nevertheless, we have been created with much care. Why? Because it is his intention that we be like him. That which is less than perfect is made good by all powerful grace and is perfected or is allowed to be a part of perfection. This is the relationship creation has with God, if God is perfect in an absolute sense. This is the rationale for there being a creation, rather than just God, being all happy and sufficient in himself and in his triunity, where there is all the love and goodness anyone would ever need or desire, even God.

Mankind, is thus intended by God to become like God in many ways, and even to have the very divine nature of God though the Holy Spirit and the good will of God as indicated by the will of Christ, which was to give himself over completely to the father's will, as a servant of the father and of all. This is how God wants us to be. And then he wants us to live with him forever, always declaring him.

Now the one who dies very young is not given the chance to do all this. Created to grow in the wisdom of Christ, who became flesh and dwelt among us, then grew in wisdom, then chose to serve, we are unable to grow as flesh in God. If a soul dies young it may perhaps "go to heaven," but it is not able to grow in the flesh and to submit its will freely in the image and likeness of Christ. And this portion of its seal is taken away from it.

The value of the life is in God's purpose for it which is the manifestation of this love in history and in the flesh, alive, like Christ. A soul that is not aloud to come out of the womb is robbed of this opportunity, which is the greatest conceivable crime. Really, murder of any type does this. But the younger the person is when his life is stolen from him the greater the chunk of divinely desired Christian salt and light that gets robbed from history. It is a crime both against the individual and all of creation. And against God, who is of course, the one who is most aware of its value, as He alone understands what it takes to break the law of infinite improbability and to move all of eternity (past) to the side to allow for such a life to begin with.

This goes contrary to common instinct and cultural norms present or ancient. Typically, society has valued the lives of older people over younger ones, men over women, whites over blacks, countrymen over foreigners, stronger over weaker, more beautiful over more ugly. And we have assigned greater corresponding criminal penalties for the murdering of one group over another. But cultural norms don't square with divine purpose and value. Quite the contrary, they reflect our anthropomorphic egocentricism. We value people most who remind us most of ourselves. We are not thinking with divine thoughts. We are thinking with very self-centered human thoughts. But morality is not about us. It is about God's purpose for us.

Let me conclude. I said I would explain why God thought murder was wrong. I did. And I also showed that it is a greater crime in the eyes of God to murder a younger person than it is to murder an older person. Recalling, of course, that I said we don't know when a soul is actually implanted into a newly forming human being by God, it nevertheless stands to reason that the earliest preborn, especially an embryonic blastocyst might just have the greatest value in the eyes of God of all. And that is truly something to consider.

What remains for discussion is the issue of "accountability" and "the age of accountability." The notion of an "age of accountability" is mostly new in the Christian church (meaning about 500 years), though there are a few references in the early church fathers. The assumption is that at a very young age a person is not capable of making good moral decisions or especially a decision about their eternal destiny and repentance from sin.

The Christian that suggests abortion is ok because fetuses go to heaven, but murder of adults is not ok because they are at the age of accountability has not thought through what they are saying. First, if what they were saying was true, then it would follow that we should kill all children before they reach the age of accountability so as to guarantee that they all go to heaven. Otherwise, we are allowing people to go to hell. Could there be a more reprehensible sin?

Further, since prevention of souls going to eternal damnation by killing them through infanticide would be a good thing, as good a thing as there could be, it stands to reason that God would also have given us a command to do it. He didn't.

On the opposite side of the coin are the adults, some of which may have chosen Christ and are sealed with the Spirit, others of which may not have. Murder of either type is prohibited equally. Why? Because both Christians and non-Christians have the ability not simply to believe in Christ, but also to love more, to be more like him. And not just the ability, the purpose. It is what we were made for.

Whether one believes in Christ or not does not change God's purpose for them and neither does their age. The will of God is that all would repent and worship and serve and love with their whole heart and be conformed to the image of God. The problem is we don't. Murder is considered to be the worst type of sin. The reason is that it completely robs a person, their society, God and history of this chance.

Having said all that, I should mention that we are not completely out of touch with God's way of thinking. For instance, we so revere life itself that we are reluctant to permit euthanization of the elderly. Yet, instinct also tells us that when an older person, a person who has "lived a full life" dies, that it is less of a loss, less of a shame. We gain a sense of closure more easily when someone very old dies. In the same spirit but in stark contrast, if a young child is killed in an accident or dies of cancer, we feel a great sense of being wronged. We feel the child has been robbed of life even more so than we would feel an adult of say, thirty or forty years would have been robbed. In fact, to this we also add righteous indignation over their innocence. Quite interestingly, the younger they are the more outraged we become. The more innocent we feel they are. This is the divine way of thinking.

That demonstrated, we must realize that the construct of "accountability" and an "age of accountability" adds nothing to our value as human beings except when those human beings, in their conformity with the divine image, exersizing their free will, have cultivated the habit of love and of doing what is right, or at least the repentant - innocent people, the pure in heart. Older people regain the value of childlike innocence through spiritual growth and realization. But most of us lose it and fail to regain it.

It follows that to decry the lives of adults who can think and understand above the lives of the very young or never born is flawed thinking and feeling.

What's more, we instinctively know that it is just as wrong to murder someone while they are sleeping as it is to murder them while they are awake. Moreover, if they suffer when we kill them that may be a little worse, but the penalty of murder is essentially the same. It is the worst thing we can do no matter how we do it. But in the case where a person is asleep when we kill them that person is out of touch with reality. Moreover, people who are sleeping, though they may be adults, are contributing nothing to society. We value any contributions they may have by looking at the potential that is in them, rather than in what they are actually doing. Potentially, they will wake up and start to make good choices. But while they are sleeping they are not making any choices. We don't say on account of this that it is okay to kill them, or that it is just killing if they are sleeping but it is only murder if they are awake when we kill them. Having the potential to chose what is good is therefore recognized as a value even by us meagre human beings.

This principle carried back to the womb is all we need to consider in order to know with certainty that stem cell therapy is morally reprehensible, as is abortion. Those who disagree, such as Senator Harkin, point to the tiny size of the embryonic blastocyst and compare that with a person the size of Christopher Reeve. His argument lies on our anthropomorphic egocentricism for persuasion. Unfortunately, we are way too full of that to see through it.

Permission to reprint this article unedited and in full only. Authorship, title, date and reference to this web site must be included.