Valuing Life

Just a couple brief thoughts.

I was flipping back through Rodney Stark's, "The Triumph of Christianity" yesterday. And one of the themes he explains to be prominent in the early years of the church was the opposition to the (widely embraced) practice of infanticide. The exposing of children to the elements, often on dump heaps, was most often done to little girls because the culture valued men more highly. Christians, following in the footsteps of the Jews, rightly rejected this practice as abominable to God, who created mankind in His own image.

And this seeing of humans, women and girls included, as the image bearers of God, is the only sure footing for valuing human life and protecting the dignity of all persons.

And furthermore, this valuing of life provides a stark contrast to much of the world around us. It did in ancient Rome, it does in China with one child laws, it does in America with abortion on demand.

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Most of my conservative Christian readers were totally with me to that point.

But I want to take this logic a step further and point out that if we value all human life as being in the image of it's Creator, this continues past the womb, and past infancy. We must care about children and adults as well. Like the flood of immigrants from Central America fleeing drug wars. Like the millions in our prison system. These are also people made in the image of God who deserve our care and compassion.

Many Christians in America need to re-think their positions on things such as prison and border reform. I am not here advocating a particular position, but I am asking to to realize this:

Jesus said "be in the world, not of the world." Not, "be in the world, and not of anything that sounds like a liberal might support it."