My wife, Jenny, grew up in Fernandina Beach, Florida and one of our traditions over the past 22 years of our marriage is to spend Christmas day with her family on Amelia Island. Typically, the day is quiet, peaceful, and relaxing. That all changed last Christmas when there was a frantic knock on the door and a woman outside was calling for help. She was going door to door and asking for everyone able to come outside and search for her missing grandson. Her family and the children had been playing in the yard after opening presents, and one moment the boy was there, and the next he had disappeared.
Thankfully, after a short search, the boy was found. His explanation for disappearing was that he wanted to play, “hide and seek!”
Reflecting on that incident, it amazed me at how quickly neighbors abandoned their Christmas traditions and special family-time to prioritize scouring the streets and nearby wooded areas calling out the name of the missing child. Even for myself, I remember jumping up from Christmas brunch and grabbing my own teenage boys to join the search party.
Why am I sharing this story? Because the inherent value of human life was clearly in focus on that occasion. Even though everyone was participating in something of extremely high priority, not a single person said, “No, I won’t join the search because what I am doing right now is more important than the welfare of a human life in potential danger.”
This situation begs a question, what gives human life that level of value? As followers of Christ, we can provide an adequate answer to this question. Human life is sacred because it originates from God. We know the familiar passage from Genesis 1:27 which says that mankind was made in the image of God. Human beings are the sole owners of that title and distinction within all of the created universe, “made in God’s image”. From this fact originates the truth that harm against a human being is harm against God himself.
Despite what mainstream culture teaches and promotes, we know that hard-wired into the human psyche is the truth of the inherent value and sacredness of human life. Stories like the one I have shared demonstrate this truth. Not one argument for the Christian view of human life had to be made before an entire neighborhood banded together to protect human life.
Yet, we know that in many situations and circumstances this truth about the sacredness of human life is suppressed due to a variety of external factors and pressures, especially in the beginning stages of human life. One of my favorite theologians, R.C. Sproul, made this statement, “Life is too sacred to decide it with the roll of a dice. We need better grounds than my preference, my convenience, or my economic condition before we decide on a matter this serious.”
Being reminded that human life reflects God’s image should motivate us to fight for and protect human life at all stages. This truth also makes me grateful for the work of First Coast Women’s Services and is a primary reason for why our church has strategically partnered with this organization. Protecting human life, especially unborn human life, is paramount for followers of Christ today as the age of secularization in which we live seeks to redefine the origin, value, and worth of human life.
Apart from the Christian understanding of the sacredness of life, we are left in a moral morass which lacks any compelling reason for why human life, at any stage, should be valued at all. For this reason, we must faithfully continue to proclaim the intrinsic value of human life and the basis for that value. The flourishing of human civilization depends largely upon our ability to defend and proclaim this truth, that humans at all stages of life are the image bearers of God.
Pastor Jeremiah Stanley, Trinity Baptist Church Mandarin Campus
To learn more about Trinity Baptist Church, visit tbc.org