The case for human life -- civic evangelicalism, part 6

This is part 6 of an ongoing series. See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. In my last post in this series I made the case for basic goods. I argued that many of the things that people today pursue and choose (such as pleasure or happiness) are not things to be pursued at all but rather are mere by-products of other choices. They are, in other words, not human goods. Other things that people choose, such as money or power, are not intrinsically valuable goods, but are merely instrumentally valuable, and are therefore valuable if chosen for more fundamental ends, such as health, charity, or the common good.

There exists a third category of objects of human choice, basic human goods. Basic goods are reasons for choice, pursuit, or action that are valuable in and of themselves. They include beauty, knowledge, religion, and marriage (more on which in a later post).

One of the basic human goods is human life. Human persons are valuable, and therefore are proper objects of choice and action, simply because they are human. For this reason, human beings ought never be instrumentalized -- that is, turned into mere means rather than chosen as ends in themselves -- as they are when they are aborted, destroyed in embryonic research, or made objects of sexual gratification.

Humans are inherently different from all other beings. G.K. Chesterton famously observed in his great book, The Everlasting Man,

Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. That he has a backbone or other other parts upon a similar pattern to birds and fishes is an obvious fact, whatever be the meaning of the fact. But if we attempt to regard him, as it were, as a quadruped standing on his hinds legs, we shall find what follows far more fantastic and subversive than if he were standing on his head.

Why is murder considered gravely wrong, while animal meat consumption has been accepted by the vast majorities of every civilization from the dawn of time? Why do humans create art, music, and poetry? Why do we clothe ourselves? Why do we travel long distances merely to view a beach, a sunset, or a mountain range? Why do we experience longings for which no satisfaction can be found on Earth?

The common answer to all of these questions, of course, is that humans are not merely different from the animals in degree, we are different in kind. We are wholly other. We are more than mere collections of matter, more than mere arrangements of chemicals, more even than sentient beings.

The implications of this fact are many and far-reaching in our contemporary culture. To instrumentalize a human person is to deny that person's dignity, his or her inherent moral worth. Slavery (and later, racial segregation) remains the most obvious example of instrumentalizing the human person. Slavery has long been abolished here in the United States (though it continues in many other places in the World, where Christian and natural law teachings are disregarded). Yet humans are routinely instrumentalized today in the United States. A few examples are obvious.

Abortion, embryo-destructive research, and infanticide all violate the inherent dignity of human persons. They turn nascent human persons, who if allowed to develop would become walking-around persons like you and I, into means rather than ends. Young humans become either obstacles to the mother's ostensible self-actualization or raw materials for research that some hope (in spite of all the contrary evidence) will rid adults of certain diseases.

Homosexual conduct, adultery, and other types of non-marital sex acts violate the inherent dignity of human persons. They turn humans into means rather than ends. Other people become means for satisfying sexual desires, and their intrinsic worth is thus denied.

Evangelicals ought to affirm the inherent dignity and worth of every human person. And on this we must not compromise. We should learn from the abolitionist and civil rights movements that compromise with the evil forces that denigrate human persons is the same as capitulation to them. Human life deserves a radical and robust defense. This much is clear. The only question is whether we have the will to make that defense.