Human Dignity in a Post Human World – Genesis 1:24-28

Human Dignity as the Answer to Abortion and Post-Human Ethics

It is my joy to introduce our speaker for this morning. He is Scott Klusendorf. He is ubiquitous in Christian circles and around the country. And I'm saying that with no overstatement. Scott has been on Focus on the Family Radio, American Family Radio, Wretched Radio, Way of the Master Radio, and Radio Radio all over the country.

Scott has spoken in Protestant and Catholic high schools, presenting the gospel as part of the pro-life case. He has spoken on college universities, some of the most liberal college universities, in front of some of the most hostile crowds.

He is the author of Stand for Life, the author of The Case for Life. He is the host of Life is Best, the television series that I promoted and suggested to you earlier. He is the director of Life Training Institute.

He comes from Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his wife, Stephanie, who has joined him up here with us as well for this trip. And Life Training Institute last year spoke to nearly 72 ,000 high school and college students across the country, this country, and Canada, equipping them and making the case defending life.

Scott is an able and articulate presenter. He was an advisor to the Marco Rubio campaign, and he has advised President Trump. And I'll let him explain that. He knows what I'm talking about. It is my joy to present to you Scott Klusendorf.

I think what Pastor Jim was trying to say is I'm radioactive. If you would open your Bibles with me to Genesis chapter 1, it is indeed a joy to be here. And thank you, Pastor Jim, for not only hosting us, but for having the courage to lead on a controversial issue like abortion.

My hat is off to you. And folks, if you don't know it, you are blessed to have the leadership that you do. And I hope you appreciate it. Genesis chapter 1, we're going to begin by looking at verses 24 to 28.

I'll read them, and if you would follow along as I do so. And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.

And it was so. Verse 25, and God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Father in heaven, we pray that you would bless the survey of your word, that its truths would penetrate our hearts, and that we would apply them to your glory, for Jesus' sake, amen. I want you to imagine you are bored one night, and you turn to your social media pages, either Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or one of those things that Satan has invented, and you decide that you are going to post something to provoke thought, and so you post the following.

Premise one, it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion, therefore, abortion is wrong. And that's all you say, just that simple syllogism.

Within about a second and a half, you can see that a friend is already typing. Not long after that, you are getting comments. And the comments aren't all nice. You get comments like, why do you hate women?

How come you want to oppress women? How come you want to take away their freedom? How come you want to impose your own religious views on others? What's wrong with you? Do you have a uterus? If not, shut up.

And quite frankly, you're shocked at the way people are responding, and it almost strikes you that something else is going on here. And indeed, there is. And what I want to talk with you about this morning is this theme from this passage that we looked at.

In his image, dignity in a post-human world. And I'll tell you why I think that's significant,.

Men and women.

Because what's driving the debate over abortion, driving the debate over doctor-assisted suicide, and a lot of issues, quite frankly, what's driving those debates is not who loves women and who hates them.

It's not about who wants to push morality and who doesn't. It's not about who's libertarian and who's narrow-minded. The real issue that's driving an issue like abortion is this single question, who counts as one of us?

That's why this debate is so contentious. That's why when you post a syllogism like what I just mentioned, you get the response you do. And the question, who counts as one of us, defies compromise. Either you believe each and every human being has an equal right to life, or you don't.

Government neutrality is impossible on this question. The government either recognizes the unborn are human and thus protects them, or it doesn't and permits killing them. And just like slavery in the 1860s, the underlying controversy is one of philosophical anthropology.

What makes humans valuable in the first place? That's what we are arguing about. And the good news is scripture does not leave us in the dark about this. In fact, from this passage we just looked at, we get the truth of scripture that gives us the foundation for answering the question, what makes us valuable in the first place?

What is it that gives us our dignity? What does dignity mean in light of scripture? And right there in verse 24, we get our first principle. If you would look with me if you would. In verse 24, we see that dignity is God given.

Look at the text. And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures. We need to stop right there and take in the significance of those words.

And here's why.

What tends to happen is a lot of Christians think we can do anthropology, meaning the study of man, before we do cosmology, how we got here. And if you don't get the cosmological question right, you're gonna get the anthropology question wrong as well.

Because what this scripture is saying is, you aren't an accident. There was a designer. There was a God who commanded life into existence. Your life, the animal's life, world as we know it. And the problem is this.

In an atheistic worldview, where the universe came from nothing and was caused by nothing, you know what human beings are? Cosmic accidents. It doesn't matter whether you're an embryo, a fetus, a teenager, or 90 years of age.

All humans are cosmic accidents. And what you see in our culture right now when you look at issues like abortion, look at issues like doctor-assisted suicide, are two rival worldviews colliding. Here's the first worldview.

It's the endowment view of human value. The endowment view of human value, which by the way, the framers of the Declaration of Independence embraced, the biblical text certainly affirms, goes like this.

Humans are valuable in virtue of the kind of thing they are. Humans are valuable because they bear the image of their maker. They are not valuable because of some function they perform. You are simply valuable because you're a human being.

Your right to life does not derive from anything you can do, any characteristic you have. It comes to be when you come to be, period.

That worldview though,.

Now has a very, very powerful rival. And the performance view of human dignity goes like this. Being human is nothing special. In fact, it's basically meaningless. What matters is your ability to function a certain way.

What matters is you having a property like self-awareness or maybe desires or sentience or something like this. British bioethicist John Harris puts it this way. Nine months of development leaves the human embryo far short of the emergence of anything that can be called a person.

A person, says Harris, is a creature capable of valuing his own existence. Only the lives of persons are important. It's not wrong to kill non-persons or fail to save their lives because death does not deprive them of anything they value.

Now, if that didn't grip you, maybe this will. David Boonin has written arguably the most persuasive defense of abortion that's out there. David Boonin is an interesting guy. He's not a flamethrower like your typical Planned Parenthood activist.

David Boonin actually likes hanging around pro-lifers because he thinks they're smarter than the people on his side of the issue. In fact, when one of my staff speakers went to Colorado to speak, he went ahead and sent David Boonin an email and asked if he could just drop by for a quick chat and David Boonin invited him to his house for lunch.

I mean, that's the kind of guy he is. David Boonin, whose book is considered by all accounts the most articulate defender of the pro-choice position, wants us to see just how consistent he's willing to be on this performance view of human value.

He writes this. Pay attention to this. This is unreal. On my desk in my office, where most of this book was written and revised, there are several pictures of my son Eli. In one, he is gleefully dancing on the sand along the Gulf of Mexico with the cool ocean breeze wreaking havoc with his wispy hair.

In a second photograph, he is tentatively seated in the grass in his grandparents' backyard, still working to master the feat of sitting up on his own. In a third photograph, he is only a few weeks old, clinging firmly to the arms that are holding him and still wearing the tiny hat for preserving body heat that he wore home from the hospital.

Through all of these remarkable changes, he is without question the same little boy. But then Boonin says this. In the top drawer of that desk, I keep another picture of Eli. This picture was taken 24 weeks before he was born.

The sonogram image is murky, but it reveals clearly enough a small head tilted back slightly and an arm raised up and bent with a hand pointing back toward the face and the thumb extended out toward the mouth.

There is no doubt in my mind that this picture too shows the same little boy at a very early stage in his physical development. And there is no question that the position I defend in this book entails that it would have been perfectly permissible to have ended his life at that point.

Did you catch what he just said? He's not mouthing the Planned Parenthood line that you were just a blob of tissue back then. David Boonin is saying, you are identical to the embryo you once were and he'll kill you anyway because until you have organized cortical brain function able to support having desires, you're not a person of dignity.

You don't have a right to life even though you're identical to the embryo you once were. What's going on under this? It's a view of human beings called body-self dualism that the scripture rejects. Scripture teaches us, all of us, as being a unity of body and soul that bears the image of our maker.

Body-self dualism says this, the real you has nothing to do with your body. In fact, your body is just an evolutionary development of matter in motion, that's it. There's nothing more to it. The real you is your thoughts, your feelings, your desires and until you have those, the real you has never shown up.

That's body-self dualism. Now, of course, right away you're thinking, wait, that's counterintuitive. You mean to say that my body existed before I did? Yeah, that's what body-self dualism is saying.

It's also a very inequitable proposition because on body-self dualism, what matters is self-awareness and desires and if you have more of them than me, you have a greater right to life than me and human equality is out the window.

Not only that, it's counterintuitive because I think even without appealing to a religious viewpoint, we recognize something's wrong with this. How many of you have been hugged by your mother? Can I see your hands?

If body-self dualism is true, if the real you is not your body, just your mind, you've never been hugged by your mother because you can't hug desires and wants and self-awareness and feelings but that's the world we are part of.

By the way, it is body-self dualism that is driving the anti-biblical view of marriage and transgenderism because the view of those espousing gay marriage, for example, says that even though I have a physical body that appears to be male, my physical body says nothing about who I really am.

Says nothing.

All that matters are my desires, my wants. Those overrule my body. Where in scripture we're told we're to present our bodies as sacrifices to a living God, to use them to glorify Christ. Body-self dualism says no.

What really matters is just your feelings. We have a better answer as Christians. We can argue that we have a foundation for dignity that is based in the fact God spoke our lives into existence He created us, intentionally and specially created us.

We have a foundation for it but we also have something else. If you'd look with me at verses 24 to 25, we also see there that dignity is assigned. The text says, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds and it was so.

And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind and God saw that it was good. Unfortunately, our culture no longer thinks that's good and there is, as Peter Jones has pointed out, within our culture an intentional motive of blurring all lines of distinction between species.

God creates creatures according to their kind. We are not different from animals simply by degree. We are different from animals in kind, meaning we are a different kind of thing than animals are. Animals aren't to be mistreated, they're certainly not to be abused, however, they are not us.

That's the scriptural teaching and yet you'll get a guy like Peter Singer who comes along and argues that the great apes have the same right to personhood and have sanctity just like human beings do. But the biblical foundation for this is quite different.

The biblical text says a different story. It teaches us that God gave man dominion over the animals. In fact, we'll see that in verse 28 in just a moment. In Genesis 1, 28, God gives man dominion over the animals.

In Luke chapter five and in chapter 24, Jesus not only commands his disciples to catch fish, he eats fish, he eats animals and we know he's sinless. In Exodus 12, a Passover lamb is required for the ceremony.

In Mark 14, Jesus authorizes a lamb to be slaughtered for the Passover. In Genesis 2, animals are named by Adam. Adam steps up and literally names the animals as one who has dominion over them but it's interesting in that very passage, it says while Adam was naming the animals, there was not a suitable helper for Adam among the animals.

That suitable helper required a special creation in the form of Eve. Our intuitions say that animals are not equal to us despite what Peter Singer says. For example, is there a difference between a hit and run with a squirrel and a hit and run with a newborn, even a disabled one?

Is there a difference in your mind between eating a hamburger and eating a Herald burger? I think we recognize that there is a difference. In fact, it was interesting to watch, I don't know how many of you remember this but about six years ago, no, it's actually more than that, it's more like eight years ago now, an NFL quarterback by the name of Michael Vick was arrested for animal cruelty.

Do any of you remember that story? He and another group of people, some players and others, were conducting dog fights. They would go collect dogs and they would train them to tear each other up and they would bet money on which dogs would kill and maim other dogs and they'd bring these dogs into a remote place and they'd have these dog fights.

Well, the feds busted them and Michael Vick went to federal prison for what he did and rightfully so and it was interesting to watch the secular media actually by accident, not realizing what they were doing, they would actually affirm the biblical view when they would report on the Michael Vick story and here's how the press reported the story.

Well, Michael Vick, what he did was terrible. We expect better of him. He should not have done that. Did the press attack the animals who tore each other up? They only went after Michael Vick.

Why?

Because we expect better of him as a man. Our understanding of pathology assumes God's special creation and our exceptionalism as humans. A dog that can't read is not a tragedy. A 16-year-old girl who can't read is one.

Why?

Because she's failing to flourish according to her nature. Look with me if you would at verses 26 to 27. So what is dignity grounded in? Our dignity is grounded in the image of God. Look what verse 26 says.

Then God said, let us make man in our image after his likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock and over the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. There are some who say when you approach an issue like abortion, the Bible is silent. The word doesn't appear.

Nowhere does it say thou shalt not have an abortion and nowhere does it teach, these critics assert, that humans have value at the embryonic stage. They claim the Bible is completely silent. However, the biblical case against abortion can be stated even if I grant that the word abortion doesn't appear and even if I grant, though I don't believe this, but I'll grant it for the sake of argument, that no scripture teaches the unborn are human.

Even if I grant both those points, the Bible is not in favor of abortion and here's how I know that. I know it because first of all, the Bible teaches that all humans have value because they bear the image of God.

That's Genesis 1 we just looked at. It's also in the New Testament in James chapter three. Do you know in James chapter three, we're told that gossip is something that offends God greatly and we get a glimpse into that when we look at the passage in verse nine.

Why is it that this is so offensive to God? Well, James tells us because when we gossip against our fellow believers, we are assaulting the image of God in that person we're gossiping about. God takes this seriously.

All humans have value because they bear the image of God and because they bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden. This is seen in Exodus 23, seven, Proverbs six, 16 to 19 and Matthew 5, 21 to name a few scriptures.

The innocent blood is not to be shed because all humans bear the image of God. So where does that leave us on an issue like abortion? Well, it leaves us with the need to only answer one question. Are the unborn human beings?

Because if they are, the same commands against the shedding of innocent blood are going to apply to them as they do everybody else. And we know for a fact, looking at the science of embryology, the unborn are indeed one of us.

And the same commands of scripture that would apply to all of us on the shedding of innocent blood would apply to them as well. People love to say, well, the scripture doesn't mention the unborn are human.

The scripture doesn't mention Americans are human. It doesn't mention Canadians are human. It doesn't mention the French are human. Some of you are going, amen, preach that, brother. Now, just because the unborn aren't mentioned doesn't mean they don't fall under the category of being image bearers.

We know they're human beings. This is not in dispute anymore in the science of embryology. We know they're human beings. The same commands then would apply to them as everyone else. So what does the image of God then actually mean?

Now, there are some Bible commentators that mistakenly reduce the image of God to traits that are common to human. They'll say, well, you know, what gives us the image of God is our rational being, the fact that we are rational creatures.

Or what gives us the image of God is that we're self-aware in a way that animals are not. Or we have a moral sense the way that animals do not. We're able to interact with others the way that animals perhaps are not.

In fact, one theologian, Paul D. Simmons, puts it this way. Persons bear the image of God when they have the immediately exercisable capacity for reflective choice, relational responses, social experiences, moral perception, and self-awareness.

Well, by that standard, not only do human embryos fail the test, so do newborns, and so do many of you before your first cup of coffee in the morning. This also results in terrible inequality. If your image-bearing status is linked to traits that come and go in your life and that none of us in this room share equally, then the image of God does not apply equally to each and every human being, only to those who have those traits.

This is exactly the point Lincoln would make when he would debate the issue of slavery. Lincoln's critics would say to him, Mr. Lincoln, that slave differs from us. He's not like us. And Lincoln would reply over and over again, but he bears the impress of his maker.

That means we can't treat him like we treat a hog. And Lincoln's critics would still come back and say, but he differs from us, and finally, Lincoln had enough, and he replied. And here's how Lincoln replied.

You say man A is white, man B is dark. Oh, it is skin color then, the fair-skinned man having the right to enslave the dark-skinned man.

Take care.

By that rule, you're a slave to the first person you meet with skin fairer than your own. You say it's not skin color. It's a matter of intellect. The white man you allege having superior intellect to the dark man, take care yet again.

By that rule, you're a slave to the first person you meet with an intellect superior to yours. Do you see what Lincoln just did there? The very arguments people made to say that slave does not bear the impress of his maker worked real well to disqualify people of a different skin color, mainly Caucasian.

And the same thing happens with abortion. People love to draw these arbitrary categories and say that embryo doesn't bear God's image because he can't think yet, because he can't feel yet. And the Bible nowhere teaches that the image of God is traced to characteristics we may or may not have.

In fact, if you really wanna think about it, angels have greater cognitive ability than we do, but they don't bear the image of God. Clearly the image of God is not based on cognitive ability or angels would bear the image of God.

Jesus did not treat people with any less dignity because they came from a lower social status. Think about it, Jesus treated lepers who were facing a terrible disease that affected their bodies and their minds.

Clearly their physical and cognitive abilities would not match other people, and Jesus treated them with dignity. The image of God is not based on characteristics. It's based on this, our connection to God as our creator.

The image of God simply refers to us as human beings and not our characteristics. It's not about what we do functionally. Our dignity is what we call intrinsic, and our culture makes a mistake of confusing intrinsic dignity with attributed dignity.

Let me unpack that for you. The beach bum and the university professor have equal intrinsic dignity because both bear the image of God. However, they don't have equal attributed dignity. The beach bum has failed to flourish.

He's wasted his life, we might argue. Although on cold days like this, sitting around wasting away on a beach sounds kinda good. The university professor earns dignity not in virtue of the kind of thing he is when we speak of attributed dignity.

He earns attributed dignity because he's accomplished something. But even though the two differ in their attributed dignity, they don't differ in their fundamental intrinsic dignity that is based on the image of God in them.

Our culture doesn't know that distinction. Finally, if you'd look with me at verse 28, dignity is a standard that remains. And God said to them, or God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

To be fruitful, to have dominion over God's creation, is a result of being in the image of God. It doesn't indicate that we are, it's a result of it. It's God's design. And yet, we obviously fail to live this out.

There is a mistaken notion out there that sin has marred the image of God in us. That is not a biblical view. In fact, in Genesis 9, 6, speaking of fallen human beings, we're told that the image of God applies still.

The text reads, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed, for God made man in his own image. Even fallen man bears the image of God. You know what's marred men and women? Our ability to live up to that image.

And to varying degrees, all of us in this room will live up to that image based on our progression in sanctification. That's what the scripture is teaching here. As redeemed sinners, we will ongoingly grow in our faith and Christlikeness.

Our justification is immediate, but our sanctification, becoming more Christlike, is an ongoing thing, and will never hit perfection in this life. And this is where I wanna take a moment to tie in a New Testament look here for a moment.

There are men and women here who you've not only failed to live up to the gospel, or the image of God in just your daily sanctified living, but you're thinking, man, I failed the command to be fruitful and multiply.

I not only didn't fulfill that command, I actually had abortions that undermined it, directly opposing what God has commanded. And we sang beautifully a few moments ago about God crushing his own son, and Jesus drinking every last drop of the wrath of God on our behalf, so that we might be reconciled to our creator, so we might be adopted into his family.

And the lyrics of the song we sang even spoke of God the Father no longer being our judge, but he is now our dad, and we get adopted into his family, and we get to be at his table. And if you're here today, and you're thinking, man, I have so messed up living up to the image of God the way I ought, and you're wondering, could there be any hope for me?

Could there be anything that could undo what I did? And the answer is, there's nothing that can undo it. Your good deeds won't make up for your bad ones, but guess what? It's not about your good deeds undoing your bad ones.

It's about Jesus taking your place as your sinless substitute, bearing the judgment of God, and living the perfect life you never lived, in your place as your substitute. And once you believe in him, guess what?

You start on a journey of becoming more Christ-like, what Paul says, being conformed to the image of Christ. And you begin that journey as a dearly loved child of God. And if you're here today, and you've had an experience with abortion, I want you to know the answer is found not in trying to make an excuse for failing to live up to the image of God.

It's found in trusting in a faithful substitute who took your place because you bear his image, and he bore the wrath of God on your behalf. That is the hope of the gospel. Let's pray, shall we? Father, help us to be people who articulate a solid biblical foundation for human value and dignity, and help us to communicate that to a broken world that is lost in what it means to have dignity.

Help us to be people who communicate the good news that we can be reconciled to God because of what Jesus did on our behalf. Bless us as we go forth today and help us to take the truths of your scripture and apply them this week for Jesus' sake, amen.