Notes from C. Colson and N. Pearcey HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE.
Oliver Wendell Holmes : I see no reason for attributing to man a significance in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.
Life is a sacred gift from God. No one knows this better than Ken McGarity. He had both legs blown off as well as one testicle and both arms broken. He also lost both eyes from shrapnel wounds in Vietnam. Despite his pain and handicaps he married, had two daughters, and even though he struggled he was alive and was greatly helped through Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some just wanted him to die, which would have been the easy way out, but a courageous doctor helped sew him up and saved his life.
What is the Meaning of Human Existence?
Christians believe that we are a Special Creation of God in His own image. Because human life bears this Divine Stamp, life is sacred, a gift from the Creator. He and He alone has set the boundaries of when we live and when we die.
Against this is the naturalistic belief that life rose from some primordial soup through the chance collision of chemicals, and over the billions of years of chance mutations, this biological accident gave rise to the first humans. Millions of people today accept this basic presupposition that we are little more than grown-up germs - which logically leads to the conclusion that a person has no greater significance than a baboon as Oliver Wendell Holmes has bluntly put it.
These two worldviews are antithetical, and this antithesis is at the very heart of our present cultural crisis.
The question of where we come from is not some academic argument for scientists to debate. Our understanding of the origin of human life is intensely personal. It determines what we believe about our human identity, what we value, and what we believe is our very reason for living. It determines who lives and who dies. This is why ethical questions about human life have become such a defining debate of our age.
It is 'Not some love affair with a fetus' or even an 'Imposition of some Victorian Morality'.
The Christian Commitment to Life cannot be dismissed so easily because it is driven by a conviction based on the BIBLICAL REVELATION, about the nature of human origins and the Value of Human Life. Dr. Kenneth Swan who saved Ken McGarity's life grew up in a Judeo-Christian Culture where human life has intrinsic value because it was made in the image and likeness of God thus naturally he wanted to save a man's life.
A Culture of Life is being overtaken by a "Culture of death", which is based on a naturalistic ethic sweeping across our culture from the unborn to the elderly and in-firmed.
This culture of death denies that the human species is superior to all other biological species, and it ends with threatening life at any stage of human existence.
Some will say that this is ALARMIST. Western Civilisation has rested on the Judeo Christian ethic for two millennia and is now being replaced by a naturalistic ethic of pragmatism and utilitarianism.
(to be continued)
Oliver Wendell Holmes : I see no reason for attributing to man a significance in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.
Life is a sacred gift from God. No one knows this better than Ken McGarity. He had both legs blown off as well as one testicle and both arms broken. He also lost both eyes from shrapnel wounds in Vietnam. Despite his pain and handicaps he married, had two daughters, and even though he struggled he was alive and was greatly helped through Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some just wanted him to die, which would have been the easy way out, but a courageous doctor helped sew him up and saved his life.
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What is the Meaning of Human Existence?
Christians believe that we are a Special Creation of God in His own image. Because human life bears this Divine Stamp, life is sacred, a gift from the Creator. He and He alone has set the boundaries of when we live and when we die.
Against this is the naturalistic belief that life rose from some primordial soup through the chance collision of chemicals, and over the billions of years of chance mutations, this biological accident gave rise to the first humans. Millions of people today accept this basic presupposition that we are little more than grown-up germs - which logically leads to the conclusion that a person has no greater significance than a baboon as Oliver Wendell Holmes has bluntly put it.
These two worldviews are antithetical, and this antithesis is at the very heart of our present cultural crisis.
The question of where we come from is not some academic argument for scientists to debate. Our understanding of the origin of human life is intensely personal. It determines what we believe about our human identity, what we value, and what we believe is our very reason for living. It determines who lives and who dies. This is why ethical questions about human life have become such a defining debate of our age.
It is 'Not some love affair with a fetus' or even an 'Imposition of some Victorian Morality'.
The Christian Commitment to Life cannot be dismissed so easily because it is driven by a conviction based on the BIBLICAL REVELATION, about the nature of human origins and the Value of Human Life. Dr. Kenneth Swan who saved Ken McGarity's life grew up in a Judeo-Christian Culture where human life has intrinsic value because it was made in the image and likeness of God thus naturally he wanted to save a man's life.
A Culture of Life is being overtaken by a "Culture of death", which is based on a naturalistic ethic sweeping across our culture from the unborn to the elderly and in-firmed.
This culture of death denies that the human species is superior to all other biological species, and it ends with threatening life at any stage of human existence.
Some will say that this is ALARMIST. Western Civilisation has rested on the Judeo Christian ethic for two millennia and is now being replaced by a naturalistic ethic of pragmatism and utilitarianism.
(to be continued)
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