Magician's Tricks and the Image of God in Man

Most of the arguments for abortion that I have seen on Facebook lately are magician tricks.  They ask us not to look at what abortion is and does in one hand because in the other hand we have foster care, immigration, poverty, fertility clinics, father’s responsibility,  etc.  This is emotional sleight of hand.  Those issues are also worthy of discussion, and they are important discussions, but they distract a person from the topic of abortion.  We must look at abortion itself.  

Abortion is the killing of human life.  Biology shows the embryo to be human life.  DNA has already coded for a unique, new being.  The real question is, “Does Human life have value, and if so, why?”

If human life has value, it possesses value innately.  In other words, it has value whether anyone believes it or not.  Its value exists in the same way gravity exists.  Science cannot help us here:  How can value be found in what is posited as the result of random chance?  As well, government can confer legality but it cannot confer value.  Value cannot be pressed into human life from without.  One government gives way to another and value changes.  If the value of human life can change, then it doesn’t objectively exist at all.

The answer is found in man’s creation.  God, powerful, compassionate, and unchanging, creates man.  Man’s value is described in the phrase imago dei.  God makes man to reflect Himself.  God makes man to uniquely relate to Him.  The image of God is man’s value, his birthright.  Every human being shares in it, whether young or old, healthy or infirm.  It exists whether we recognize it or not.  It is the central difference in our design.  The imago dei is our purpose, meaning, and value.  It cannot be altered, destroyed, or put on a sliding scale.  The imago dei is what makes us who we are, what defines us.  Human life has value because God values the imago dei in us.

Abortion touches what God has claimed as His own.  There is judgment waiting for those who have participated in the sin or have advocated for calling that evil good.  But, it is an offense like all other sins and in need of repair.  For those who have been victimized by abortion and find themselves weighed down by a load too heavy to carry, know this:  There is forgiveness, freedom, healing, and release from guilt and shame available from the same place I get it:  Jesus.