How much is that doggy in the window?

He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep!" (Matthew 12:11,12 ESV)

One of my cultural heros, long time lecturer, writer, and talk radio host Dennis Prager has, for over twenty years, posed a hypothetical situation to groups to whom he has lectured that goes something like this: If you were passing by a lake and found that your beloved pet--dog or cat--and a person who was a complete stranger to you were both drowning, and you could only save one, and in doing so the other would certainly drown, whom would you save? Dennis says that over all the years he has posed this question the percentage of people, whether young or old, who answer that they would save their pet and let the stranger die has remained fairly consistent at about 60% to 65%.

Some of this can possibly be attributed to the urbanization of the United States over the last century: the farther away from the farm one gets, the easier it is to anthropomorphize animals, I suppose. But I attribute more of this trend to the decline of Christian moral truth as an influence to American law and culture. To be sure this cavalier attitude to human life is nothing new. Consider the ancient Chinese practice of deferring to name children until age two, for example. But this custom, generally credited to the high infant mortality rate and their reluctance to emotionally bond with a child who might then die, I would rather contend was a direct result of their worldview which based its value on human life relative to its utility.

A mere cursory review of human history can demonstrate that the Judeo/Christian value placed on human life is unique. Even Hinduism, with its image in the Western mind of non-violence and respect for all life, leads to a caste system and the horrors experienced by the Sudra (the "untouchable") caste, or Krishna persuading Arjuna to do his caste duty of killing his relatives in war, for the indwelling soul neither kills nor is killed (Bhagavad-Gita, II. 17-22).

The American trend of abandoning our legal and cultural definition of human life based on Biblical moral truth, to a secular/humanist view of utilitarianism, has lead not only to the distortion of our values--as the above Dennis Prager anecdote demonstrates--but also to the appalling rate of abortion, exceeding that of many European countries. Whatever direction our government takes on these issues, it's imperative that the Church remain steadfast to Biblical truth that man is not an animal, but rather a unique creation of God, made in His own image, and therefore due an intrinsic worth and dignity commensurate with that fact.