What is Man?

Partial birth abortion.

Jack Kevorkian.

Dolly the cloned sheep.

Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue.

These names and topics have filled our headlines in recent days and months. And seemingly, the topics may not have much to do with one another.

Or do they?

What is it that euthanasia, abortion, cloning and artificial intelligence all have in common?

What they have in common, and the issue that is confronting humanity at this instant in history is the question of what it means to be human.

It's not a new question.

It was the Psalmist who asked of God, "What is man that you should take notice of him?" Shakespeare, through Hamlet, asked, "What is man? A quintessence of dust."

It is the question of the ages. What are we? Are we special? Is there a purpose to our existence?

Since the philosophical debate between Renee Decartes and his opponents, humanity has largely decided that man is just a machine made of flesh and bone. Bill Gates, the spokesperson for the 21st century, recently said that he sees nothing special in human intelligence or consciousness - that the only barrier between machine and man is time and complexity.

Human consciousness in the minds of many is just an odd anomaly in the evolution of life on earth. Our minds are just the random activity of overly complex neurological structures. Our souls are just a fading dream.

But we know differently, don't we? We know that humanity is special. That our minds and our souls exist - we are not bodies that have a soul; we are souls occupying bodies. Our minds are not some epiphenomenon of brain activity, but separate and real entities that exist outside the concrete world of the merely physical.

So when Jack Kevorkian decides another person should die. We know that his actions are immoral. When little babies are, in the words of Shakespeare, again, "untimely ripped from their mother's womb", we know that life has been taken. When the infinitesimal structures of DNA are manipulated by humanity, we know that every person born is knit together not by genetic engineers, but by the hand of God.

And what do we say of Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov? Has machine intelligence made its first foray into the land of human intelligence? Has a critical barrier between humanity and machine been broken down?

Hardly.

We don't judge a person to be human by their intelligence. By their emotional stability or mental acuity. We don't decide the value of human life based on its affects or abilities. But based on humanity's nature. We are stamped forever and unlike any other creature in God's creation with the very image of God. And sometimes even we Christian's forget - and decide who is worthy or valuable based on wealth, appearance, influence or power. But we would do well to remember that God has created us all. And all of us are special in His eyes.

C. S. Lewis said it this way,

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."

We are the creation of God - and are considered by Him to be the supreme creatures in His creation. But a better status is available. God has made a way to reconcile His wayward children to Him. He has made a way to be reunited with Him in a present and future relationship that completes us as human beings. The reconciliation; the reuniting; begins and ends with Jesus Christ.