Yesterday, as I was getting ready for church, I felt provoked by an image posted by one of my Facebook friends that featured three images next to each other, showing an unborn child and a corporate tower (standing in for a corporation) being granted personhood, but a feminist’s personhood being given a tepid “meh.” Apparently a feminist in the ilk of my Facebook only feels like a person when she has the legal claim on her unborn children as her property, to destroy at her will and pleasure. There were other people who felt like this in the course of American history, and those were slaveowners. For all of their difference in worldview, at their core was a reduction of people to property and their desire to be recognized as the privileged owners of that which belongs only to God, the souls of men, women, and children.

Recently, two sermons at church have dealt with the meaning of Matthew 5:22, in particular its ominous closing: “But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” The question about this verse posed by yesterday’s sermon was: Why is it that defining people as being worthless puts one in danger of the lake of fire? Part of the answer, at least, is it puts us in the position of God defining what other people are worth, when it is God who alone has that right? Who are we to say that someone has no purpose or worth, when it is God who makes life in the first place.

Defining the worth of people is dangerous business. During the times of American slavery, it was a common but harrowing sight for people to be stripped naked and paraded in front of others and given a value based on qualities that were judged as economically worthwhile, whether someone was hardworking, had a good attitude, or was a fertile woman who would bear many children for her master. Nowadays, people judge the value of a life in terms of convenience, in terms of their desire not to let anything or anyone interfere with their own fun and their own ambitions. Life is a gift from God, a gift that comes with repercussions and consequences and complications, but a gift nevertheless. Even a child born with serious disabilities is a reminder that an image of God that is broken and damaged is still beautiful and to be treasured, and may possess far better character than the rest of us. Even a child born out of rape and incest is a reminder that no human deed, no matter how ugly, can destroy God’s ability to restore it and make it beautiful and alive. A child born of a one-night stand may be unknown to his or her father and unwanted by a mother, but God wanted that child for His own purposes and plans. Who are we to dismiss the right of God to make and take life in His universe and to seek that power for ourselves for our own plans?

Among the most flagrant violators of the rights of people in our present evil world are governments and corporations. There is an irony in this that is not often examined. A government and a corporation both are fictitious people who are granted a sort of personhood as a collective identity in order to provide a legitimacy to the actions of the human beings, and both are often considered the property of those people who control it. There are dangers, though, even in considering fictional people to be property, and that is the fact the people who govern such institutions are tempted to view their employees or customers or others as property as well instead of people like themselves. The results of such evils can be seen everywhere, whether one looks at death and destruction or degradation or the lonely exile of people to become refugees. And we will be judged for having viewed that which belongs to God as being our own to rule or ruin by our will and pleasure.

We may not always do a good job at showing the proper care and respect to others, nor at appreciating the value and worth we and others have as the children of the Eternal, the Most High, but so long as we make the effort and keep the right attitude, we can always be refined and our efforts can be improved. First, though, we must have a heart of love for others, a recognition that so long as anyone is viewed as worthless and as property than the rights and freedoms of no one is secure. To feel as if our rights as people depend on denying the rights of others is to put ourselves as an unjust and corrupt elite. Those who murder the unborn and those who seek to own the souls of others are the same sorts of threats to the dignity and value of life, but even so, they are people too.