George Tiller, Abortion, and the Imago Dei

I am pro-life. I think George Tiller's medical practice of aborting viable babies in the third trimester was unconscionable. And I think his assassination is equally unconscionable.

This is a difficult issue for me. Tiller wasn't just someone who performed late-term abortions. He was an all-out advocate for such a practice - a culture warrior in his own right. Prior to his killing, Tiller had suffered other physical harm, legal challenges, protests, and harassment. None of this deterred Tiller from continuing his terrible practice. Clearly, Tiller was a man who was completely committed to doing what he was doing. A lot like his killer, I suspect. Which is why I can equally condemn the actions of both of them.

I agree with those who say that the country's gradual shift toward a more pro-life posture has nothing to do with violent acts like this. It has everything to do with the compelling peaceful arguments that have been made by those of us who see God's image in every person, including the unborn. Scientific advances that increasingly demonstrate the viability of pre-born life, coupled with many post-1973 individuals rightly seeing themselves as 'survivors' of a sanitized and sanctioned practice of death, have gradually reshaped the ethos of the abortion issue in far more effective ways than judges, politicians, and laws have done. Tiller's killing may or may not stem this tide. But it clearly violated the basic principles that have given rise to this tide.

Tragedies like this killing always highlight a brutal dynamic of humanity when left unchecked. Everybody has 'reasons' why they do what they do. Nothing that has ever been said or done is purely 'thoughtless' in the sense of having no reasons behind them. Judging the propriety of words and deeds isn't about determining whether there were 'reasons' behind them. No. Parents have 'reasons' for cursing at their children. Children have 'reasons' for throwing their food at the table. Madoff had 'reasons' for ruining the lives of so many. Having a 'reason' for doing something doesn't make it right.

The propriety of our conduct is about whether our reasons are good or not. But this leaves us in another dilemma. How exactly are we to determine whether our reasoning is good? In my view, an ethic of word and deed that is not based, either explicitly or implicitly, on the doctrine of imago Dei is one that leaves us in chaos. It is the Christian doctrine of humanity made in God's image that gives us common cause, mutual respect, a real ability to bridge differences, and most importantly, a fundamental dignity that cannot be revoked by any man or woman. The practice of abortion, and the killing of abortionists, are both rooted in a denial of imago Dei. Both practices, in the end, embrace the antithesis of imago Dei, for they betray the belief that one person gets to decide whether another person has intrinsic value or not - or in the case of abortion, one person gets to decide whether another person is really a person or not.

The breakdown of the imago Dei ethic doesn't just show up on the issue of abortion. I'm convinced it is the primary reason why America is disintegrating into all-out individualism and factionalism. The isolation, mistrust, and even hatred it has spawned is, in my view, irreversible absent a return to the only ethic that ascribes permanent value to humanity as a whole. All of us, especially those of us who are Christians and claim to embrace biblical ethics, need to take a hard look in the mirror. If we really believed in the imago Dei, would we really be treating others the way we are? Considering that Tiller was apparently a churchgoer, his abdication of imago Dei is only an acutely grotesque example of less newsworthy but far more common abdications that many of us, including me, silently exhibit in our attitudes and 'reasons' for treating people the way we do.

The danger of an increasingly post-Christian America isn't just about the waning influence of the Gospel, Jesus, and the need for salvation in our current zeitgeist. It is also about a deterioration in the ethic that binds us together and instills mutual respect and responsibility to each other as fellow image-bearers. The loss of this ethic results in the basis for Tiller's grisly practice, as well as his grisly execution. One would hope that both would cause us all to take a step back and do some serious assessing of where we are and where we're headed. But civilization has paved over over an abundance of such moments throughout time without barely missing a beat. The dangers of this are numerous, obvious, and imminent.