The Value of Human Life

In Book 3 Chapter 6 of "Crime and Punishment," Raskolnikov states (speaking of Aliona Ivanova), "I didn't kill a human being, but a principle!"

Reading this statement caused me to think of a conversation I had with a friend earlier this year...

As I walked through the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. (March 2009) my friend Matt and I were looking at the pictures and exhibits, reading the stories, and watching the videos in the museum. Let me just say, if you have never been to the Holocaust museum, go. I have been to museum's like this all over the world, I've been to the peace parks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, where the A-bombs were dropped, I've been to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and I've been to the memorial in Kigali, Rwanda that pays tribute to the genocide victims, but I have never been so heartbroken as I was in the Holocaust museum.

I was doing ok until we reached the children's section of the museum. Here there were stories of thousands of children who were murdered by the Nazis. I cried as I looked at pictures of adorable 5 year old girls with pigtails and little boys playing outside and then read the stories of how this one was killed four days after the picture was taken, of how this one survived four months in concentration camp before dying of starvation, etc...

With tears in both of our eyes Matt and I went and sat down on a bench, unable to keep walking until we had processed for a little while. I had been thinking about one question and after a few minutes I looked at Matt and said "How does this happen? How can you rationalize killing so many innocent, unarmed people? How do you sit there and look at a line of people, mainly women and children, as they're marched into a gas chamber and it not phase you in the least?" Matt thought for a minute and said, "I guess they simply chose to no longer think of them as humans." And that is true. A little later, in another exhibit, we saw quotes from Nazi leaders and soldiers, to hear them talk you would have thought that they were merely killing some insignificant, inferior animals.

It is amazing to me what you can rationalize when you refuse to look at human life as a valuable, God-ordained thing. By calling it simply a fetus we manage to kill humans every day through abortion with no qualms, by dehumanizing the Jews the Nazi's managed to slaughter them without so much as an afterthought, and by reducing a human life to a "principle" Raskolnikov committed a murder.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made. God deemed us important enough to send His Son to die for us. Let's not forget the value of the human life.