A Persons A Person

In December of 1948, the newly-formed United Nations met in Paris France to draft what would become the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was just a few years after the end of World War II. Keep in mind that World War II, at least in Europe, was fought to defeat Adolf Hitler. Hitler had not only killed millions of Jews, but he had also rounded up all those whom he deemed as a drain to his master race, including gypsies, those of African descent, and homosexuals. But he didn’t stop there. Thousands of Germans with birth defects and mental challenges, as well as the old and infirm, were either sterilized, euthanized, or sterilized and then euthanized.

So after Hitler was defeated, the United Nations wanted to make sure nothing like this could ever happen again. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved December 10, 1948, begins this way:

"Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world."

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

Just a few years after that in 1953, Theodore Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, toured Japan. This was a big deal, because During World War II, Seuss produced hundreds of political cartoons depicting Japanese with dehumanizing racial stereotypes—thick glasses, slanty eyes, buck teeth, the whole works. But Dr. Seuss had been hired by Life magazine to write an article about the effects of the war and post-war efforts on Japanese children.

A university dean named Mitsugi Nakamura was Dr. Suess’ tour guide. He took Dr. Seuss to schools all over Japan, where he talked to school children and asked them to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up.

What Seuss saw made a deep impression, and when he returned to America, he started work on Horton Hears A Who!, the story of an elephant named Horton who is the only animal in the jungle who can hear the tiny inhabitants of a dust speck calling out for help. Horton protects the dust speck, and even when every other animal in the jungle is bent on destroying the speck, Horton keeps insisting,

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

The book was Dr. Seuss’s way of apologizing for the way he had portrayed the Japanese in his political cartoons. And when you open the book, you see that it’s dedicated “to my great friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan.

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

“Recognition of the dignity of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

These are both great statements. But there are a couple of problems. First, while both Dr. Seuss and the United Nations affirm the dignity of every person, they don’t define what makes a person. Secondly, even though the UN statement says that a human being has inherent value, it doesn’t say why. Are they valuable because of what they can contribute to society? Are they valuable because they are smart, or good looking? Are they valuable because they are wanted?

So today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Every year, hundreds of churches around the country take the Sunday closest to the anniversary of the 1973 Roe V Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalized abortion nationwide, to talk about how Scripture defines human life.

So for that, we’re going to go to Psalm 139. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word:

13 For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

Let’s pray

So, I want to talk first about what we learn from the Bible that we don’t learn from science, or the United Nations, or Dr. Seuss. A lot of people will affirm the dignity of human life—that people have value just because they are human. We can talk about the special place human beings have among all the creatures on earth. I was at breakfast with some guys from our church yesterday morning and Gary Alexander said, “You know, the two things that separate us from the animals are self-control, and the ability to use a knife and a fork.”

The Bible takes us a step beyond talking about dignity. The Bible talks about the sanctity of human life. When you hear the word “sanctity,” it’s describing something that is sacred. It comes from the Latin sanctus, which means holy.