A Report to Observers from Outside our World
Why Was I Standing on a Sidewalk Holding a Sign?
***BEGIN REPORT***
I think I’ve finally gotten over the shock of your first contact with me. I have to admit I was quite fearful after observing your technology. Being able to open a portal to another world and communicating through it is quite beyond our science at this time. I was also doubtful of your assurances that your motive for contact was simply to learn more about us. Since then, after many conversations, I have made that leap of faith that your intentions are indeed benevolent. But even if they are not, I believe is it better for me to explain humanity as best I can, just so you have no misconceptions about who we really are.
Secondly, I understand that you chose me to give you a common man’s perspective of the goings-on of this little planet I live on. While I truly feel the honor and privilege of communicating with superior beings such as yourselves, I do understand that you chose me because of my commonness; I realize that I am nothing extraordinary in the way of human beings, and could not possibly enlighten you on much of anything except for my own perspective of the world I live on. As you previously mentioned, you have already interpreted and absorbed our greatest works of human reasoning, philosophy and theology. That said, I must say that I’m gladdened that you value reason and truth. I don’t believe we’d get very far in any discussions without that commonality. Afterall, if I insisted that there is no objective truth, I would be making an objective statement, and thus refuting my own statement.
Well, on with answering your inquiry. You observed that in the previous month I was spending time standing on the sidewalk in front of a building holding a sign and saying prayers. You wanted to know why I did that and what was the point of it all. Let me explain.
I did so because it involves one of the most contentious issues of our culture. This is so because it hits at a very basic belief that we have about ourselves—that each individual human life is precious to our God, and because of this has inherent dignity and is intrinsically valuable. This is the basis of our civilization, that every human by the very virtue of being a human, has an unalienable right to life. Our laws prohibiting killing are a testament to this belief. Humans who intentionally violate another human’s right to life are punished severely for it. And by that same principle, we have the right to defend our own precious life even if that means taking the life of the one threatening our life. Besides defending our own lives from imminent threat, no other human right, want or need supersedes the right to life.
It should be obvious that this inviolable right must be universally applicable to all human life or it applies to none. This is the position held by my Church. I believe it because it makes sense to me and also because the perfect source of truth and reason, our God, demands that it is so.
Others, for various reasons of their own, have decided that there are exceptions to the rule that all humans have an equal right to life. They do this in various ways. One way is to say that certain humans are not really human. You have probably noted in your review of our history that often minority groups of people are labeled as being non-human so as give license for abusing and killing them. This thinking is also applied to unborn humans. Some humans believe (or say they believe) that we are not human during the time of gestation, the first nine months of our lives developing in our mother’s wombs. As you already have an understanding of human reproduction, I don’t need to point out how absurd it is to assert the unborn are not human.
Others argue that intrinsic value comes upon a human at some time in his development. When intrinsic value comes upon a human in development seems to vary depending on the holder of this belief. Some say it comes when the unborn human is viable—meaning he could survive outside the womb if born. Others say that only after a child is completely outside of his mother is he valuable (why, even some will say that if most of a child’s body is outside his mother, but the head remains inside, that’s not enough—he must be completely out to be valuable). Still others say that a human baby is only valuable if his own mother subjectively deems her child that way. I know all this sounds absurd. After all, if something has intrinsic value, you can’t by definition give or take it away depending on the circumstances.
Another way some try to make an exception is to simply assert that a pregnant woman has a right to control her body (they often call it a “right to choose”). This is basically a complaint against female biology itself. As you know, the reproductive process, once begun inside a woman, is an automated one that concludes with a baby being born. Many women dislike or are fearful of this aspect of their bodies, especially since the sexual act is often used by humans for emotional or entertainment purposes rather than for reproduction. Intent for reproduction or not, with every sexual act, the possibility of a resulting pregnancy is always there. Thus, some women assert the right to abort that process. However, once the reproductive process has begun, (as you know) another human is brought into existence who has a separate body from the mother. (I feel stupid having to repeat basics that you already know, but this is their argument, not mine). Stopping the pregnancy necessarily means that the baby must be killed. So, while a woman does have a right to control whether her body becomes pregnant, once she is pregnant, this asserted right for control cannot supersede her child’s right to life. This flawed argument, while a common one, is simply an attempt to side-step the value of the life of the unborn baby altogether.
Needless to say, once humans begin to carve out exceptions of humans who are not intrinsically valuable, they by necessity begin to eat away at the very idea that any human is intrinsically valuable. Now I realize that we humans don’t show ourselves off very well in protecting human life. We violate this right all the time, as you’ve seen. In the past 100 years, our world wars have been especially gruesome. Even nightly in our largest cities’ streets, there is a constant blood bath of killing. But as you also know, we are a fallen species. That’s why we believe our God became a fellow human so as to save us from ourselves.
I’ve come to the end of my current report without answering specifically why I was standing on the sidewalk in front of a building holding a sign and praying. Putting it simply, I was there to assert the truth that all human life has value. Why I was standing in front of that particular building and what happened while I was standing there, I will answer more specifically in my next report.
***END REPORT***