Jesus showed that we must love all people – even those that we profoundly disagree with: Gavin Matthews

A Rabbi stands in front of a cement stele of the Holocaust Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe during a march from the Brandenburg Gate on November 11, 2013 in Berlin. More than 200 Rabbis from 30 different countries took part in a Silent Memorial to mark the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELE (Photo credit should read JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)

Is human value and dignity fixed and inherent, or is it contingent upon the skills and performance of the individual in question? Is an ­isolated elderly person of equal significance to an internationally-adored, youthful celebrity? If so, why?

In 1787, the American constitution was adjusted to say that all men were not, in fact, created equal, because (according to the notorious three-fifths compromise) an ­African-American slave was the ­constitutional equivalent of 60 per cent of a free white person. Value is not intrinsic, it stated – but conferred by the state, which claimed licence to both “give and taketh away”.

I know of no one who today does not find that utterly appalling. ­However, there are utilitarian ethicists who are claiming something akin to it – that the value of a human life is derived from the individual’s capacity to ­contribute to society and make ­decisions. In other words the idea that the value of a human life is not inherent, but conferred by a court, is making a comeback. The value of your life, in this view, is prone to ­troubling ­fluctuations.

I will never forget standing amongst the stelae of Berlin’s memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe and feeling a sense of dread at the awful possibilities that open up when humans seize for themselves the right to determine the value of life. The perils which await us if we think that human dignity and rights are negotiable, and can be allotted according to race, sex, religion, nationality, age, health, or political persuasion are too grave to ­contemplate. The American founding fathers declared that human equality was “self-evident”, yet that axiom didn’t do much for their slaves.

If legal systems cannot give enduring dignity to humans, where can we ground the view that all people have infinite, inherent worth from their first to their final heartbeat? The atheist/agnostic historian Tom Holland claims that he is ethically a ‘Christian’ – because every sense of right and wrong he instinctively feels is deeply rooted in the Christian ­tradition. This is something he argues at length in his best-selling 2019 book, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind.

What exactly does that Christian tradition offer this debate? The first thing is the radical and unique idea from the Hebrew Bible that all humanity bears the imprimatur of God himself. When Jesus Christ teaches that we should ‘love our ­enemies’, he’s telling us that even those whose behaviour is appalling, bear God’s image.

Likewise, when Jesus Christ offered himself on the cross, for all people, he demonstrated what loving even one’s enemies looks like in practice. It was this act, argues Holland, that more than just fixing the divine market ­value of human life as ultimate, placed altruism at the heart of the western concept of goodness. The relevance of this is not merely that we must be peacemakers, not warmongers. Neither is it only that we must protect the sanctity of life at its fragile margins. It also means that we must treat even those we profoundly disagree with, in accordance with the value that is intrinsic to their humanity.

In our increasingly divided, ­society debates appear to be becoming ever more shrill and abusive. This is fuelled by the social media ­bubbles in which so many of us operate, in which we rarely really know ­anyone who disagrees with us and have few deep friendships across political/class/ethnic or religious divides.

While not all ideas are equal, in all our debates we must begin by affirming the worth of the person, even one who is saying the thing we dislike, and adjust our tone accordingly.

However, the final element of the Christian contribution to the vexed question of human value is that of redemption. The sorry reality is that while we all have noble aspirations, we have all failed in different ways to adequately respect those who differ from us – failed to take action to protect the vulnerable, given in to the temptation to look down upon ­others, and held in contempt what God has declared to be of worth. In Jesus’s estimation, in so doing we declare ourselves to be at enmity with God.

Extraordinarily however, the very heart of the Christian message, is that those of us who have failed are still beloved of God, that the death of Christ is powerfully redemptive, and that as a result we cannot only be forgiven for our past but be given a new future, in which we live differently. A future in which there will be robust and vigorous discussion of ideas, but value and love for all people.

Gavin Matthews for Solas.