Image of God

Scientists in China are working on an AI tool that they hope will be able to translate animal noises into human language. Much like the technology used in Disney’s movie Up, the goal is to translate animal communication into human communication to facilitate cross-species dialogue.

While research is unclear whether or not this is possible, some work is currently being done with dogs to see if they are able to use a tactile mats to communicate with their owners.

The desire to talk with our pets and other animals is a common one. Dating back to Ancient Greece and the myth of Melampus and more recently the book and movie series Dr. Doolittle, humans have been fascinated with the idea of being able to speak with our furry counterparts.

Even the Bible includes a story of a miraculous event where a Donkey is given the ability to warn his rider in Numbers 22.

Our desire and inability to talk to animals points to a valuable Biblical truth: We have things in common with animals, but we are necessarily distinct. In the Creation narrative of Genesis 1 and 2 we see God creating animals and humans on the same day, and yet with very different processes. And ultimately, only humans are made in His own divine image.

Pro-life advocates saw the 2022 Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as a turning point in the fight against abortion in the United States. After the court overturned Roe v. Wade and removed federal protection for the procedure, some conservative states began introducing fetal personhood laws, granting the unborn the same rights as full-born children.

But Hannah Strege watched it all unfold with another vulnerable group in mind: frozen embryos. In this new era, would they have rights? If they did, would anyone respect them?

Strege, 24, was conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 1996 and frozen for two years. In 1997, she and 19 of her siblings were adopted in embryo form by John and Marlene Strege. They were shipped by FedEx to a local fertility clinic. Hannah was the only embryo to survive thawing and to successfully implant in Marlene’s uterus. She was born in December 1998.

Since Hannah was born, the number of frozen embryos sitting in storage in the United States has risen from roughly 100,000 to an estimated 1.5 million. Many of these embryos remain from IVF treatments, indefinitely chilled in canisters of liquid nitrogen with no plans for their future.

Some clinics feel overwhelmed by the growing volume of embryos sitting in storage and doctors may create dozens of embryos per patient. One doctor told NBC News in 2019 that some patients have 40–60 eggs retrieved in a cycle, and “the embryologist gets the orders from her doctor to inseminate all of them—and the question isn’t asked if the patient even wants that many inseminated. … Nobody’s going to have 30 kids.”

One Florida reproductive endocrinologist said, “We were not prepared for any of this. Twenty-one percent of our embryos have been abandoned.”

People today may say that it shouldn’t matter what other people think about you. All that matters is what you think of you, that you live up to your standards and do what you think is right. I propose that that is utter nonsense. We are utterly dependent on others to name, bless, and affirm us.

Imagine a poet who says, “You know, I've been writing poetry for 10 years and I've let 3,000 people read my poems. Everyone has hated them. Everyone says, ‘This is stupid, this is terrible, this is bad. You must get another job.’” But the poet says, “It doesn't matter what they think. I know I'm a great poet.”

Would you say, “Well, there's a person with a great self-image?” Of course not. You’d probably say, “That’s a person on the verge of insanity. They are not functional.” And you know the reason why? Because we cannot bless ourselves. We cannot feel beautiful just because we keep saying I'm beautiful. You cannot bless yourself. You cannot name yourself. You cannot say I'm somebody. Somebody from outside has got to tell you you're beautiful. Somebody from the outside has got to tell you you're a good poet. Somebody from the outside has got to bless you. Somebody from the outside has got to name you. You can't do it yourself.

And that means you are completely dependent, or you will be completely dependent on somebody else, spiritually. Your whole being is going to rest on somebody, whether it's the critics, your parents, somebody you hope to marry, somebody you have married, or somebody else. Like sheep, we are dependent on others for our survival and flourishing.

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes:

A few years ago, I was having a breakfast meeting in a diner in Waco, Texas, with a stern, imposing former teacher named LaRue Dorsey. I wanted to understand her efforts as a community builder because of my work with Weave, an organization I co-founded that addresses social isolation. I was struck by her toughness, and I was a bit intimidated. Then a mutual friend named Jimmy Dorrell came into the diner, rushed up to our table, grabbed Mrs. Dorsey by the shoulders and beamed: “Mrs. Dorsey, you’re the best! You’re the best! I love you! I love you!”

I’ve never seen a person’s whole aspect transform so suddenly. The disciplinarian face Mrs. Dorsey had put on under my gaze vanished, and a joyous, delighted nine-year-old girl appeared. That’s the power of attention.

Each of us has a characteristic way of showing up in the world. A person who radiates warmth will bring out the glowing sides of the people he meets, while a person who conveys formality can meet the same people and find them stiff and detached.

The first point of my story is that you should attend to people in the warm way Jimmy does and less in the reserved way that I used to do. But my deeper point is that Jimmy is a pastor. When Jimmy sees a person — any person — he is seeing a creature with infinite value and dignity, made in the image of God. He is seeing someone so important that Jesus was willing to die for that person.

Former abortion doctor Patti Giebenk tells the following story about the woman who prayed her into a lifechanging encounter with Jesus:

During my lengthy conversion from pro-choice to pro-life, there was a person who prayed for me repeatedly. She was a prayer warrior I’d never met, but God heard her special prayer for me. It was the prayer of Sister Josita. Throughout her life, Sister Josita advocated for the poor, the refugee, and the vulnerable.

After Sister Josita heard that Dr. Giebink did abortions, she started praying for her—for over ten years. Then Dr. Giebink met Christ and stopped doing abortions. She joined a local church in South Dakota, and started treating poor women around the globe, but no longer doing abortions. After returning from one of her many trips to, she received the following letter:

Dear Doctor Giebink,

May your Christmas be blessed and the New Year filled with joy.

You don’t know me ... I want to thank you for your courage to speak out for life, and ... to bring an end to abortion. When I saw you on television, I was so proud of you to publicly state that you used to perform abortions for Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls and now you support life instead. When I first heard that you were performing abortions, I began lifting you up in prayer. I do not believe abortion is right, or a solution to an unwanted pregnancy. I have prayed for you, by name, that one day your heart would be touched, and you would discontinue performing abortions. I thank God for you, and I continue to pray for you.

Patti Giebink concludes this story with the following words:

Sister Josita still prays for me. We write regularly, and I’ve visited her twice. She turned ninety this year, and she’s still a vibrant and dynamic warrior. Her initial intervention for me—just a name and a face—moved celestial mountains, making way for my future legacy of life. May we all stay on our knees until the answer comes, just as Sister Josita did.

Every person starts as one fertilized egg, which by adulthood has turned into roughly 37 trillion cells. But those cells have a formidable challenge. These cells must copy 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA perfectly, about once every 24 hours. To speed up the process, cells start replication in multiple spots with people having tens of thousands of them throughout their genomes.

However, this poses its own challenge: How to know where to start and how to time everything. Without precision control, some DNA might get copied twice, causing cellular pandemonium. Bad things can happen if replication doesn’t start correctly. For DNA to be copied, the DNA double helix must open up, and the resulting single strands are vulnerable to breakage or the process can get stuck.

It takes a tightly coordinated dance involving dozens of proteins for the DNA-copying machinery to start replication at the right point in the cell’s life cycle. Keeping tight reins on the kickoff of DNA replication is particularly important to avoid that pandemonium.

Today, researchers are making steps toward a full understanding of the molecular checks and balances that have evolved in order to ensure that each origin initiates DNA copying once and only once, to produce precisely one complete new genome.

Possible Preaching Angle:

3,000 years ago, King David exclaimed, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Ps. 139:14). Scientific knowledge has increased exponentially since that time and we should be even more in awe of God’s creative genius on display.

Cicero said, “The thing itself cannot be praised. Only its potential.” He was talking about young children. Such was the view in the Empire where Jesus arrived as an infant. Plutarch said, “The child, is more like a plant” than a human, or even than an animal.

But Jesus and his followers had a different view of the moral status of children. To follow him, Jesus said, you had to become like a child. Even babies, Christians said, are fully human and fully bear the image of God. As the African bishop Cyprian wrote, “God himself does not make such distinction of person or of age, since he offers himself as a Father to all.” And if that’s God’s view, then “Every sex and age should be held in honor among you.”

The church even extended that honor and protection to the unborn. The Didache, one of the earliest Christian documents says, “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.”

Throughout the Roe regime, contemporary Christians have similarly demonstrated their “contempt of death,” their pursuit of justice for the unborn, and their love of children and pregnant women. The church has more than mere potential to better bear witness to life. It is the house of the Life himself.

Betty Hodge knows what it’s like to have an unplanned pregnancy. And she knows what it’s like to have the father of the unborn child push for an abortion. She’s been there. But she didn’t seriously consider terminating her pregnancy, because she didn’t feel alone. Hodge said, “Thankfully I had a family that was supportive.” She now works at a pregnancy resource center in Jackson, Mississippi, so she can provide that same support for other mothers in need.

These days, she sees a lot of them. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (in 2022), allowing the state of Mississippi to pass a law banning all abortions except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest that have been reported to police. The clinic that gave its name to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case shut down in July. It was the state’s only abortion provider. So, while women may still travel to Florida, New York, or Illinois to terminate a pregnancy, abortion has effectively ended in the Magnolia State.

The state health office estimates this will result in an additional 5,000 babies being born in Mississippi in 2023. The pro-life movement there is eager to celebrate each of these precious lives, but they’re also aware of other upsetting statistics: Mississippi has the highest rate of preterm births—over 30 percent more than the national average. The state has the highest infant mortality rate in the US, with nearly nine of every 1,000 babies dying. And for the infants who live to be toddlers, 28 percent will live in poverty.

Hodge doesn’t shy away from these hard facts. For her, this is part of the work of being pro-life. ... And with the state expecting 5,000 more babies in 2023, she sees an opportunity to put pro-life beliefs into practice and show that Christians care. She said, “If we’re going to say we stand for life, then it’s pertinent for us to stand up and say we don’t just care about the unborn child. As a church, we have an opportunity to make a difference.”

N.D. Wilson writes in an article titled “God the Merrymaker”:

We Christians are the proclaimers of joy. We speak in this world on behalf of the One who made lightning and snowflakes and eggs. Or so we say. We say we want to be like God, and we feel we mean it. But we don’t. Not to be harsh, but if we did really mean it, we would be having a lot more fun than we are. We are made in God’s image and should strive to imitate him.

A dolphin flipping through the sun beyond the surf, a falcon in a dive, a mutt in the back of a truck, flying his tongue like a flag of joy. These all reflect the Maker more wholly than many of our endorsed thinkers, theologians, and churchgoers.

Look over our day-to-day lives. How do we parent, for example? Rules. Fears. Don’ts. “Don’t jump on the couch.” “No gluten in this house.” “Get down from that tree.” “Quiet down.” “Hold still.” We live as if God were an infinite list of negatives. In our bent way of thinking, that makes him the biggest stress-out of all.

We say that we would like to be more like God. Speak your joy. Mean it. Sing it. Do it. Push it down into your bones. Let it overflow your banks and flood the lives of others. At his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. When we are truly like him, the same will be said of us.

Last year a software engineer at Google made an unusual assertion: That an artificial-intelligence chatbot developed at the company had become sentient, was entitled to rights as a person and might even have a soul. After what the company called a “lengthy engagement” with the employee on the issue, Google fired him.

It’s unlikely this will be the last such episode. Artificial intelligence is writing essays, winning at chess, detecting likely cancers, and making business decisions. That’s just the beginning for a technology that will only grow more powerful and pervasive, bolstering longstanding worries that robots might someday overtake us.

Yet far less attention has been paid to how we should treat these new forms of intelligence, some of which will be embodied in increasingly anthropomorphic forms. Might we eventually owe them some kind of moral or legal rights? Might we feel we should treat them like people if they look and act the part?

Answering those questions will force society to address profound social, ethical, and legal quandaries. What exactly is it that entitles a being to rights, and what kind of rights should those be? Are there helpful parallels in the human relationship with animals? Will the synthetic minds of tomorrow, quite possibly destined to surpass human intelligence, someday be entitled to vote or to marry? If they make an articulate demand for such rights, will anyone be in a position to say no?

These concerns might seem far-fetched. But the robot invasion is already well under way. The question of rights for these soon-to-be-ubiquitous artificial forms of intelligence has gained urgency from the sudden prominence of ChatGPT and the AI-powered new form of Microsoft’s Bing. Both of which have astounded with their sophisticated responses to user questions.

“We need to think about this right now,” says David Gunkel, author of the book Robot Rights. Citing the rapid spread of AI and its fast-growing capabilities, he adds: “We are already in this territory.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The world continues to play down the unique sacredness of human life and is willing to grant equality to animals or manmade robots. Humankind was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Only we have the “breath of God” (Gen. 2:7) and are unique among all of creation. Only God can create life; the best we can do is create an imitation of life in AI.

Author Pete Greig shares the following story in How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People:

I was walking the darkened streets near our house one night, reviewing the day before bed, remembering how I'd driven Sammy [my wife] and the boys to the cinema and how someone had cut us off. I'd yelled at him. Sammy had yelled at me. I'd yelled at Sammy. Hadn’t she seen how dangerously the other guy was driving? Had she forgotten that we had vulnerable children in the car? Didn't she know there was such a thing as righteous anger? She'd gone silent.

We arrived at the cinema. The film had been great. Life had moved on. No big deal. But now in the stillness of these darkened streets, as I returned to that moment, it seemed that God was siding with my wife. I sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry. I admit it: I lost my temper. I shouldn't have yelled at that driver. Lord, help me to be more patient tomorrow."

There was a pause before I sensed him telling me to apologize to our sons. This thought annoyed me, and I found myself protesting. "That's ridiculous. You're making this bigger than it is. My kids don't need me to apologize. They won't even remember such a trivial incident. Do you have any idea what the traffic is like around here?"

Ten minutes later, I was sitting on Hudson's bed. "Son, I just want to say sorry to you for something. Do you remember me yelling at that man on the way to the cinema?" Immediately, he nodded. "I shouldn't have done that. Mum was right. Christians are supposed to be patient and kind. I set you a bad example. That's not how I want you to grow up and treat people. I'm sorry." Right away, he put his arms around my neck and squeezed me tight. "That's okay, Dad.”

A minute later, I was in the room next door, making the same speech to Danny, and the same thing happened. He immediately knew exactly what I was talking about. He hadn't forgotten either. He listened to my apology and didn't think it was crazy. He hugged me and told me it was okay. It's a silly, mundane story, and that's the whole point. We are changed--conformed into the likeness of Christ--through a thousand small choices like these.

Some people think that the claim that human equality comes from Jesus is just biased. But when the British historian Tom Holland set out to write his book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, he was not a Christian. He'd always been far more attracted by the Greek and Roman gods than by the crucified hero of Christianity. But through years of research, he concluded that he, agnostic as he was, held many specifically Christian beliefs. For example, his belief in universal human equality and the need to care for the poor and oppressed.

Holland writes:

That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely a self-evident truth. A Roman would have laughed at it. To campaign against discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth. The origins of this principle—as the philosopher Frederick Nietzsche had contemptuously pointed out—lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.

In his book The Life We’re Looking For, author Andy Crouch relates the following spiritual prayer experience. While stuck in Chicago’s O’Hare airport on a cold winter night, he needed some exercise, so he tried the following prayer walk experiment:

As I walked, I decided, I would try to take note of each person I passed. I would pay as much attention to each of them as I could … and say to myself as I saw each one, image bearer. I passed a weary looking man in a suit. Image bearer. Right behind him was a woman in a sari. Image bearer. A mother pushed a stroller with a young baby; a young man, presumably the baby’s father, walked next to her, half holding, half dragging a toddler by the hand. Image bearer, image bearer, image bearer, image bearer. A ramp worker walked by in a bulky coat and safety vest. Image bearer.

By the time I reached the corridor where Terminal 1 connects to Terminal 2, I had passed perhaps 200 people, glancing at their faces just long enough to say to myself, image bearer. I had six more concourses to go. ... After about 45 minutes of walking—image bearer, image bearer, image bearer … I was at the most distant gates.

By the end of the walk … I had passed people in every stage of life and health, [many] national and ethnic backgrounds, some traveling together, most seemingly alone. The stories I would never learn behind each of those faces … the possibility and futility each one had no one and would know … carried an emotional and spiritual weight that I can still feel, years later. From time to time, I repeat this exercise on a city street, in a coffee shop, even driving on the highway with faces are just a blur behind a windshield. Image bearer, image bearer, image bearer. It never fails to move me.

Can fetuses (or unborn children) really feel pain and experience a human connection with other humans? New scientific research provides a mass of evidence that they can. Here are some of the facts from the latest research:

• There is now strong evidence that fetuses as early as twelve weeks exhibit conscious, intentional behavior and that they actively discriminate among similar sensory experiences.

• At 12 weeks the baby demonstrates intentional “social” movements—behavior that isn’t accidental nor reflexive but demonstrates conscious awareness of the environment, and intentional—even social—planning of physical actions.

• As early as 14 weeks, fetuses distinguish between music and mere vibrational noise that stimulates the same auditory pathways.

• At 19–23 weeks unborn babies electively respond to and distinguish between different types of external stimulation, displaying more intentional movement to their mother’s belly touch than to maternal speaking.

• As early as 20 weeks, fetal hand movements toward the mouth and eyes are straighter and less jerky, revealing a surprisingly advanced level of motor planning.

Stuart Derbyshire, a researcher and former pro-choice consultant, was considered “a leading voice against the likelihood of fetal pain.” Yet, faced with mounting scientific evidence to the contrary, Derbyshire changed his mind and wrote, “The evidence, and a balanced reading of that evidence, points toward an immediate and unreflective pain experience mediated by the developing function of the nervous system from as early as 12 weeks.”

Newly-released figures (June, 2022) show that one-fifth of all US pregnancies were aborted in 2020, with 930,160 terminations taking place over the course of that year. The statistics showed that the number of terminations rocketed by eight percent between 2017 and 2020.

An exact breakdown on how advanced each of the terminated pregnancies has not been released. But researchers did determine that 54 percent of all terminations which took place in 2020 were the result of the so-called “abortion pill.” It sees women take two doses of a drug which induces miscarriage during the first 10 weeks of a pregnancy.

The statistics were released almost two months after a leaked Supreme Court draft judgement indicated plans to scrap the 1973 Roe v Wade law. It guarantees American women the right to an abortion. Multiple states are now poised to impose an outright ban on terminations as the conservative majority court prepares to publish its completed opinion.

The number of abortions carried out in 1973--the first year the procedure became legal--sat at around 750,000. That number rose to more than one million by the late 70s, and stayed there throughout the 1980s, reaching an all-time high of more than 1.5 million abortions in 1990.

The figure dropped below one million for the first time in 2011, and now faces decreasing further as tough new laws come into place across conservative states.

Advances in medical technology since Roe was published have further complicated the issue. Roe allows women to have abortions up until the point a fetus can survive outside the womb. That is currently defined as between 23 and 28 weeks of pregnancy.

But in 2021, an Alabama baby born at just 21 weeks went on to survive thanks to modern medicine that would not have been available in 1973, sparking further discussion about abortion time limits.