My wife and kids are out of town tonight, so I took up one of my favorite hobbies -playing the guitar. After playing a few songs I started roaming the interwebs looking for new material to learn. I happened across THIS acoustic rendition of Sweet Child O’Mine performed by Slash.
So, as I sat in my living room floor watching this man work wonders with an acoustic guitar, I would glance from time to time at my own guitar and think to myself, ‘imagine the potential of this instrument.’ I cannot bend strings like this man. I don’t have the coordination of this man. I don’t have the years of experience this man has. This man has a wonderful talent. And, perhaps, his guitar is nicer and more expensive than mine. Yet, if he were to pick up my guitar he could do things with it that I cannot imagine myself doing. My guitar has tremendous potential that has not been brought out because of my own limitations.
They say that they great sculptors can look at a piece of rock or clay and see images in them waiting to be carved, or molded, out. It is their imagination and skill that brings these images into reality.
Coal can become a diamond if we don’t burn it up first. The potential is there.
As I followed this line of thought an argument I had heard from Leon Kass came to life in an instant. Kass, the former Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics under George W. Bush, was recently interviewed concerning the Kermit Gosnell trial. In the interview, he briefly mentions his argument from human possibility:
“Nascent life prior to birth,” Dr. Kass says, “does not yet display any of the grand and glorious things for which we applaud humanity in its flowering. And yet it is the dignity of human possibility to be found in nascent life that should lead us treat it not less well than it deserves.” He admits to being “agnostic” on the question of whether the embryo “is a human being equal to your grandchildren.” Even so, Dr. Kass says, “in the face of our ignorance about its status, the embryo does have a certain claim on us. It is the bearer of human possibility, and we owe it not to mistreat it.
Some may look at a guitar and see wood and metal. Tonight, I looked at mine and saw the possibility of beautiful music. Some may look at a rock and see, well, a rock. The sculptor looks at it and sees potential. Some think of an embryo as nothing special, as a potential hindrance to a liberated woman who isn’t ready, or has no desire, to be a mother. Those who love life look at it and see possibility – glorious possibility. I see the potential for beautiful music, for tears, for laughter, for joy, for sorrow. I see clay with which a potter can mold something glorious. Indeed, he has already molded something glorious – life in his own image, even in the womb.
Someone may say, ‘this argument does not prove that embryos must be protected.’ After all, the fact that something has potential doesn’t make it inherently valuable. The rock may be valuable to the sculptor, but not valuable to someone else who is not a sculptor. But what if there is a great Sculptor who values all rocks? What if there is a great guitar player who values all instruments? He does.
- Psalm 139:13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
