To millions in the English-speaking world, “Thou shalt not kill,” is the most fundamental commandment. After all, if you don’t have your life, nothing else matters.
Common sense declares that this is about human beings—not plant and animal life. We kill bacteria, mosquitoes, trees, and wolves without remorse. But murder remains taboo. The killing of a human being is so final, so immediate, and so terrible that people the world over abhor it.
We abhor murder because there is something obviously different about human beings. The difference between human and animal is ineffable, but undeniable. When we try to name it, we might call it “humanity,” “soul,” or “personhood.” But, whatever we call it, it is part of our very nature.
Some religions and philosophies teach that it exists before the moment of conception, and others teach that it comes into us sometime after conception. But all this religious speculation is just that—speculation. It is far more natural and consistent with human experience to believe that humanity, soul, and person are synonymous with human life. The burden of proof lies on those who would say otherwise.
Murder, more than most other sins, is relatively rare. Annually, fewer than one in 16,000 people commit murder. And, in some nations, that dips below one in 625,000. Also, unlike other crimes, murder has no statute of limitations. The deed is as unthinkable decades later as it was in the moment.
Because the internal taboo against murdering a fellow human being is so strong, would-be murderers must either numb themselves to their own inhibitions or convince themselves that their victim is subhuman.
That might explain why, according to the US Department of Justice, more than half of violent crimes are perpetrated under the influence of drugs or alcohol. That number rises when extended to psychotropic prescription drugs. It is the rarest of human beings who can bring himself to the act of murder while stone-cold sober.
But they do exist. Not only do people murder in a drunken stupor, or in a blind rage, they may also convince themselves that the victim is not truly human. We see this in any number of genocides. Before the bloodletting ever began, dehumanizing words like “kulaks,” in Stalinist Russia, “bourgeoisie,” in Maoist China, “cockroaches,” in Rwanda, and “Jew,” in Nazi Germany prepared murderers to deceive themselves about what they were actually doing.
Propped up by such propaganda, human beings did terrible things to other human beings, only to wake up from their delusions years later. When the world looks back at genocides—from Armenia to modern Nigeria—it must first notice the people who were murdered. Only deeper reflection brings it to notice the horrible injuries to conscience experienced by the people who participated in the murders.
We should protect fellow human beings from both horrors. That’s why civil societies work to speak truth to every delusion that would dehumanize people. Anything that would lower the bar of protection for some category of human being—be it race, nationality, sex, religion, or age—is an affront to the natural law against murder.
Any separation between human life and human beings is a breach in the wall that holds back man’s inhumanity toward man. Thinking of someone as less human because of a Y chromosome, an arbitrary level of melanin, or the ideas that he holds in his heart is called “invidious discrimination.” It separates humanity into “more human” and “less human” based on invidious (arbitrary and illogical) criteria.
Likewise, thinking of a person’s life as less human based on physical or mental capabilities is invidious discrimination. Again, nature teaches that human life is always human life—just as eagle life is always eagle life. Lawmakers and judges dare not withhold the protection of law from certain persons based on unproven and unprovable theories.
All of this can be said about murder without consulting the Christian Scriptures. Legal protection for human life is taught by natural law. So, Wyoming’s Statute 35-6-121(a)(v) rightly states that the legislature “has a fundamental duty to provide equal protection for all human lives, including unborn babies from conception.”
That said, there is one thing that Christianity teaches that helps us understand why we have such a visceral abhorrence of murder. Faith teaches that every single human being that God brings into existence is given as a gift to you.
Regardless of whether humans are tiny embryos or old, wrinkled and bedridden, they are alive for your blessing. Whether they are male or female, share your worldview, or share your family’s traits, every fellow human being is a gift. It is always in your interest to protect and prolong their lives. For every human life enriches your own.
Indeed, "the internal taboo against murdering a fellow human being is so strong, would-be murderers must either numb themselves to their own inhibitions or convince themselves that their victim is subhuman." Sadly, over the millennia human cultures have routinely numbed that instinct in the name of tribalism, power, and countless non-Christian value systems.
Although imperfectly, Judaism and Christianity address this human failing by going beyond the natural aversion and cultural taboos against murder. These religions recognize that every human being bears the very image of God and therefore possesses an extraordinary dignity. Rather than silencing such religious convictions in the name of "separation of church and state," couldn't we could use a lot more of that understanding today?