In His Image: How Man is Designed to Legislate Morality
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In The Bible, God creates man in His image. I set out below to show a tiny overview of a far more complicated and amazing collection of working parts in man that show that God designed man not just in His physical image, but in the way we are designed to do things similar to what God has done: Legislate Morality.
Speaking of Man
It is often stated in varying degrees that man is extremely similar to monkeys, and that he is just a primate that learned to talk through a series of accidental, beneficial mutations that occurred to better ensure his survival. So how does the language of man compare to the sounds of animals?
According to the National Human Genome Research Institute (1), a human being is 96% similar to a chimpanzee. Some say this is evidence of a recent evolutionary link between the two very distinct species. It also turns out humans are 90% similar to a cat, 85% similar to a mouse, 80% similar to a cow, and 61% similar to a fruit fly. Your DNA is also said to be 60% identical to both a chicken and a banana. That said, DNA research continues to throw these numbers farther apart with every new discovery of the layers of information contained within each of your cells, but that’s a topic for another day.
If we just look at what is around us, we can see what the codes of that DNA bring about; people, cows, fruit flies, monkeys, bananas and all the other living things on this planet. Humans aren’t as good as monkeys at climbing trees. They both eat bananas, which now seems strange if we are actually 60% like bananas.
But monkeys don’t talk. They simply lack the physical design in their throats, mouths, lips and jaws (think hardware) and far more importantly they lack the dedicated areas of the brain (think software) to comprehend oral communication. Depending on the desired sound, there are as many as 100 muscles used by a human in order to make the precise sounds of the tens of thousands of words in the English language. There are animals with a variety of chirps, squeeks, grunts or howls, but nothing even remotely close to the complexity and order we find in any one of the many human languages.
Monkeys are an entertaining animal, and clearly have non-verbal forms of communication, but it seems clear that monkeys were not designed to communicate with words. Monkeys will never be able to describe how they feel, or say how their banana tastes. They can’t say thank you and they can’t say I’m sorry. Monkeys will never converse with one another about how the DNA of humans is 60% similar to bananas and chickens.
No other living kind can communicate information the way humans do. A few animals may mimic the sound that humans make, but they can’t understand why the sounds are significant. Animals can certainly sense fear and react to it, but they cannot tell another creature how the fear makes them feel, or tell another about their day, or where they are from. Animals can be a part of a story, but they can never tell the story.
Man is designed in such a vastly different way than any other creature to use the fine motor skills of his mouth, and the circuitry of his brain to be able to speak and comprehend speech. Without speech, so much human achievement would have been impossible. And yet, the animals go on without the mutations proposed to be of our benefit. They continue to chirp and grunt and live and go on about their lives unchanged for thousands of generations. They don’t seem bothered by their inability to speak in terms of their ability to survive, as would seem to be the point of evolving the ability in the first place.
There is no denying that man seems intentionally designed to speak, especially when compared to all other living creatures. The Genesis account of creation begins with God speaking creation into existence. Jesus is referred to as “the Word” in the book of John. Without speech, we would not be able to ask the questions, where did we come from, or, why are we here? Without speech we would not be able to communicate our ideas of right and wrong. We could never tell someone they must not do this, or they must do that.
Hands on Purpose
When I was a new recruit at the police academy 20 years ago, there were a number of things that the instructors drilled into our heads, everything from how to shine your shoes to how to shoot a gun. One of the most often repeated things I heard, and continue to preach to officers, is that you have to watch peoples’ hands. The hands are what will kill you.
There are lots of ways for a man to kill another man, but the vast majority require the hands. The hands can strangle and punch. The hands are what throws the spear, swings the sword, pulls the trigger or pushes the button.
The other thing they taught us about hands in the academy is that we officers should always have our hands out of our pockets. If you were seen with your hands in your uniform pockets by a drill instructor, get ready for problems. This was their way of getting it through to us that our hands were our defense. We had to be ready to react with our hands at any moment to whatever may be thrown at us. I have threatened to sew pockets of officers’ uniforms shut for fear of them not being prepared to react to the random human outburst, often aimed more at the uniform than the individual officer.
Man’s hands aren’t just dangerous though. Man’s hands are the only hands of all the creatures that are so finely tuned to provide enough strength and dexterity that a person can go from climbing a mountain to swinging a bat to writing a letter to playing a piano without issue. Man’s hands have created the incalculable amount of art that has existed in history. Hands are the primary instrument in expressing design and imagination, using tools small and large, and putting the intricate finishing touches on a creation.
No animal comes close to the potential of man and his hands, especially when combined with his intelligence and imagination. Animals continue to live on, seeming not to need the capabilities we possess with our hands, and instead relying on instinct rather than imagination and finely tuned hands. From the beginning, the hands of a human seem important. A fetus at 10 weeks is only 2 ½ inches long, but already has fully identifiable hands formed(1).
The hands of man, while capable of being used to commit terrible atrocities, are the same hands used to perform the most complex surgeries imaginable to save other human lives. Human hands are used for eating, greeting, expressing thoughts, writing, sensuality and for prayer. And when speech doesn’t come to a person, our hands are capable of speaking (sign) and reading (braille). Hands are used to feed infants their first solid food. Hands can be used by a father learning to braid his daughter’s hair, or a mother teaching her son to tie his shoes.
Man also uses his hands quite frequently to write important things down, especially things like history and laws. No animal has written a history of their kind from creation to present. No animal has compiled so much as a sentence about the right and wrong ways to conduct themselves. The law of the jungle is not
Legislating Morality
In criticizing Christianity, many point to the idea of how unjust the world is as clear evidence that there cannot be a good God. It is initially hard to argue against this idea when you consider the horrible ways people treat one another on a daily basis around the world. How do we deal with this undeniable evil?
In the recorded history of man, laws of one sort or another have been a staple of every civilization. In a very summarizing statement, a law is supposed to bring about order and establish standards of behaviors. This is not a uniquely Judeo-Christian philosophy. Every society has laws that govern the behavior of its people in their conduct toward one another. It is a fundamental purpose of governments, as even the bible notes.1
One thing I often hear is that we should not try to “legislate morality.” We should let others do as they please, as long as no one gets hurt. My response is that all laws legislate morality. That is the purpose of laws in the first place. If people were inherently moral, we would not need to legislate any laws. But people are not inherently moral. While people are quick to point out their relatively good behavior compared to their neighbor or Hitler, it is not often they compare their behavior to Mother Teresa or God Himself.
Every statute in our criminal code legislates morality. Laws against violence, rape and murder exist because people recognize that man has inherent value, and should be protected. That is a moral position. Laws against white collar crime and fraud exist because stealing from others is agreed upon to be morally wrong. Laws concerning drug, food and water safety exist to protect people because we value people. That is a moral position. Stop signs legislate morality. If none existed, do you think anyone would stop out of pure courtesy to their neighbor as they are running late for work, with no potential traffic ticket to worry about? If you follow any law back to its source, you will eventually find a moral position that grounds it.
The moral basis for laws are a reflection of the value man sees in other men. These laws have many similarities to natural laws in that if you break them, bad things happen. If you try to defy gravity, you will likely crash to the ground. If you defy a stop sign, you will likely crash into a car.
If the Bible is true, we are all the sons and daughters of the God Who spoke the laws of nature and of man into being. Man is given dominion to act in a way that reflects God’s value for the life He originally spoke into existence.
There is no other creature aside from man that possesses the hardware or software to speak the way we speak, to read the way we read or the fine motor skills we have in our hands that allow us to write complex symbols that express ideas to others. Without the ability to speak, read and write, humanity would be unable to collectively have a history, and as importantly, to have a law that came about as a result of that understanding of history.
Simply being able to speak, or even to read and write, would not get us to a point where we speak and write about right and wrongs. We have also been given a sense of right and wrong from the same Creator Who created us in His image. The animal kingdom has it’s laws, but they are not written down or even spoken. They are just instinct.
The God of the Bible is the original Lawgiver, and we are the Lawgiver’s law givers, acting out our instinct, with the use of our completely unique abilities to speak, read and write, to legislate morality in defense of creation and our fellow image bearers.
Tony Williams is currently serving in his 20th year as a police officer in a city in Southern Illinois. He has been studying apologetics in his spare time for two decades, since a crisis of faith led him to the discovery of vast and ever-increasing evidence for his faith. Tony received a bachelor's degree in University Studies from Southern Illinois University in 2019. His career in law enforcement has provided valuable insight into the concepts of truth, evidence, confession, testimony, cultural competency, morality, and most of all, the compelling need for Christ in the lives of the lost. Tony plans to pursue postgraduate studies in apologetics in the near future to sharpen his understanding of the various facets of Christian apologetics. Tony has been married for 9 years and has two sons. He and his family currently reside in Southern Illinois.
