Some additional points got brought up at What's Wrong with the World, so for the sake of continuity, I'll continue with another post here as well.
It is entirely true that we do not own ourselves, but it is also true that we have stewardship of our lives and property. While God may possess a property right in our bodies and souls, this does not negate our ability to guide and determine what happens to our bodies, though we shall be held to account for our stewardship of these resources.
It also seems clear to me that part of the reluctance to accept these things comes from a squeemishness about markets. Some people, too many today, actually, find anything that smacks of capitalism to be crass and undignifying. While I would not accuse the contributors and readers of What's Wrong with the World of being anti-capitalism in general, I think they fail to realize the fullness of how markets are tied into human interaction. They exist everywhere, as they exist wherever someone wants something and someone else has a willingness and ability to supply it to them. Like Jesus with the church, wherever two or three people meet, there a possible market exists.
If it be true that our stewardship of our bodies does not go to the point where we may sell off body parts for noble reasons, then surely we do not possess sufficient right to ever dispose of our bodies in any form at all. If we cannot sell our kidneys, then neither can we give them away. Even in death, the property right to the body is retained by God (there should be no controversy here with Christians). If these things be true, then even the act of giving blood is a violation of God's property rights in our bodies.
Yet Jesus commended those who are willing to lay down their lives for another, an act which is entirely destructive of God's property right in our bodies. Clearly, God has granted us stewardship of our bodies to be used, however, necessary, for noble ends. It is thus hypocritical to say that a man may allow a roving mob to beat him to death so that his friends may escape, but that he cannot arrange with one of those same friends, who is dying, to buy a kidney from him in order that his friend may live, and his wife and children may be supported. Objections that the financial transaction cheapens the whole thing is just a matter of preference and taste that have no more universality than the early arguments over what foods to eat and which days are holiest.
Ironically, conservative efforts to oppose fair trade sales of organs by consenting doners will have no effect on the culture of death as the culture of death is rooted in a combination of a refusal to respect the natural rights of the unborn and an unwillingness to submit to God's authority on sexuality. Abortion is the issue closest to this one, and yet the key difference here is that the fundamental philosophical error of the abortionists is that they refuse to admit that an unborn child is a separate being with its own growing set of rights and responsibilities granted to it by God. The primary property rights problem with abortion is not one of propertizing the baby, but rather of the unwillingness of the mother to recognize God's property right in the child, and the limited grant of stewardship given to that child over God's property right in it.
Related Entries:
- Why Christians shouldn't object to the free sale of kidneys and other organs
- A conservative idea worth considering
- Why Christians shouldn't always be afraid of 'situational morality'
- Hypocrisy
- Flunking the abstract thinking challenge
- Lying and legislating morality
- What America might look like if it were a theocracy
- An interesting prophecy
- Protestantism and superstition
- Scripture, chivalry and sinking ships
Mike,
An interesting post.
I don't think that God cares much about our bodies one way or the other. If he has property rights to our bodies, He doesn't enforce His rights very often. To me, His objective is something beyond the ashes and dust we're made of.
Which is why abortion is so terrible in my book...not because it violates some sort of cosmic property right that God is supposed to have, but because it extinguishes a soul before it's time.
I thought that you had a great point about the alleged immorality of selling organs makes giving them away immoral as well. Let me add this to what you wrote: capitalism is all about the most efficient allocation of scarce resources. When you pervert the market, you affect this efficient allocation, and could actually introduce immorality into the system.
The social justice folks object to markets driving decisions as to who receives organs and who doesn't. But they propose to replace the market with a dictatorship, however benevolent that dictatorship is at present, it's still a dictatorship. What is more moral? A market where many agents determine what happens, or a socialized system where the will of one or a few imposes its will on everyone else?
Sorry for the ramble...I hope that this comment made sense.
WWwtW is actually a very conservative blog. Not conservative in the Republican sense, but still quite conservative. They seem to have a hard time understanding that money or not, the issue is a matter of property rights and who has power of attorney to execute those rights.