Earlier this year I had the privilege of visiting India with a group of Compassion Australia staff. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment we landed in Calcutta (or Kolkatta as it’s now known). Stepping onto the tarmac the aroma of diesel fuel that permeates the air immediately hit us. Outside we were confronted with the cries of beggars as we got into our taxi.

We made the drive into Kolkatta’s heart and pulled up outside our first stop—Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity orphanage. We took off our shoes, and were quietly led around the various rooms inside this simple but neatly kept building. In one room some children were being fed lunch, in another some nuns met together to pray. Mother Teresa’s tomb sat at one end of a downstairs hall. We moved from room to room and met some of the 300 orphaned children being fed, clothed and educated there.

But it was the special wing on the second floor that I will remember most. Climbing the steps, we walked in and found rows of cots end to end. This was the ward where the most difficult cases came—those children with severe intellectual handicaps. In these beds lay little boys and girls, their arms and legs emaciated due to their lack of movement. Some children slept; those awake stared vacantly at the ceiling, dribbling. One little boy had a hole in his bottom lip—his grinding teeth had bit right through his skin. These children were so handicapped they couldn’t move or talk, let alone read, write or play.

And over each of these beds stood Mother Teresa’s Sisters and their helpers, holding these kids’ hands, wiping up their dribble, rubbing their arms and legs, turning them over to prevent bed sores, holding and cuddling these humans who would never be able to offer thanks or, in some cases, even recognise them.

Why?

Radical ethicists like Princeton University’s Peter Singer say children like this don’t need to live. They are ‘non-persons’ since they have no capacity to be rational or self-conscious. Like a cabbage or a chicken, they are replaceable. Why, then, do these Missionaries of Charity bother?

Similar questions could be raised about the elderly—those with dementia or Parkinson’s disease. Why care for them when they can no longer offer anything back to society?

The reason is this: every human being, even in their most broken and undignified state, is made in the image of God. ‘God created man in his own image,’ Genesis, the first book in the Bible, tells us; ‘male and female he created them.’

Merryn and I visited a large market a couple of weekends ago. Out the front of the market was a guy who could cut out a silhouette of you on black card in 2 minutes for two dollars. So, we gave it a go. With tongue hanging out this guy went to work, cutting out a silhouette of Merryn and me. He was brilliant! Two minutes later he handed us the card.

There was our silhouette, the outline of our faces side-on. He’d included the wisps of Merryn’s hair and my overly-high forehead (thanks very much). It certainly looked like us. But some of our features weren’t quite right. My chin was a little pointy and my nose a bit too round. Funnily enough, Merryn’s chin and nose were the same. I looked back at the artist—and saw the same chin and nose! He’d created us in his image!

In the same way, God has drawn us, crafted us, cut us out in his image, placing his features on us. What exactly those features are have kept the theologians discussing for centuries, but at the very least we know where our abilities to live, love, relate, choose, feel, decide, reason, imagine, create, and even laugh, come from. They’ve come from God who has all these qualities and more.

Human beings are image-bearers, from their conception to their old age. This belief has been the foundation of western society’s emphasis on human rights. As our politicians decide whether to allow therapeutic cloning, and whether embryos are valuable only for the stem cells they can give us, let’s remember this. Humans are not things. Embryos are not commodities. People are not products. Humans are not valuable for what they can do, but because of Who they reflect.

It was this conviction that kept Mother Teresa serving Kolkatta’s poor and ignored. It’s the same conviction that keeps her Missionaries of Charity wiping dribble from severely disabled children.

And it’s a conviction I hope we can urgently recover too.