Brookings resident Carl Kline is an ordained clergyman, part-time teacher and occasional blogger.

There was a picture on my Facebook page the other day of an egg. The commentary below said, “This is a chicken.” I couldn’t help myself and I wrote in the comments, “I’m sorry, I thought it was my breakfast.” Of course, this cartoon was in relationship to the recent ruling of the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos are to be considered children.

In essence, I would guess this court ruling is an effort to solidify a belief in the sacredness of all human life. I believe that is also true of the motivations of most in the pro-life movement. The problem comes when you have competing lives and it’s necessary to make a choice. Here situation ethics are more useful than dualistic concepts and legalisms of right and wrong.

It’s also debatable when life begins. Even in Roman Catholic thought, the beginning of life has changed over the centuries.

For instance, in the early centuries an Aristotelian view held sway in the church, with a fetus going through three stages; from a vegetative soul, to a sensitive soul, to a rational soul. Thomas Aquinas believed boys received their rational soul at 40 days, girls at 90.

In the 12th century the belief changed, that the embryo did not have a soul at all and abortion was not necessarily murder. Then in 1588, Pope Sixtus V banned any abortion at any stage. That was revised in 1679 when Pope Innocent XI ruled that the soul only occurred at birth, so abortion was not homicide. In 1869 the church reverted to the view that abortion at any stage was murder. Today, the church is a bit more humble in saying, we don’t know when ensoulment takes place, so life must be guarded at every stage of pregnancy.

There is also the question of the “soul.” What is it? Where is it located? In an effort to answer those questions when I was in seminary, I decided I wanted to observe an autopsy during my clinical training at Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. That may seem morbid to some, but I was struggling with the idea of a soul. I wanted to see if there was any room reserved in that body cavity for such an essential part of the human being. The chaplain made the necessary arrangements. He got the permission of the family of the deceased and the pathologist, and I was summoned to the bowels of the hospital as a procedure was about to occur. I recall walking down a long darkened hall, then entering a door where I came face to face with a bank of metal tubes, large enough for bodies. You could slide the tube out, place a corpse on it; then slide it back in to keep the body cool enough till it was needed elsewhere. A couple of them had hand- written signs with, “place babies here.”

The autopsy room was just to the left. As I entered, the corpse was on the table and the pathologist was preparing for the procedure. The first cut was down the center of the body with smaller cuts at the top and bottom so the body cavity could be opened and all of the organs more easily seen and examined. The more difficult cut was the skull, with the top removed so the brain could be examined.The whole procedure was a blood-and- guts experience. I didn’t see any spirit or soul escape. There was no sign there was ever such an entity in this body.

I’d been reading a book at the time about the origin of the word “soul.” It suggested the idea of the soul originated with the observation of breath, leaving the body for the last time when someone died. That last breath was one’s soul. The breath of that autopsy corpse had left that body some time ago. As I experienced the autopsy, there was no sign of a soul left behind.

In religious circles we often place too much emphasis on an unseen “soul,” and too little emphasis on a human body right in our midst. For instance, were we to do more to prevent the unwanted pregnancy, especially due to rape and/or incest, abortion might be far less likely. Who is raising young men to be respectful of young women and how to exercise machismo in creative and life affirming ways? Who is seeing a living and breathing soul in the neglected or homeless child and coming to their aid?

Who is showing us soulfulness in real life, so empowered by the spirit of the Creator they seem to exist in another realm?

In relating all of the above, I’m simply asking for religious humility, a recognition that we never have all the answers for all the people all of the time. I fear that much of conservative Christianity these days has lost the ability to ask questions and seriously seek answers; only to make rigid statements, avoid introspection and dialogue, and bask in the religious rightfulness of their positions.

We would do well to remember the words of C.S. Lewis: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” That leaves room for us to think more about the neighbor!