We have to go on and ask how a Christian vision, its values and virtues, impinge on our day-to-day life and the questions this raises. We have seen already how this is crucial to personal integrity in public life. So many of our moral dilemmas have to do with a proper estimate of the human person. These arise, in their sharpest forms, when people are most vulnerable, when they cannot defend themselves and where society has the task of protecting them. In other words, they arise at the earliest stages of personhood and at the latest, when there are questions of mental capacity or even of mental illness. Without a lodestar, such as the imago dei, we could quickly run aground on the rocks of crude utilitarianism (the weak can be sacrificed for some greater good or the good of a larger number) or be marooned on the shifting sands of public opinion polls. For instance, while it may be correct to take a developmental view of the emergence of a human person through the stages of fertilisation, implantation, the beginning of brain activity and so on, we still cannot say exactly when there is a person. Instead of greater permissiveness, this should lead to greater caution about any procedures, which aim to manipulate the early foetus or embryo to benefit someone else. We should also be concerned for its integrity as personhood unfolds.

At the other end of the life-cycle, while it is never permissible to kill, we are not required officiously to keep alive either. People may decline medical intervention, if they are competent to do so, and death may result when the primary aim is to relieve pain. Living wills may also be respected, though they pose certain dilemmas of their own. If, for instance, they are made too far in advance of the circumstances contemplated, they may not be able to specify exactly what the person concerned is wishing to refuse or to accept. If, on the other hand, they are made in the course of a serious illness, the question would be whether a person's judgment is clouded by their illness or even by direct or indirect pressure from relatives. In any event, it cannot be permissible actively to take life, or to assist in doing so, even in situations where a person is alive but not responsive to our signals or to the environment generally. This is because the dignity of personhood is inalienable and cannot be taken away by human agency, except, perhaps, in clearly specified circumstances such as self-defence or a just war.

A widespread nihilism in culture has led to a lack of consensus about the sacredness of the human person and, in turn, this provides a context for the horrendous and mindless violence inflicted on people, even on young children. We cannot expect respect for the person if we do not give any reasons why persons should be respected. Mutatis mutandis, this is also true of racism. The Judaeo-Christian tradition, based on the Bible, teaches the common origin and equality of all human beings. It may be that Christians have not always upheld such equality in practice but without its basis, as we have seen in doctrines of "scientific racism" and eugenics, the weak will have no defence against oppression and exploitation by the powerful.

The family is an important aspect of biblical anthropology which sees man and woman as ordered to one another in a stable relationship of receiving and giving. It is this mutuality and complementarity, which provides not only support and companionship but the stability required for the nurture of children. The family then is a basic unit of society and any dysfunction will surely affect other areas of our social life. It is true, of course, that Christians themselves have sometimes used family structures to abuse and exploit the more vulnerable members of the family, often women, children or the elderly. In this, they are not alone as such abuse of the family is widespread and can be seen in many parts of the world. But does such abuse or misuse justify the full frontal attack on the family, which we have seen in most Western countries in the last 30 years or so? The Office for National Statistics and other bodies regularly publish figures for marriage, divorce, single-parent families, cohabitation and how long it lasts, etc. This is not the place to go into the detail of these figures save to note the social devastation they represent: families everywhere with a parent (usually the father) absent, the psychological trauma of broken relationships, children without crucial bonding with one parent (usually the father) and for boys the lack of a role model as they grow up.