Explaining things is difficult. Wittgenstein had something to say about that. Metaphors help, different ways of picturing things help, those are just metaphors by another name. I think it might be useful to begin thinking of ourselves less as ourselves, and more as constituent parts of a broader organism. 
When we try to navigate the world as ourselves, we almost invariably choose avarice and short-sightedness, even when we know it’s wrong. It’s a matter of perspective. From right here, where these eyeballs are, at the very center of the universe, it just makes sense to behave in a certain way.
I’d suggest that most doctrine and tradition is bent towards helping us make decisions that pay respect to the folks just off stage. But that’s a bit beside this point. 

What if we thought of ourselves not as one person with one stomach and one back, but five people. The great-grandparent, the grandparent, the parent, the child, and the grandchild. There are exceptions but these seem to be the maximum number of folks in a family line alive at the same time. The largest number of people able to throw forks at eachother from across the dinner table and complain about eachothers music, and hug. 

I think Richard Dawkins is annoying and tiresome for the most part, but he’s on to something interesting when he suggests that the real organism is our genes, and not necessarily their expression in us and other organisms. What if the expression of the gene of most consequence is not the individual ape, but the family unit? 

There is no part of a life that is more or less valuable than another. To be cared for as a kid has much value as to care for a child as an adult, or to be cared for as an elder. To suckle is as beautiful as giving milk, to ask for help as significant as giving it, to inherit as important as passing on. Jung suggested that dying was as psychologically significant as being born. When we prioritize one of these things over the other we rob eachother and deny ourselves of the dignity and Grace unique to the human experience.

We are not made in the image of God only in one stretch of years, but across all of them: as child, parent, elder, and everything inbetween. Our goal should be towards building a life and an apparatus for life that honors and facilitates the beautiful execution of every stage.