I was in a cold medication-induced haze last night and thinking about the value of human life and life in general. The overall concensus is that the value of life is intrinsic to the creature – human or otherwise. Humanists, existentialists etc.  would likely agree with this statement and claim that the human creates his or her own value in the way they live their lives and how they impact the world etc.

 

Unfortunatly this offers no real benchmark for value aside from the individual – which means this approach boils down to a sort of Darwinian – strongest group or individual determines the value of a particular life or lives at the moment.

 

If this is the case value loses its value (so-to-speak) and depends solely on brute force. The implications of this are interesting but I will not try to delve into them now. Suffice to say I think this is likely the position the western world holds right now.

 

As I continued to think about this I began to formulate something of a position for myself on this area. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that very few people actually have anything like a defined position on anything (myself included), happy to go through life in a sort of vague "let’s see how things work out mode" working with a kind of cobbled together conglomerate of ideas built off of life experience.

 

So here’s what I think:

 

 

Of course those of you who know me well know where this is leading (where all my thoughts lead frankly). My first thought was that this idea unravels rather quickly when you notice that various people are loved to various degrees – i.e. the person who has no family or friends has no value because no one loves them. On the surface it seems like a very elistist idea that should be tossed.

 

But this idea depends upon the existance of a loving God – and that it does not matter if you have hundreds of people who love you deeply (Mother Theresa) or nobody at all – because a loving God loves all equally and God’s love trumps all others.

 

Of course the challenge of this idea is that not all people realize that God loves them or their awareness of God is bent or cracked by history, culture and the development of Gods made in their own image. Their lives and value are dependant upon the love of people around them. This is good but human love will fail and if your life’s value is built upon how much your peers love you than your sense of self-worth will fluctuate with the whims of the people around you.

 

God’s love is dependable and it is there even when everyone else has walked away.

 

Now this isn’t some elitist Christian perspective (it isn’t – really) that claims God only loves Christians and therefore only Christians have value – that’s not where this is going. As a follower of Christ I rely on my Bible as one of God’s primary revelations of His will to humanity, I say one of because I believe that God’s primary revelation is in Christ.

 

Now – this is the point where many have likely given up and filed my post in their "raving Christian" file. For the rest of you I need to say that the only way I can wrap up this perspective – that a life’s value is based upon how much it is loved – is to turn to Christ.

 

Christ is the expression of God’s love for humanity. Christ’s sacrifice is the expression of how much God loves humanity. God’s will is that "all would be saved" and receive the gift of eternal life in God’s presence. This is not a conditional love – God never said I love Christians more than Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, atheists and the blended crowd of humanity. His love is equal for all. The struggle that people have is in accepting the way in which God has expressed love – through Jesus.

 

When a person rejects Christ they reject the offer of unconditional love that God has made and God loves us enough to allow that rejection to happen. The offer remains despite the rejection. God loves the person the same, despite the rejection. It is our acceptance of God’s love in Christ that allows us to realize our true value, allows us to transcend the value we have tried unsuccessfully to give ourselves through money, relationships, etc. We need to be clear on this point – our acceptance of Christ does not give us value, it is a recognition of the value we already had and continue to have in God’s love for us.

 

So there it is.

 

For those followers of Christ out therre you should ask yourselves what this means when we have been called "the body of Christ" – what responsibility do we have in expressing the love of God? The ramifications are powerful.