If a 1974 Ford Bronco can be restored and sold for 10 times the original asking price, why are people not seen as valuable and why are lives not important.
Over the past week, I have been astounded at the lack of value that life and lives have in our world. A school shooting took the lives of 19 children. The Southern Baptist Convention was accused of covering up and minimizing sex abuse cases for over 20 years. A released report shows over 700 people in roles of trust that have violated the sanctity of life. Keep in mind this is not 700 cases but 700 people who devalued somone else.
By the weekend when you would think that it would settle down, there was even more destruction. One report, I read, says there were at least 14 incidents of mass violence over the weekend. This past weekend alone resulted in 156 people dead from Friday morning to Tuesday morning and an additional 412 injured. As we sit back and try to understand our world, we need to ask this simple question. What has changed in the past generation that life and lives has become so expendable. Why does the value of human life seem to have lessened over time.
People want to point to a destruction of the moral fabric of our society, to the removal of prayer in schools, to the disintegration of the family and even to the church. Maybe it is all those things but I wonder if it more basic. Maybe what we have lost is the idea that life has value and purpose. If we see no value or purpose in the life of another it makes that person become expendable and really not human. Whether it be killing a person, abusing a person ,ignoring abuse or minimizing a victim’s story, the assault on the value of that person’s life remains the real issue.
Scripture says that all life has value. Because the Bible tells us that we are all God’s creations with equal dignity and value, this is why Christianity as a worldview is superior to every other when it comes to supporting human equality. Materialism has a stranglehold on our world right now. Humans are understood to be merely products of random, meaningless, physical processes. The estimated material cost of the human body is approximately $160.00 give or take a little. Most of us spend more on eating out in a week. When we see the object of a person and not the soul there is little value. That kind of value can be granted and revoked in a minute—and it is every single day. Even if the biblical worldview hasn’t been followed consistently by some who claim to be Christian, it doesn’t mean it has failed; it means it hasn’t been followed consistently.
Tim Keller sums it up this way in The Reason for God: “The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone.”
I am deeply humbled to think that Jesus died for me while I was "still" a sinner. (Romans 5:8). That means before I even believed, He valued my life more than His. When I read this passage and go one step further, I realize that He values every person's life more than His own even if they don't believe in Him. I wonder would happen if we took that step in this world, valuing the life of others more than our own. Would violence toward others decrease? I wonder if we looked at the person and realized that God values them, would that make us more compassionate, more caring, more protective. Would we hold that the sanctity of life is bigger than institutions, than things, than even ourselves. Would we hold others up? Maybe we need to be teaching in our schools that every human life has value, but in order to do that effectively we have to first believe it ourselves.
Erwin Lutzer, Senior Pastor of the Moody Memorial Church in his book, Hitler's Cross, wrote: “America is an angry nation- angry because of the emotional distress caused by the breakup of the home, angry because of crime; angry because of a perceived betrayal by politicians, angry also because each side in the culture wars sees the other as the enemy of all that America should stand for. We need to heal rather than hurt; we need to unite rather than divide. We have to model reconciliation in our churches so that the world will see what a redeemed community looks like. We must defend the gospel, though not ourselves, No retaliation, no threats, no self-pity. Just endurance, patience and love.”
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