It seems as if everything in life is assigned a value. Our goods or services are valued at a specific price, based on what people will pay for them at a given time. These values are not true estimates of the intrinsic worth of whatever is being purchased but more of a reflection of “what the market will bear.”
what has value
For example, a particular “Beanie Baby” that someone would have paid 100 dollars for 25 years ago when they were a really “hot” item might be purchased for a single dollar today. Each year, there are one or two toys that people will pay significantly inflated prices for their child’s Christmas present, but six weeks later, the same toy could be purchased for a third of the cost. Every once in a while, there is a report of someone who bought a painting at a yard sale for five dollars, only to discover later that it was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, as it was a painting from a famous artist.
Services also have value. The office visit to a family doctor will probably be a little less than an office visit to a medical specialist. Each job position from fry cook at the fast-food restaurant to the CEO of a major corporation has a value assigned and is compensated accordingly. Whether or not they are fair assessments or not, there is a value assigned.
Who determines value
The question is not whether people and things have value, but who should and does determine the value. In one sense, that will vary significantly from time to time, place to place, and situation to situation. What is valued greatly in one culture and context may have far less value in another. Sometimes governments assign value because they have the power and control to do so. There are nations where the prices of everything from gasoline to medical care to education are determined and tightly controlled by the government. There are even places in the world where the government determines the value of human life. There have been places and times in which people with handicaps have been deemed invaluable to the point of not being worthy of continuing to live. Throughout dark times in our history, people groups from certain ethnicities were treated the same way. Perhaps most remarkable of all, there are nations and cultures in which people deem unborn babies of such little value that they can be killed before they are born, at any time, for any reason. These are the type of things that happen when value is arbitrarily assigned by those who have no right or authority to do so.
God Assigns Great Value
There is only One who has the authority to assign value to any person. The Scripture says that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything that is in it.” God is the creator of all things, the ruler over all things, and the judge of all things. He alone has the authority to assign value. God has assigned great value to every human being. We are all “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
God has demonstrated the value He assigns for every human through the way He intentionally created us. He knew us before we were born. He has numbered the hairs on our heads. He knows all the days of our lives. And because of His unfailing love, He provided a sacrifice for us and our sins through His son, Jesus. No other valuations matter compared to the way that God sees us!
As Lent commences on Ash Wednesday, we are entering a time of introspection and prayer leading to Easter. Let us reflect on the significance of death preceding resurrection, urging readers to embrace a daily practice of surrendering self in preparation for our spiritual transformation.