Do we have value? It is a question we ponder, whether consciously or not, throughout our lives. A young child looks to his or her parents for love and security whilst teenagers crave popularity with their peers. A young employee wants to impress the manager whereas the middle-aged may rue missed career opportunities. The recently retired worker wonders about their contribution to society and those cared for in a home for the elderly can feel purposeless and overlooked. The question cannot be avoided at any stage in life.
From an atheistic viewpoint, we are just one more species in the spectrum of life, albeit having superior mental powers. We live on an insignificant planet in a vast and seemingly empty, lifeless universe. As the Nobel prize-winning biochemist Jacques Monod expressed it fifty years ago:
Man must realise that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world; a world that is deaf to his music, just as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his suffering or his crimes.
The implication of this bleak outlook was brought home to me a couple of years ago when a student came to my office, saying, ‘I see little point in living.’ When asked what had brought him to this view, he responded, ‘I used to be just molecules, one day I will be just molecules again, and I may just be molecules now.’ That student verbalised a sense of purposelessness and despair that is increasingly common in our society.
What is our value?
Diamond is universally valued, but where does its value lie? Aesthetically, we might suggest that the value of diamond lies in its reflective and shiny nature; industrially, it has value in its hardness and high melting point, but do its properties alone account for its value? Diamond was reflective, shiny and hard before human beings inhabited the earth, but it had no more value than the pebbles on the beach washed up by the sea. The value of diamond is primarily in the mind of its human owners who value the above properties! Furthermore, its value shows itself in the price paid for it by its owners. No scientific equipment or measurement can identify a diamond’s value, without reference to the value that human beings confer on it.
We value each other in society for friendship, relationship and help, in addition to economic contributions to society, but do we have a deeper, objective value? My mother spent the last 18 months of her life in an excellent home for the elderly, where she experienced an impressive level of care. However, there were others in the home who had no living family members, no obvious friends and who certainly did not contribute to the UK economy. Would we say that they had no value or did they have deeper value simply in being human? As both Monod and the student in my office expressed it, from a purely atheistic viewpoint it is difficult to identify a deeper basis for that value.
Ultimately our value lies in the mind of our owner, whether we acknowledge them or not. If we do away with our owner, as atheists claim to do, then we are in danger of losing an objective basis for our own value too. The basis of our hope is that our universe and all within it has an owner, to whom we each owe our existence. This owner created us in his own image, to enjoy life in his world and to relate to him. Yet, from Adam onwards, we have all turned from him and claimed the ownership of our lives for ourselves. As C.S. Lewis remarked:
All that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
The Bible’s account of human history in the Old Testament tells of the way God dealt with the nation of Israel to bring them back to relate to himself, though they repeatedly deserted him to worship other gods and to look to other nations for their security.
What is our cost?
Our value is seen most clearly in the way that God dealt with the consequences of our rejection of him. As the value of diamond is seen in the price that its human owners are willing to pay for it, our value is seen most clearly in the immeasurable cost that our divine owner was willing to pay for us. As Paul explained in his letter to the church in Rome:
When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6-8).
World religions invariably teach that we reach God, or enlightenment in some eastern religions, by our own efforts, either through good works or through meditation that claims to free us from the illusion of reality. The Bible is clear: we will never reach God by our own efforts. We are all aware of the way we disappoint ourselves; how much more do we fall short of the God to whom we owe our existence, whose standards are perfection?
God came to this earth in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the angels announced to the shepherds caring for their sheep at his birth:
Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger (Luke 2:10-12).
This Saviour baby came to save us from the consequences of our rebellion against our Creator God. He lived among people just like us for around thirty years, showing what God is like in the way he interacted with people across society – his patience, his authority, his power, his love. As a friend summarised the description of Jesus’ humble suffering in Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, ‘Jesus gave up the right to live like God, to act like God, to look like God, to be treated like God.’ He did this for us, taking on himself such suffering on the cross for all our rebellion against God, so that we might be accepted by him. Yet the grave could not hold him: he rose from death in glory, affirming that we too will share in life forever with him when we accept him and put our trust entirely in him.
Do we have value? God himself has answered that vital question in the most dramatic way possible. Thankfully, we do not need to look inside ourselves, or at each other, to find an answer.
