Tuesday April 21, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

Nearly all people have the sense that there is something fundamentally valuable about human life. Why do the images of starving children break our hearts? Why are we offended at the mistreatment of human beings? Why do we believe that there are certain rights which every human deserves? It is because, deep down, we know that a person has a value which cannot be measured by any standard of man. Christians believe that every human being has value because we have been created in the image of God. It is not something we purchased or earned, but something given to us as a part of our nature. When God created man, the Bible describes Him forming man with His hands from the dust of the Earth. Of all that God created, only mankind is described as being formed with His hands. Furthermore, it was not enough to form man, God breathed His life into man, thus making him a living being. Man then, is the shadow, or representative of God in creation. (That is what the term image means.) We were then given (as an expression of our worth) the responsibility of caring for what God had made.

However, we know the rest of the story. Mankind fails in their responsibility and sins, thus bringing the consequences of sin upon the whole of creation. Did we then forfeit own value by such heinous actions? After the fall and Adam and Eve’s exile from the Garden of Eden, the Bible shows that mankind quickly fell into depravity. The first child of Adam and Eve murders his brother, and it does not take long for that wickedness to spread.

Genesis 6:5-6 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (6) And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

Surely that means man had surrendered his own value. Every thought was wicked to the point that God regretted making him. How could anything evil, still have value as a human life? God shows by His actions, however, that the value given to humanity is not altered by our behavior. For rather than exterminating humanity with all its wickedness, God preserves humanity and establishes a plan to save it.

-Jared Freeman, “Intrinsic Worth”