One one level, the video below is hilarious. But when you think about it, it’s actually not. Before you watch it, consider the following distinction.
The Christian worldview recognizes the intrinsic value of every human being. Why? Because we are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26). Race, gender, sexuality, athleticism, intelligence, age, whether or not you’ve been born yet, and/or whether or not you produce a lot or a little or nothing. None of that matters.
You aren’t valuable because someone else says so. You’re not even valuable because you think so.
You’re valuable because the Creator of the cosmos says so. The value of a person is intrinsic because it is received, not achieved.
To confuse this received value with how the marketplace values things is a critical error. Consider this distinction:
In the marketplace something has value because of the relative demand placed upon it by those who desire that thing. Put another way, an item is worth-less if no one wants it. Importantly, many or most people recognize that human beings are not objects to be bought and sold (yo, people, that’d be slavery).
But we’re not done. Unfortunately the distinction must be made finer.
In the marketplace, what is valued relative to demand are things such as productivity or entertainment, things that people do value differently. Generally speaking, the skills and productivity of a software engineer are valued more highly than that of barber or fast food worker. You may or may not value the C++ code a software engineer creates more than a triple foofiato at Starchucks, but generally speaking, the market does.
So what happens when you remove God from the picture?
What happens when you believe that the universe somehow exists because of time+matter+chance?
This. This is what happens:
Did you catch that? He said, “Human beings have value because I value them.”
But that’s not objective moral value, that’s relative value. It fails because if every single person on the planet did not value — for any reason — the life of, say, a severely handicapped and vegetative 98 year old who will never “produce value” again in their life and is a complete burden on friends, family, and state, it would still be wrong to value them like a bruised tomato at a farmers market.
The Christian worldview not only recognizes this distinction, it makes provision for it.
Caring for the less fortunate is not optional in the Christian worldview. Theologians and philosophers and politicians disagree on exactly how that should be applied, but none question the fact that God’s heart is for all people at all times in all places and circumstances.
To badly paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, once you have no objective moral point of reference, the only thing left is “will to power.” In other words, you have social Darwinism wherein the strong devour the weak. The value of a human person is relative. It’s part of why Nietzsche disdained Christianity — because we are to serve one another including caring for those who are “useless” in a utilitarian sense. That’s weakness to Nietzsche.
The bottom line: Christianity does not conflate identity and market value.
The software engineer, the barber, and the vegetative 98 year old, are identical in the received identity from God. Their productivity, as valued by other people, will differ.
But if you have no God, how do you distinguish between someone’s value in a job or in a society and their value as a human person?
You can’t. Any attempt to do so simply tries to borrow God’s morality without bearing God’s responsibility.
And you end up with persons as objects.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + conversational apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.