What Is A Life Worth?

Who can measure a life? How do you measure a life?

There is a lot I am passionate about, I've shared several through my blog. But there is one thing that nags at me, one thing that hits the deepest and that I feel most passionate about, and that is someone's self-worth. We hear this term a lot. Sometimes it's used talking about someone's value.

Worth can be defined as something that has significant value, or useful and of importance. Unlike money, humans don't have a dollar amount when it comes to their value or worth. It's easy to judge how much a house is worth, it's simple to have the knowledge of how much the car I drive is worth (and at this point in time, it ain't much). We easily measure worth on property value, product value, food value--those are all tangible ways to measure somethings worth.

So how do we measure a humans worth? What is the worth of a human? What are you worth and what is your value? What is mine?

Many, especially americans, value their worth based on their jobs. That's a biggie. My husband and I are currently watching a relatiy show called The Pitch, us ex-ad geeks are loving it. On the show, two agencies battle it out to win new business through their pitch. Last week, when they were showing clips of the agency employees who were working on a specific piece of the pitch, one of the girls was being interviewed for the show. She literally said, "I really have to win this pitch-my self-worth depends on it. This is how I value who I am." That is word for word my friends. I looked over at my husband (he knew what I was thinking), with my jaw on the GROUND. How incredibly sad! I wanted to reach into the TV screen and scream at her and say "Nooooooooooooooooooooooo"!!!

Let's look at all the ways us humans measure our worth:
-How much money we make
-How big our house is
-Where we work
-What we wear
-What we eat
-Who we talk to
-Who we know
-Where we come from
-The houses and neighborhoods we grew up in
-The schools and universities we attend or don't attend
-What we know/knowledge/how smart we are
-How well we do on tests
-How many skills we have
-How creative we are
-How much we weigh
-What we look like physically
-How others treat us
-How we treat others (meaning if we treat people really good are worth goes up)
-How much of a difference we are making
-How popular we are/how known by the world we are
-Our religious beliefs
-Our political beliefs
-Our ethnicity
-What's happened to us/our past
-The degrees we hold


I mean honestly the list goes on, what did I forget?

I gotta know, do you believe any of that? That you are worth less or more based on the above list? If your kid came home from school and told you they got a C on a paper or a test, would you think or believe that their value or worth as a tiny human was lowered or changed at all? What about if they got an A? Would you think their worth went UP? Gosh I so hope not.

Our world is so focused on rank and elitism. I think it's absolutely disgusting. There, I said it.

I wish I could reach every single teenage girl and more to let them know this: 
YOUR WORTH IS NOT BASED ON WHAT YOU DO, WHERE YOU'VE BEEN, WHERE YOU'RE GOING, OR WHAT SOMEONE SAYS ABOUT YOU. YOU HAVE VALUE BECAUSE YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING. AND THAT IS ALONE ENOUGH. YOU ARE WORTH MORE THAN RUBIES AND YOUR VALUE IS THE SAME AS A BIG WIG ON WALLSTREET OR ANGELINA JOLIE. NO ONE, I MEAN NO ONE HAS MORE VALUE THAN YOU AND NO ONE, NO ONE IS WORTH MORE THAN YOU. WE ARE EQUAL. IT'S THE WORLD THAT HAS CREATED THESE RANKS, NOT GOD. DON'T BELIEVE IT, DON'T BUY INTO IT. WE ARE ALL ON EQUAL GROUND. IT'S A LEVEL GROUND. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, OR HOW MUCH YOU WEIGH OR WHAT YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU ARE BEING BEATEN, ABUSED OR MISGUIDED. I'M HERE TO SAY THAT YOUR LIFE IS WORTH JUST AS MUCH AS THE NEXT. BELIEVE THAT REALITY. BELIEVE THIS TRUTH.

My daughter is in Africa right now, and I could never believe that because she is american that 

her life is worth more than these precious boys. Just because she has more opportunity and more money and probably more resources doesn't mean that her life is worth more. They are equal in the eyes of God.

If this isn't the truth, then I may as well crawl into a hole and die. And I am not kidding. I get through each day BECAUSE of this truth! I have removed myself from the ranking system of the world. I refuse to play into it, and I have offered the same truth to my daughter.

I don't think I could live a minute in this world if I was basing and judging my self-worth on anything other than the raw truth that all lives are equal in the eyes of God. I just couldn't. I would drown.