The Value (or lack thereof) of LIFE.

I have always liked the beach—even the not-so-pretty, not-so-warm beach on the San Francisco Bay—where I grew up.  But thank God, I wasn’t at Crown Memorial Beach in my hometown of Alameda on Memorial Day this year!  The beauty of the beach and beach-going would have been forever ruined.  Each time I think about what happened, I am shocked and saddened all over again.

Gathered on the shore were first responders (at least a dozen), and about 75 other people standing and watching—watching while a 53-year-old man walked into the water and drown.  Apparently, he was intent on suicide, but he struggled about an hour before he finally died.  Even then, none of the firefighters or policemen went to retrieve his lifeless body—a bystander did.  How do you account for public safety officers standing and watching? 

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about the scene—you know, if this had been a dog, at least 50 of those on-lookers would have run into the bay to save it.  (Yes, I said ‘bay’—these are mellow waters, not the high surf of an ocean, and descent into the water is gradual)  Maybe even, if it had been a child, folks would have gone to save him . . . then again, maybe not.  Sad to say, I think animal life is more highly-valued than human beings in today’s mixed-up world. 

How did we get here?  How is it that the value placed on human life can be so low?  And how is it that certain people choose exactly whose life is worth something… or not?  >Did it start with Dr. Death, Jack Kevorkian, who died last week?  ‘Remember his ‘assisted suicide’ contraption that helped people die when they would rather not face a debilitating or terminal illness?   >Or did it start in 1973 when Roe vs. Wade made abortion legal? (How many abortions are given/gotten in the U.S. each year?  1.37 million, WikiAnswers)   >Or when young mothers thought it a viable option to put their unwanted newborns in garbage bags and then into dumpsters?  >Or, was it when schools threw out teaching Creationism, replacing it with Evolution? 

On the last point, here’s the thing—if you and me got here/gained life through what is called “spontaneous generation”, an explanation of how the first organisms came to be, (really just meaning ‘random act’).  That ‘randomness’ would seem quite haphazard as to our individual existence(s), would it not?  I suppose if life is that accidental, then maybe there is nothing wrong with people standing and watching a man die . . . ‘just another random occurrence.  Well then, maybe 343 firefighters should not have gone to their deaths on 9/11 trying to save innocent people from their demise in NYC. 

The foundational question regarding your worldview is, ‘how did you get here?’ 

Folks feel like idiots believing in creationism or currently called “intelligent design”, what with their elementary, then middle school and high school teachers drilling into them the folly of such belief … Rather, they just ‘buy’ the notion of evolution with its far-fetched random origins instead of studying the matter for themselves—instead of seeing that it takes much more FAITH to believe in that, than the most beautiful explanation for life---a Creator.  Being the ‘CREATED’ is what gives us our value, don’t you see??  After each day of creation, God looked at his handiwork and said, “It is good.”  Man was the crown of his creation, after which he said, “It is very good.”  Indeed.

When God said he wove you together in your mother’s womb, that is what he meant.  It was anything but random.  In fact, let me take you to the psalmist’s words in Psalm 139: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” 

Created and endowed with life, even that was not enough for God the Creator.  For it was then that he invited us into relationship with him—it was then that he offered us not just life on this earth, but eternal life.  No random act could account for such a grand offering.  Ah, that we might value the gift of life—our own and all of God’s magnificent human creation!

Christine

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