I want to believe in humanity. I want to believe that within us, there is a measure of goodness, of truth, and nobility. And I want even more badly to believe that there is a God of wisdom and Love who values us enough to guide us in the way of life and joy. But I must admit that my beliefs and desires to believe are severely tested by the truth of what I know of this world.
Rarely do I take the time to consider the griefs our people bestow upon one another as nations, the conditions we pass over, the intense poverty, the injustice, and mass hopelessness, the wailing of countless bereaved children thrown into chaos wrought by the selfishness of other men and the apathy of our governments. Indeed, for me, to know the truth is to hate myself, my people and at times my God. Where is our innocence? We tremble and weep and do nothing, and our inheritance is passed on. This is the problem of our evil. And it is too great to stand under. When people ask, I cannot preach it away, I cannot climb atop books and hope to escape the smoke of guilt and accusation. War, rape, brutality, and base exploitation are what are flesh and blood have brought about. Though it is right, it is also wrong to say that God’s love is wonderful and mysterious, and His plans of expressing it complex, for to know the truth of things in this world, chokes this bold declaration into a desperate gasp for what is an increasingly elusive answer.
There is a God. But if He is here, He must be a weeping God, for what He has declared as necessity through the events of history, has shown him to be a God who is accustomed to the deepest of pains, for His hands are not idle in our horrors.
And so we bow and God speaks, and He says: “all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’”
And some of us whisper, “Surely I could never stay Your hand, but what do you expect me to say? Shall I stay silent when all the inhabitants of the world cry out from darkness? Are we truly nothing? And is our pain nothing to You?”
Somewhere inside of me, there is a word, that says, “We are not nothing.”
Some churched folk may say, Indeed we are significant! we are worthwhile, because the infinite worth of Jesus was the ransom for us. Very well, but you are not thinking this through. This ransom, it was not paid because of our worth, it was paid because of God’s glory. Let me affirm this truth again, may there be no talk of our worth being the reason for Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice. For that would be wrong. Truly it is not because of anything in us that God should choose us, but because God’s choosing of us is reason alone for the action (Deut 7:7-8). Further, the sacrifice of the cross, was not to display the worth man of but rather to uplift the worth of God, by displaying Him as a God of true and measureless grace. Hence Paul’s repetitive affirmation in the first chapter of Ephesians. So again, consider with me, the worth of man is lost in all this.
I hope the reader understands, I am not seeking glory for man, I am only seeking an explanation for the significance of our existence, and the affirmation of our worth in light the world’s brokeness. Not because of what we have done, but because of what we are. Human.
All I want to hear is “You are of value to Me.” and maybe then I will be able to keep my chin up, when the world is falling apart around me.
We were nothing. Now we are not. Our value isn’t in who we are, but who we know (and how much He paid for us to know Him). God sacrificed Himself for His own glory, but also for our good. He didn’t do it because we were worth it, but by paying that high a price for us, He’s made us to be valuable. We’ve been transformed from worthless to valuable because of His love and care. Now our worth should be found in knowing and having a relationship with the great God of the universe.
Jeremiah 9:23-24
23 This is what the LORD says:
“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,
24 but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,”
declares the LORD.
And if you want to see how excited God is that you’re part of His family, read the parables of the lost sheep, the 10 coins, or the prodigal son. If He were not God, the love, care, and value He places on us would be undignified. Because He is God, it’s the definition of what love, care, and value are. Notice the celebrations described in each of those parables — they’re celebrations over the lost ones who are found — particularly in the prodigal son. And check out Zephaniah 3:17,
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
God is specifically speaking about Israel in this passage, but it still amazes me that God will sing about His people. The idea of God rejoicing over people, God exulting over them with singing…it blows my mind and changes my thoughts of Him.
If you want to know you’re valuable, look at who God has made you, and how He rejoices over the fact that you’re His. You don’t get any of the credit, you can’t take pride in yourself, but our God knows you, loves you, and rejoices over your relationship with Him in ways that seem unbecoming a King.
Ed, might you be working under a false assumption that humans must be worth something in order for us to find true joy?
John Piper asks the question this way: “Do you feel most loved by God because He makes much of you, or because He frees you to enjoy making much of Him forever?” (Brothers We are Not Professionals, 16)
It is part of the age we live in that joy is found in valuing the self. For our age, being loved = being valued. God’s love, however, does not consist in making much of us, but rather in freeing us to make much of him.
Edwards, in The End For Which God Created the World, which I know you’ve read, says God has one chief and ultimate end, though it is composite: The glory of God / love for man. These are not two ends, but one. His glory is too good to be kept in and thus, for his glory’s sake, communicates goodness to his redeemed; and yet this is simultaneously the supreme act of love, since it gives us access to the infinite glory of God. Or, as Piper has rephrased it: “God is more glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him.”
The value of living life is not found in value in ourselves, but in the value of knowing the eternal God. We are nothing, and this magnifies God’s love. Any dignity humans have (less so in a fallen state, more so in a redeemed state), is just a manifestation of our being made in the image of God, thus it points back to him anyway. Our song forever will be of his mercy in loving grasshoppers like us, not of our greatness.