Vantage
point
Life:
Cheap or priceless?
“Life is the
cheapest thing in the world. … It has no value. Of cheap
things it is the cheapest.”
The cynical
philosophy belongs to Wolf Larsen, the fictional skipper in Jack
London’s The Sea Wolf. London’s Darwin-reading
character is a literary construct that accurately represents what
evolutionary thought demands when taken to its logical conclusion.
Larsen saw no difference between human and animal life. He contended
that a person’s life was of value only to himself. Sadly,
this is no fictional attitude.
In the streets of
Dhaka, Bangladesh, I have seen naked, undernourished children
lying on the sidewalk as throngs of people passed by, taking no
notice. In Cambodia and Thailand, I have seen young girls who
had been sold into lifelong prostitution, only to be thrown out
when spent. In Africa, as in Asia, I have been among populations
ravaged by AIDS and decimated by military massacres, with few
to care. In our own nation, abortion continues to run wild. And
the state where I last pastored, Oregon, holds the stigma of being
the first to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
What is the value
of a soul among the earth’s billions?
To God:
priceless.
The Psalmist
displays wonder at this: “What is man that You are mindful
of him, … that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:4, NKJV).
When Jesus walked the earth, He continually took time to minister
to one soul.
Christians
can be overwhelmed by the sea of human misery and fail to do anything.
We must take our lead from Jesus who carried the weight of all
the human race yet took time for individuals.
To a postmodern
audience, debate about Darwinism is irrelevant. The evolutionary
theory has been misrepresented as fact for so long that it is
ingrained in society, nurturing a callous disregard for life,
even one’s own. People must be shown the value of life.
There
is one thing of ultimate value in every life — the soul.
“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). Unborn babies,
the downtrodden, the elderly and the infirm — all are cheap
to the godless and deceived. To God and His people, however, every
single life is priceless.
—
Ken Horn
