A Question of Value

Behind what is going on in the news--the Afghanistan pullout, the riots in major cities the past year, the controversies for years over abortion, and more--is an issue that most people largely ignore.  What is the worth of a human life? 

It often seems to me in reading the news the past few years that as a nation, our thoughts on this are rather skewed.  For instance, George Floyd's life seems to be regarded as quite valuable, to judge from the riots in so many of our nation's cities.  On the other hand, the life of David Dorn, a retired police chief--and also black--who was murdered in St. Louis during the Floyd riots there, seems to be accorded little value by the same people who got so upset over George Floyd's death.  On a more recent note, during the Afghanistan pullout, we had the possible death of a suspected terrorist, who was spotted and locked by a drone, but the authorities refused to allow the kill; the terrorist went on to kill himself, but he took a large number of other Afghans and thirteen American service members with him, besides an even larger number of Afghans and Americans injured in the explosion.

What is the value of human life?  For much of the world, there seems to be no real concept of it.  Of all the world's religions, past and present, only two set any real value on human life--Judaism and Christianity.  No others put much if any value on human life.  As for atheism, its most famous proponents--Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and more--put no real value on life--all people in their way were expendable.

But why should human life have value?  It depends on what a human is.  What follows is an insight I read from C. S. Lewis; I can't remember which of his books it was in, and a brief search did not turn it up.  But here is the distinction I remember reading from him:

If a human being is simply an animal that lives for seventy years or so and then dies, then a state that can last for hundreds or even a thousand years is worth more than any one person.  But if a human being is a spiritual animal that can live briefly in this world but then potentially forever in Heaven, then the state by comparison is a minimal, temporary thing.

I would be the first to acknowledge that even many Christians do not seem to understand this.  But our secular neighbors do not get it at all.  But this is a part of the philosophical and religious divide we have to live in during our present times.