For the most part, I avoid hot topics and controversial issues, not because I am afraid to share my opinion; rather, because many other blogs cover those matters quite well, while my objectives are to consider personal perspectives and growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But two things intersected this week that spurred my thinking about the value of a human life.  The first was the doctor-assisted suicide of Brittany Maynard and the other was a statement made in our community group:  “We each personally play an integral part within The Church.”  As Christians, every one of us has significance and divine calling to be a part of the Body of Christ, but without a public ministry or a specific talent it is easy to forget that.

I also understand the crippling effects of hopelessness and depression—believing that my life held no particular significance, my existence was of no benefit to anyone else, and the emotional pain too unbearable; so I am in no place to judge (no one is) the decision made by Brittany Maynard to end her own life.  I also know people who live with chronic pain, choosing to live in the grace of God.  I just feel very sad that she did not believe that her life had value apart from her suffering and did not recognize a God-given purpose for her time here.  I also do not know if she had a relationship with God through Jesus Christ; and if she did not, her eternal destiny holds much more suffering than what she escaped from by ending her life.

There are not easy, rubber-stamp responses for some of life’s tragedies, the results of fallen humanity.  We have life affirming tenets of Jesus, who identified himself as “the way, the truth, and the life,” (John 14:6) who proclaimed that he came that we “may have life, and that [we] may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).  The Holy Spirit ascertains through the Psalmist’s prayer that we have a “measure of days” (Psalm 39:4); and in Psalm 139, a chapter which identifies the beginning of life before birth, David recognizes God’s destiny for all the days of his life:  “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.  I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well….Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.  And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them” (Psalm 139:13-14, 16).  Solomon also recognized, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven:  A time to be born, and a time to die…” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 2).

My step-mom suffered from severe dementia the last few years of her life, and as I witnessed her decline and saw unscrupulous people take advantage of her vulnerabilities and deplete her estate, I wrestled before God with why He was allowing her life to continue—it seemed like no life at all, her mind was gone but her heart kept beating.  I don’t have an answer but I do have scriptures that validate her existence; and I know that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God’s] ways higher than [our] ways, and [His] thoughts than [our] thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

Human life has value because God gives us value—so much so that He willingly sacrificed His life for ours.  He took the punishment for our sin that we so rightly deserve so that we may have hope and a life that is impossible to earn—life without tears, without pain, without suffering, and without death.  “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.  In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory”  (Ephesians 1:11-14).

Within our inwardly focused, personal rights defending, and bucket list-creating culture, it is difficult to see beyond our own comfort and desires to the fact that life holds so much more for us.  Jesus proclaimed that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and He reminded His disciples after washing their feet, “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.  Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him” (John 13:15, 16).

Quality of life has much more to do with what we give or do for others than ensuring our own ease or happiness.  In fact, scripture reminds Christians, “do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?  For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20).  And, “by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Every individual is significant because God creates life—it is not up to us to decide who should live or who would be better off dead—it is not up to us to determine any one person’s value to God other than the fact He gave His life for theirs.