I posted a thing on my Facebook that I found:

 

It’s from J.S. Park, who recently wrote a book called What the Church Won’t Talk About. You should buy it. My mom bought 4.

Anyways. I wrote, “I hope you know why I live like I do. And if you don’t, ask me sometime.”

And someone actually did. Which made my day.

I wrote them, and I’m actually talking to them right now on Facebook Messenger, but since I tend to have, um, explosive word syndrome, I wanted to write some of it here. I guess it’s hard to answer that question, though, with only a few words. I mean, you can, but words tend to lose their meaning without context. Because after all, you can only learn so much through isolated, witty picture-quotes on Facebook. 😉

So here it is.

“Why do you live like you do?”

 

Dear friend,

One time, in middle school, I was lying in bed at night wondering if my life mattered. If I just disappeared, would the world be any different? In two days? In 100 years? What if I never existed? I’ve always wondered if my life really mattered. I chose to believe it did. So I kept going for a few more years.

Fast forward to the day of my graduation at CSU. I was about to walk up and get my social work degree, but I had to sit through this long ceremony. So I decided to talk to various professors and fellow social work graduates. But I wanted to make it something that mattered. (I hate small talk anyways.) So I asked them a simple question: “Why am I worth any more than, say, that chair over there?”Most people were confused at first. But I explained that the question I was getting at was, “It’s great that we’re dedicating our lives and careers to helping people and all… but *why* do people matter in the first place?”

None of them could answer.

And if they did, it was something they honestly hadn’t thought about much.

And these were people who were dedicating lives to helping things they couldn’t prove even mattered.

What did I learn in college?

I learned that all these courses taught us how to help people, but never once took a shot at why.

But despite what everyone else was worried about, in college, this was one of the questions I racked my brain trying to answer. “What makes people matter?” “What makes my life matter?” “Are all people really equal, or are some people more valuable than others?”

My conclusion was that all people do matter.

All people.

People are not something that can be “valued,” though, like, given a price tag or something, say, like a pack of gum. Or even the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is trillion-dollar a hunk of metal. But… there’s something more to a person than just… molecules. Fat people don’t matter more because they have more molecules than skinny people. Grown-ups aren’t more important than kids just because they’ve hung around longer, or stuffed more into their brains. There’s something beyond all that that makes us significant in this huge-ass universe.

And here’s what I came to.  People have souls. And every person, regardless of race, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc., has exactly one soul. Which , I concluded, means every person has equal and immeasurable value.

I couldn’t find any way around it. Either my neighbor, and the stranger on the other side of the world, is worth paying the highest price for, worth laying down my life for… or nobody really matters at all.

Including me.

Maybe you disagree with that. But  in studying social justice for 3 years, I found that, if human beings don’t matter, then the whole justice system falls apart. Why should we fight for rights for women? People with disabilities? People who identify as gay? And if some people matter more than others, well, then, logically, certain people deserve life more than others. If people don’t matter equally, then I could justify harming one person or people group… if it would benefit another group.

Right?

And I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. Utilitarianism is what this thinking is. And it’s the reason for genocide, the Holocaust, and other atrocities. Utilitarianism uses lives as “utilities” to accomplish something higher. Some *system* that apparently matters more. In other words, in Utilitarianism, the people are made for the benefit of the government, the economy, the society… rather than all these systems being made for the benefit of the people.

Anyways.That’s some philosophy for you. 🙂

Climbing down the ivory tower.

I’m nowhere near perfect in practicing this, or even believing it the whole time, but I make it my business to love people radically. That was my goal at Starbucks, whether it was my favorite coworker or the most annoying customer, that I treated them with dignity. Because I know how much they’re worth. But not only that, I know *why* they’re worth something.

I don’t know your experience with God or religion or faith. There are a lot of religious nuts out there. But as one of my favorite Eastern thinkers says, “You never judge a system by its abuse.” So. All religion aside, I have gone through a personal journey of trying to figure out why I exist, who I really am, and whether there is a God. And I have landed on this. God is real, and even though lots of Christians haven’t represented him well, a man named Jesus really did rise from the dead. I’ve come to this through not only logical evidence, but also personal experience. I’ve been to Israel, studied the history, the nature by which Christianity became popular (people in the Roman Empire, many of them total cowards, faced *brutal* things… to defend, what, a hoax? and the like), examined the science behind the universe and biology, and even tried out different lifestyles. And the only one that makes sense is Jesus.

If people matter at all, then every single person is worth dying for.

You can’t put a price on a person who matters infinitely, except, well, another life. And if there is a god who understands everything, he would also see that.

The only god in any world religion who ever gave his life for a person was the Christian God (Jesus). Allah never subjected himself to the human experience. The Budda experienced suffering and gained wisdom, but the process of nirvana “(literally meaning “extinguishment”) causes you to lose your identity and purpose and soul, not find it. Muslims and Buddhists mean the world to God, and I respect them and love them, but if the Christian God is the real god, they’re wrong. If the Muslim god is the real god, I’m wrong. If there is no god, we’re all wrong.

But if Jesus is really who he says he is (aka. God in the flesh), then it means the Being who created us… loves us so much he was willing to die for us. And if this god is real, then he’s right about everything. Right?

So maybe I’d be correct to have that attitude toward people, too.

Including myself.

This is why I believe Jesus tells us to “love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” and to “love your neighbor as yourself,” Because (1) God is the most important, pure, amazing thing in the world, and (2) Humans derive all their significance from who He is.

But you can’t love your neighbor as yourself… until you realize the depth of His love for you.

I’m only 22. I don’t know near close to everything, or most things.

But if a radical Muslim extremist came up to me and asked me to deny my faith or face death, I’d be confident enough in what I’ve landed on to tell him, “I’d rather die than deny the truth that Jesus, not Allah, is God. And He loves you as much as he loves me.” Radical, right? I guess that would make two of us.

I’m pretty confident about this. If you still wonder why, I’d love to show you more evidence. There’s lots.

People have significance, and people have purpose. Carpenters make chairs with the purpose of people sitting in them. And if my life has any meaning and purpose, I’ll find it in the carpenter who made me. I believe God made me for a purpose. Many purposes, actually. One of the big ones is to know him, and another is to love people radically. So that’s what I do. Not all the time. But it’s my goal.

I think he also made me to do specific things, like impact certain people’s lives, or write certain books, or have certain conversations. Maybe even this one.

If my life matters, it will matter because I impact other people whose lives matter equally as much, and mean the world to God.

I want everyone I meet to know they’re loved, and that they do really have a place in this world. Not everyone will get that from me handing out a cup of coffee, or giving away my old car. But that’s the message I strive to communicate in any way possible. Because I think it’s the most important message you could ever communicate, and really understand. Because it’s the only thing that’s ever changed my life.

So yeah. That’s why I live like I do.