In Christianity, my beliefs about myself, God, and the world can translate into every aspect of my life. For example as a Christian, I assert that:
- All people are equally (and infinitely) valuable. (Genesis 1:27, Romans 5:8, 1 Peter 1:18-20)
- All people were made by God to desire good things (and ultimately, to desire Himself). (Romans 7:15)
- God is the best thing. (Mark 18:10)
- All good comes from God. (James 1:17)
- There is no good apart from God. (Psalm 73:25)
- And all people are sinful — prone to search for those good things in ways that don’t satisfy (aka trying to find satisfaction apart form God, the best thing). This is sin. (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10, 1 John 1:8)
- Sin is contrary to God, who is good, which means that sin is evil. Sin is hurtful to God, but also to man. It creates a spiritual chasm between man and God. (Romans 6:23, Isaiah 59:2)
I look at my whole life through the lens of such statements as these. Because the most authoritative and undistorted perspective on reality is, by definition, the perspective of the one who invented it, and knows exactly how it functions well, and what makes it go wrong.
And I never find an inconsistency, a place where these truths cannot invade. At work, at a party, at a bar, in economics, when I wonder who I really am, when my eyes are on celebrities and politicians and the news and the world, when obeying God is the farthest thing from my mind,
I have this underlying notion that I am
no more valuable,
no less sinful,
no less in need of love than any other human being —
rich or poor,
young or old,
disabled in one way or disabled in another,
gay or straight,
murderer of the flesh or murderer in the mind,
slut by reputation or perverted when nobody knows.
I am no different.
But each of these sinful humans I walk by each day are worth more than the whole ecosystem
to the One whose opinion,
out of all of us,
is most accurate
and matters most.
