What You’re Worth Part I: Your Nature

The more ministry I do, the more I’m beginning to believe that most people’s deep hurts and struggles with faith center around a pretty simple question:

“Am I really worth something?”

And I don’t just think it’s just church people asking this. I’m a pretty strong believer in the idea that most human beings live their lives primarily out of a desire to know that they’re valuable; for someone to tell them they’re worth something.

People will go to some pretty extreme ends to achieve this. They’ll insult, humiliate, and oppress to prove themselves better than another. They’ll fish for compliments, get physically fit, buy fancy clothes, work long hours, and build empires. Whether it’s just for a fleeting second of affirmation or a fixed monument in praise of their excellence; the stay-at-home mom and the CEO both want the same thing, and they’re going to employ the best means they know of to feel it.

But I don’t intrinsically know what I’m worth. None of us do, actually. And I think it’s in our nature as humans. My reading of Genesis 1-3 indicates to me that Adam and Eve were in a state of internal paradise because God had declared them “very good” (Genesis 1:31), a description for creation he did not use until he made humans, but had reserved solely for his most prized creation made in his very own image. In fact, the Bible’s first poetic inset occurs when God creates man (Genesis 1:27). It’s as if the rest of creation is mere repetitive prose to the poetic beauty that God sees in each of us. That kind of affirmation leads a person to be unashamed, even when completely naked (Genesis 2:25). But I think one of the core reasons our ancestors ended up falling into sin was because they allowed the Serpent to determine their worth for a time instead.

I think the third chapter of Genesis would look quite different had Adam and Eve been fully capable of asserting their own value on intrinsic grounds, telling the serpent that they had no interest in the wisdom of the forbidden fruit because they were quite glorious just as they were. But we don’t see that kind of self-informed response to the serpent. In fact, Eve could only recite what God had already told her (Genesis 3:2-3). I think she was made that way. And I think you and I were too.

Until the Serpent entered the scene, God had been the only one speaking to her what her value actually was. And He was telling her that He loved her enough to give her every tree in the garden except the one with the power to destroy her. She needed this because she was incapable of telling herself that she was quite lovable, and even having heard this from God, she is still unable to resist the serpent’s temptation in the face of his accusation (God is holding out on you / you’re ignorant) because she hasn’t internalized God’s truth.

I believe we were hard-wired in our original form as human beings to actually need an outside source to determine our worth. This means that, try as we may to convince ourselves of our worth, we will ultimately fail; and our insecurities, defensiveness and manipulation of others for our own purposes will constantly bear witness to this failure. So then, if we absolutely need an outside source to determine our worth, it’s natural that we will seek the answer from whoever we believe holds the authority on the matter. There are ways of doing this that lead to death and others that lead to life. I’ve experienced both.

Since we all have this fundamental question of value at the source of our most damaging thoughts and actions, how do we go about answering it? Over this next week (in two more posts), I want to share with you some foundational teachings of the Christian faith in order to equip you to answer your question well. Because I think that just maybe everything you do is riding on this thing…

Related posts:

1. What You’re Worth Part II: Econ 101
2. What You’re Worth Part III: Entitlement
3. The Fear of Sin
4. Reflections on Mark: Affirmation for a Son