Worth

Well, I guess most of us heard the squeal of burning rubber, the raucous applause, and the flashing lights and bells yesterday. SpaceX was launched on the stock market and Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire! He’s worth that much!

Really?

I don’t know about you, but my heart choked in my throat at the gaudy announcement. We have been drowning in the greed and corruption of wealth and power, political expedience, and flagrant opportunism in a culture where worth is flaunted by ‘how much stuff’.

So, if Elon Muck is worth over one trillion dollars, where does that leave me? Or you? God, do I ever feel worthless by comparison…..

All depends.

This is a topic I have struggled with through various seasons of my life, for sure. My head can affirm one thing but my heart does not always easily agree. My worth is so intricately laced with status, education, career, relationships, success, finances, reputation, recognition, health, and countless other imposters.

Remember past thoughts seducing a moment of restless discontent with promises and great anticipation? When I leave school, then…. When I’m married. When I have my first job. When I have children. When I pay off the mortgage….. It never ends….. Then I’ll be content, happy, feel as if my life means something.

If I had as much money as Elon Musk…… Read his life story; happiness, stability, and contentment don’t appear to be owned even with a billion/trillion dollars.

The reality is that money and ‘stuff’ is incredibly unreliable when measuring worth, particularly a sense of self-worth. Look at the news and stats. How many extraordinarily wealthy people exude contentment and peace? It’s more common to read of scandal, addiction, and the misery of those who have reached their mountaintop of success and never felt so alone or unfulfilled. That’s because there’s more to life than fills the bank.

How do we describe personal worth? What transforms the value of a person in our eyes?

Relationship.

Consider your child (if you are fortunate to have one, or more) “If she/he could only be cured I would give all the money I had in the world, even my life, for them to recover,” The value and worth of a life is measured by love, when all is said and done. Love is the essence of the real transcendent value of a human life. And it’s not hard to discern the difference in one who knows love from the inside out, and one who is looking for love in all the wrong places.

Love that releases and affirms worth is priceless and not for sale. It’s a gift from God. He knows a thing or two about what makes humanity tick. Thousands of years ago Jesus was conversing with his disciples because they were understandably struggling with what he was saying. He was telling them that he would die and that life involves taking up a Cross (in other words, suffering). What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Mark 8:36

The key to life, worth, and value is not what I can accumulate around myself to demonstrate how successful, famous, or rich I am. The hallmark of human worth (worth its weight in gold) is how much I give away – of myself, for others.

Jesus also said: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” Luke 12:40

Some of the richest people I have ever met have been among the poorest materially. And that’s not elevating poverty to be a good thing. It’s just that when you live life at the coalface I guess your senses are heightened as to what really matters. I don’t know. It’s just that those people have seemed to me to be more joyful, more real. more honest, and more present and generous. Certainly not a romantic or perfect view in any way; they also share our universal human struggles pertaining to greed, envy, status, or whatever.

All of this to say that I’m not at all impressed by worth measured in the lights and bells of the stock exchange.

God’s love begins with himself and never places upon us the burden of performance as a condition for his acceptance. That’s why He sent His son into a world that had lost it’s way, and sense of purpose, meaning, and value. Jesus gave up His multi-trillionaire status and became poor as a peasant born in a straw manger in Bethlehem. How else could he get our attention without scaring or intimidating us? Humility was his gift to the world, unconditional love, touching the leper, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, bringing hope to those crushed under the brutality of Rome. Offering meaning to a Roman centurion who discovered that his privileged status and wealth could not heal his servant.

I’m still in kindergarten when it comes to really experiencing these truths. My restless spirit wrestles, but in my heart of hearts I know that my wealth and my value will only ever be fully known in the company of Jesus. And for the little I have tasted, that is priceless. A small deposit of the more that I (and you) am promised is still to come. And if God’s love reaches me, then the same embrace must be offered to my neighbour; to the rich, the poor, the immigrant, those with whom I agree, and those with whom I disagree. A real challenge in our divided impoverished world where trillions of dollars have given few solutions and not much hope to the masses.

I wrote this song many years ago to attempt to capture some of these themes….. singing is easier than living day by day…. but at least there’s a direction, a foundation, and One who helps and supports us along the Way.