Human Value: It’s a Salvation Thing

Greetings from the University of Oklahoma, well, in retrospect I guess.  Part of my second year internship assignment requires me to “make plans to visit another team and learn how they are equipping their students to launch new movements,” so I chose to visit the OU staff team and my friend David Chang, who served with me on the Epic Movement Bay Area Summer Project, 2008.  My hope was to learn how the OU staff team ministered to and loved the fraternity and sorority students on their campus as well as serve the newly planted Epic Movement.  

There’s so much I can share in terms of experience, how the OU team equips their students, and the differences between OU and UT–OU has such a high percent of student involved in fraternities and sororities!  On my last day at OU, I met up with David Chang’s friend Michael, a biomedical engineering freshman, who was interested in chatting with David’s “intellectual Christian friend” (that’s me, in case the ‘intellectual’ threw some of you off).  Our conversation quickly moved to the topic of human value.  After he wrestled to soundly explain (to no conclusion) why he believed humans are all equally valued, I shared with him what God recently taught me: How do you determine the value of anything?  Is not the value of something derived from the price you’re willing to pay to have it?  I explained to him that nothing really has value unless something external to it delights in it, to a certain, extent and is willing to “purchase” it with whatever resource.  Then, we talked about human value: if there is no external being to “value” humans, then human value is merely based on one human’s perception of another, which is by definition, relative, and therefore not equal.  I introduced the concept of God to this young, declared atheist, explaining that an external being, say God, must delight in Man to the extent that “he/she/it” is driven to give up something to have Man.  David, the psalmist, sings, “he rescued me because he delighted in me” (II Sam. 22:20).  As believers, we know that God was willing to give up the blood of his beloved Son to purchase back what he lost to our own folly.  I lead Michael through a very graphic description of what Jesus Christ had to suffer in order to purchase us back, being mindful to include as many excruciating images of crucifixion I had come to learn over the years.  He winced over every detail.   

I was blown away at Michael’s response: “I never knew there was Someone out there who valued me just as I am; even my parents have trouble doing that!”  Humans are equally valued: we are all worth the blood of a holy God—a price none of us can pay!   Because of that, I told him, as a Christ-follower I have come to love my neighbor all the more, for they are worth the torture, the humiliation, the death—and resurrection—of my God.  How amazing is God to move in Michael’s heart and tell him exactly what he needed to hear!  Michael not only became a theist that day, but also chose to not count the Message–that there is a God who delights in him so much that He was willing to let His own Son die in Michael’s place–as foolishness (I Corinthians 1:18).  PRAISE GOD!

Please continue to pray for Michael that he would be drawn to God, and pray for David Chang to have more opportunities to follow up with Michael.