What is the Value of a Life?
To some it’s not much. To others it’s incalculable.
Most people value the life of a child more than the life of an older person. I think it’s the promise of a life yet to be lived. For example if a disaster strikes and you literally can only save one, most everyone would save the child.
To a parent with a sick child, a terminally sick infant for example, there’s nothing beyond what they would give to heal their child. To a child abuser who’s thrown their child across the room and cracked his or her skull, the life of their child (to them) is next to worthless.
The first parent has a hard enough time understanding and dealing with their situation, when they read about the second parent, they explode with disgust and anger, and rightly so.
Why do these two extremes exist? How can one person have such little regard for an innocent life? How does the parent of the sick child deal with, and cope with, watching something they value more than their own life struggle to live and possibly slip away?
I don’t have the answers to all the questions that surround both situations. I wish I did. I’ve never experienced either situation (thank God). But God does have answers and can provide healing…
God experienced both as we tortured his Son, nailed his Son to the cross, and killed him…
…turn to God for peace in situations where peace seems an impossibility.
Until next time,
Fred
