we are created for a purpose
There is an almost surreal quality to the pablum complaint heard in recent days, first voiced as “black lives matter,” only to subsequently be summarily transformed to garner broader appeal as “all lives matter.” What is of consequence here is not the verisimilitude of such a glib declaration but much more importantly the contradictory attitude of those who have so loudly and stridently voiced it.
What’s a life worth?
The prevailing philosophical sentiment, self-professed by those who profess to understand such things, follows the existential prescription that human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine precisely what brings meaning to their life. It is Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) run amok, and thus everyone for themselves. It is, in all essential aspects, the new sovereign religion of me.
“Man, accepted public principle now tells us, is not a created or ultimately even a social being. Nor is he a composite of body and soul with a nature that reflects natural functions and goals. He is pure subjectivity, a Cartesian ego not tied to any role or quality. This sovereign independence, now seen as the basis of our unique dignity as human beings, requires that the ego be able freely to choose his values and connections, unhindered by any natural or social limits.
For that reason he has to be free to treat the world outside the ego as raw material for his purposes. That world includes his body, which has no intrinsic meaning or proper use. Indeed, it especially includes his body, because it is uniquely his and not shared with others, so it is no violation of justice for him to make it entirely his own to do with as he wishes.”[1]
Perhaps no bleaker specimen of this conceit presents itself than the brutal group assault of an inebriated college student surrounded by and largely ignored by hundreds of others over a recent spring break on a Florida beach. The callous disregard for the dignity and intrinsic value of another human life is a public avowal made with cold indifference that “no life matters” and a direct repudiation of the polemic that “all lives matter.”
The intrinsic value of human life cannot be determined by the idiocentric subjective calculations of another human being for no one holds the necessary qualifications to conduct such a judgment on another. The inherent fallacy in which all advocates of the holy “me” fall prey is the essential belief in the nothingness of man. If man is but a subjective whim, a figment of imagination, then he can be of no value and has no valid reason to exist.
It is through God alone that life holds meaning for God created us for a purpose and that purpose grants to each of us immeasurable value, value which cannot be diminished by anyone but the One who gave us life. Since God holds an inestimable value upon every soul we have no power or right to reevaluate another’s value as determined by our creator. All lives matter because all lives are creations of God and the sooner we return to God the sooner we will recognize the value of every life.
[1] James Kalb, Sex and the Religion of Me, First Things, December 2014.
