Human beings are only of worth when they are wanted by someone else. Sounds like a horrific thing to say, and yet, I want to know why it’s true. I want to understand why the life of every person I know should make a difference to me. And I want to know why, 12 years ago, I laid my hand on a tiny pink gingham coffin and watched in tears as it was lowered into the grave.
Why did a crowd of mourners weep with me? What we were sad about? Were we sad about my daughter’s death only because her family wanted her? Or should we–even if no one wanted her–have been sad anyway?
If Rachel were alive today, she would be in sixth grade. She would look just like her older sister if baby photos are anything to believe. Photos. That’s the only way I know what she looked like. It’s been so long that, without them, I can’t remember her face.
Except for those lips. Ruby red, though I don’t know why. I had expected them to be blue. She had been dead for several hours when she was born, after all. I would think I had imagined those beautiful lips if not for the photos.
Those photos. I can’t bear to look at them most of the time, even all these years later. But I’m fiercely glad they exist. I’m still so incredibly touched by the thoughtfulness of the nurse who forgot to bring me pain medicine three times because she was taking such perfect photos of my daughter. In those photos, you can’t even see her torn eyelid–a sign that she had already begun to return to the dust. She just looks like she’s sleeping.
Maybe that’s why it’s hard to look at them.
Maybe that’s why it’s hard to ask questions such as these.
Why did I weep? Why the crowd of mourners? Certainly we had something to be sad about, but what? Why should Rachel’s life–any person’s life–make a difference to me? And what makes a person valuable? The fact that he is wanted by someone? Or is it something else entirely?
For that matter, why rail against the idea that human beings are only valuable if they are wanted by someone else? Why shouldn’t we value my daughter more than the baby aborted by its mother that same day? Why mourn one and not the other? Do the photos of my sleeping beauty matter more than the sonogram images cast aside along with the aborted baby’s corpse?
No one wants to ask these questions. And yet we must. We must ask why a baby in a tiny pink gingham coffin matters. Because if a human being is only valuable if he is wanted by someone else, then all of us are worthless unless we are wanted.
And all of us are disposable the minute we’re of no use to someone else.
But the theology of the body says something different. It reveals that, by the nature of who a person is, what she is, and that she is, every person is of infinite worth–regardless of whether the person is loved, rejected, wanted, appreciated or valued.
By human individuals, that is.
That’s the surprise. It’s true – our value does come from Someone else. It comes from the God Who loves us so much that He paid for us at the price of his blood. We as human persons are valuable because we are wanted by Him. The one Who fashioned us. Our arms, our legs, our hearts are physical evidence of a desire so deep and pure that it takes on Flesh. Our bodies are like photographs that reveal the value God has given us.
That’s not the sort of thing you throw away.
Spring 2023