what are you worth?

“Pride is not about having something. It is about having something more than the other person. If comparison is gone, pride is lost.” C.S. Lewis

The cardio-physiology lab at Christian medical college is medical technology at its zenith. Mega machines and multiple monitors make its operators a humble lot. The centrally air-conditioned Cath lab with X-ray machines to scan from various angles, creates a semblance of robotic medicine. The series of radiations that these innovations emit scan through the heart and guide the interventional cardiologists into the right vessels. And I was there to sedate an agitated patient and thereby aid in a smooth procedure.

Suddenly I overheard a conversation. I admit that eavesdropping is not the most virtuous of acts, but the topic of discussion captured my attention. “Just with a cardiology degree we must not be satisfied. We need to do at least three fellowships. A single one is not enough!”. A cardiologist is one who takes three years of training after his post graduation, which in turn is of three years duration. According to recent data there is not even a single such super-specialist for one Lakh population in some of the states in our country. They ought to be special people with contentment and satisfaction writ large on their faces. But that was not the case in this vignette. I delved into this universal phenomenon of dissatisfaction that has struck human race like never before. Meet a pre-university student and he believes a medical degree will settle his life. We meet him after 5 years and he is in this ‘PG mania’ that drills this concept that life is neither fruitful nor livable without it. It did not take me much time to realize that all these pursuits engender so much strain and trauma because of mutual comparison. Most of the times, we want things only because the other person has them, without even realizing to what extent we need it ourselves. That’s why I could not answer the question as to why I needed a PG for a long time. The ideal of it being a channel through which I could serve better dawned upon me only later. Most of those initial times, I used to sit through those long hours of coaching classes, only because others were doing it.

I do not know if this applies to all societies, but in our culture conformity to orthodox norms gains supreme importance. We are trained to play safe. We are discouraged from threading the less travelled path. We are restricted from making self-constructed careers. The ages of herd- mentality burdens the shoulders of this generation terribly. Siblings are graded based on the academically best of the lot. Classmates always aim to score not full marks but one better than others. Our qualifications, marriages, houses, vehicles and bank balances- are all driven by a single factor of comparison. But the marvel of human anatomy reverberates with the distinctness of each individual. No two humans’ genetic code is the same. Our retinas and our fingerprints all vary from one another. That’s why surgeons even after performing thousands of operations regularly note that no two abdomens are same or two knee joints are alike attesting to the surprises human body can hurl at its beholders.

The debate of conformity and distinctness is a very crucial one. Because the worldview we engender will mould and shape our lifestyle. Should our lives be lived under the constant prejudices of our people? Is it wrong to be different? What is the course of action we ought to take? What is the purpose of life which is being severely threatened by our mutual rat race? I look at evolution and science and find no encouraging answers. Darwinian Theory suggests that we are here only by chance and thus demolishes the whole question of distinctness of human being. But the Christian perspective on humanness is unique and which I think is the only wholesome answer to the conundrum.

1. We are special because we are made in the image of God: The story of how God created man is interesting. For five days, He created all the creatures of land, sky and waters and called them ‘good’. Then He decided to make man in His own image. He made man out of the dust and kept him in charge of all the living beings. Then God looked at man and called him ‘very good’. There is a soul in each one of us. In that sense we are created in God’s own image. There is an intrinsic worth of being a human being. Put off all your qualification, abandon all your beauty, give up all your riches and donate all your money- you are still valuable because you are made in the very image of God. That fact cannot be altered by some material commodities we strive to accumulate. The likeness to God is the exclusive prerogative of man alone among earthly species. So the next time we get discouraged or puffed up by looking at our neighbors, let’s remember this truth of worthiness by the virtue of who we essentially are.

2. We are special because God loves us: The story of creation was followed by the pain of separation. Man separates from God by willfully disobeying His commands. So God who is holy sends man away from the place of creation. From then starts God’s effort to reconcile Him to men. God decides to come down and take the burden of universal sins on Him. Incarnated in the form of Jesus, He dies on the cross and redeems human kind back to Him so that whoever now believes in Him will be with Him. There is no reason as to why He did all this except for love. He died not for all men but for each man so that even if there was only a single man He would have still done the same, as C.S.Lewis put it. God loves us. And no matter how unworthy we may feel or the world around makes us feel about ourselves, it is this fact that God loves us that liberates us. Even if we find no man loving or caring for us we can gain assurance from the fact that He cares to the extent of giving up His life.

3. We are special because He fills us with His Spirit: The wonderful aspect of knowing Jesus is being in a constant relationship with Him. That constant communion of course is by His Spirit that in dwell all believers. So the Spirit is the comforter and the peace giver. He is the wisdom and the power to all who believe in Christ. It is this Spirit of God in us that will lead us to all truth and reveal the heart and mind of God. Filled with the Spirit, the early followers of Jesus did extraordinary things. They raised the dead, healed the sick, fed the hungry and shared His love- the very acts that Jesus did when He walked on earth. God wants to continue the work of redemption through us. He wants us to be His co-workers. It is a privilege and an honor. The world struggles to make an identity while we already have it as His workers. That makes us very important in the eternal perspective on the daily job for God.

With all this uniqueness and worthiness that comes from God, we can be a comforted lot. As a civilization we have made giant strides from Stone Age. But have we managed to preserve or enhance the value of human life? We fought with sticks and now we fight with nuclear arsenal. Unless we realize that identity comes from beyond and not from within, our convictions on life, purpose and distinctness will rest on sinking sand.