Life Is Cheap...Or Is It?

Looking over our world even in a casual way might lead one to the conclusion that life is cheap. Violence, bloody warfare, abortion, terrorism against civilians especially, suicide bombing, the 9/11 tragedy,the inhumanity of man to man, incurable diseases like AIDS - all these and much more would indicate a complete lack of worth for human life. As I write this blog today, we have just received reports on the bloody massacre at Dawson College in Montreal. They do not know yet how many students have died or are injured. What a tragedy! In his blog, the young twenty-five year old shooter, a Canadian by birth, describes people as "worthless". The result of such negative thinking was the shooting spree he initiated at Dawson College today, striking terror into the heart of the students and others.
Recently, I was standing in line outside a medical blood clinic when another man began to talk with me. Soon the caretaker of the parking lot and buildings came along cleaning everything up. Very recently the medical building had been vandalized by people trying to break in. They wanted to enter the pharmacy where they thought they would be able to acquire drugs. They were frustrated by their mistakes and never did make it into the pharmacy. The man in the lineup said to me, "We could get rid of all this human riff-raff for thirty five cents per person, you know. "POW!" "Just one bullet in a gun, pull the trigger and they're gone. Then burn their bodies and it would be as if they never existed." He then proceeded to muse that this would also be a good way to get rid of Vancouver's homeless and even unwanted (by him!) foreigners coming into our country. Wow!! Heady stuff, eh? It seemed a bit reminiscent of the Nazi holocaust.
How thankful I am that such destructive thinking has not taken over Canadian society. It did remind me, however, that we are always only a hair's breadth away from mob rule. Some approach it a different way. Take, for example, those who rationalize that there would be no consequences if we withdrew our troops from Afghanistan and if America lost her resolve and pulled out of Iraq. Yet they endanger us all. They are unwittingly allowing the baser instincts of man to rule and we are the poorer for it. When all we can think of is saving our own skin, so to speak, we are in terrible straits. We are always at our best when we make every effort to uplift others and make their plight better.
The Bible is a book that seeks to save man from himself and bring the best out of each one of us. Our country and the U.S. to south of us were founded on the Bible. In God's Word the value of a life is clearly seen. In fact, Jesus loved us so much that He laid down His life for us. Hear the Word of God when it says, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."(John 3: 16)
Possibly Psalm 8: 4-6 encapsulates it all for us: "What is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. You made him ruler over the works of Your hands; you put everything under his feet....O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth." Psalm 139 speaks of God's closeness to each one of us.
It reminds me of a T-shirt I used to see which said, "I ain't junk, cause God don't make junk!" (Pardon the incorrect English grammar!) Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter who died so tragically recently from a stingray attack, used to take animals from the wild and show us their worth by explaining how beautiful they are in their own way. Similarly, we need to take humankind with all of its diversity and proclaim the dignity of human life. Then, as God does,love unconditionally all our fellow man.