There is an exciting possibility at church this year. We’ve been talking about starting a school, and the best ways to do that from scratch. Now, there is a likelihood that we will be able to start with students and families who have been attending another Christian elementary school, as it transitions into our new classical Christian day school. That could be rolling as soon as September! Please pray for the congregation, students, and their families as we work toward that end.
In the midst of this flurry of activity, here is something worth posting, and hopefully worth reading. When I was in (public) Jr. High school, a group of students were involved in the “Great Books” program. I suppose it was a precursor to the current federal Common Core program, which seems to be pretty much the opposite of classical education. One of the discussions we had involved four people in a lifeboat at sea, with only enough supplies for three to survive. We were supposed to wrestle with the value of human life, and perhaps defend a distinction between the four different people in the boat.
A conversation in our kids’ school this morning (a classical school at home) centered upon the question, “What gives a person’s life objective value?” People seek to find value in their lives through things like health and appearance, in diet and exercise; through their education and jobs; through popularity; or in the simple fact that they are alive or that they are human; or that they were created by God. The former options are self-evidently shallow. The latter options sound better, but still fall short of the answer. There are many living things, and a reasonable person can see the difference in value between a tree or a fish and a human being. Moreover, all of those living things were created by God.
The answer is this. A person’s value is determined not by something in themselves, but by the most external thing possible: by the love of God, which is expressed emphatically in the incarnation and death of His only-begotten Son. When we say that Jesus Christ died for all people, to reconcile us to God, that sets the value of every human life as high as it could possibly be set, because God was willing to pay the greatest price for it. John 3:16 tells us the objective value of every single human life.