It was my third week at the children's home when I first saw a child being beaten. I had seen face slaps and ruler spankings at the school, but never a naked child being whipped with a stick on display before the other children. I walked in the room petrified at what I was seeing, but was quickly escorted out by a fellow house mother. She sweetly explained that this was how discipline worked in India. I waited outside the room, gazing into the trees from the second story balcony, feeling the pain in my heart with every cry of pain from the child.
When I heard the shuffling feet of children leaving the room, I ran in to find the young girl on the floor, and the house mother walking towards me with a greeting smile.
My heart burned with anger as I kissed my hand and bent to touch her feet, as a custom sign of respect. But as I touched her feet, I fell to my knees and crawled to the naked child as she reached for her clothes. I scooped her thin body into my arms and quickly left the room, hearing the all too common word "dirty", being spoken behind me.
Never had my 18 years young heart known such anger. My burning tears streamed into her oily hair as I held her naked body and gently rocked her. That poisonous word echoed in my ear, as it did in the young ears of the children who heard it every day.
Dirty: the common word used in India to describe people with leprosy. A name these children have heard screamed at their parents on the street. A name these families had been demeaned with as the lowest caste in society. A name these children, even having been rescued from the decease, were still being identified with.
What a lie this child was believing. She was anything but dirty, she was beautiful.
I knew no Hindi, she knew no English, but I stroked her head and spoke words of truth into her ear. Telling her she had value, that her life had purpose, that she had worth, that she was loved, that she was not dirty.
It was through this experience, and the next few months of fighting against these culturally accepted brutal discipline techniques that God first placed in my heart an understanding for the value of life.
The 500 children I had the pleasure of teaching and playing with were considered the dirt of society. They were lower in status than cows. If left in the leper colonies, they would be uneducated, unable to work, and would survive off the religious duties of the higher caste's charity.
But even in this home, a place of refuge, a place where they were safe from the brutality of their society, they were still being stained with lies of their worth.
This experience ignited the new found understanding of inherited worth; that life has value because God said so.
They, you, I, and we have devalued life. We are all guilty of putting a worth on life; a price on what and who we find valuable or invaluable to us. We stamp others with a worth, and often stamp ourselves with a worth as well; a worth depending on how we feel valued by others. These stamps that influential individuals leave on us so often leave scars; scars that we will forever acknowledge, forever pick at, and forever influence our self-perceived worth.
But our life has value because God said so. No one else gets the power to give us worth or take it away, NOT EVEN OURSELVES.
Throughout school, I felt a value put on me by men. Walking on the street I would be devalued to a pretty object that men felt compelled to whistle at, holler at, and enjoy for a few seconds of their own self entitled pleasure. They would act as if I planned my outfit, chose my lipstick shade, calculated my walking route all in accordance for when I would pass them, and they could sit back and enjoy the way I look. This entitlement that men feel is nothing new; it's part of this messed up idea that women are somehow for them. But I am not going to go into that here... Lord knows that's a topic all in of itself.
Being devalued by drive-by callouts, sidewalk whistles, and pathetic "pick up" lines ("pick up" because the only thing that needs to be picked up is the pride you just dropped with that ridiculous non sense that you thought would work) is a form of dignity stripping, respect withholding, worth instilling power that men think they have the right to place on women. Isn't that infuriating? These callouts may seem small to the sexual assaults and rape that many women have been victim of throughout their lives, but the heart of the issue it the same; placing a value on a women that is cultivated by not only men's sexual drive, but by their power drive.
It took a long time for me to separate my own value from the value that men put on me, and I have a strong assumption that a great deal of young girls and women struggle with this just as I did and sometimes still do.
It was a pivotal point in my "God given worth" journey, when that man stroked my hair and told me, "You are just a hoe... You are just a hoe...," attempting to implant lies in my own head as he justified his own reasonings for devaluing my body. It was in those words that my spirit shook, my identity burned knowing the lies he spoke over my God formed frame. Never have I been so broken and whole in the same moment; in complete humble understanding of the dignity that I have because God said so.
Working in women's ministry, I've heard countless stories of women being demeaned and devalued throughout their lives, but unable to put words to their inability to see their self-worth because of those wounds of the past. Asking the simple question, "Do you know how valuable you are?" brings forth vulnerability, pain, and the reality of where our value is found. And when we see where that power source is, we can often see the amount of power we've aloud it to have over our own perspective of our worth. It is through this process that we get to see our scars, begin to heal, and then understand that we are valuable because God said so.
We cannot value others lives without seeing the value of our own, and we can't see the value of our own life without valuing others. Making this thought a daily understanding, helps us view lives with the value they deserve. Even if someone does not believe in divinity, they may not proclaim value over their life without that same value being over other's lives. That is inconsistent and frankly hypocritical.
We do not give life value, only God does that. And He has.
He loves life, all life, and has declared it all valuable.
Pregnancy, the beginning of life, is a pivotal point in this understanding.
This political title "pro-life" is a funny one, because everyone is pro-life. Everyone wants to be advocates of life, not death. So making "life" a political title is stupid. Similarly, everyone is pro-choice. Everyone (generally speaking in the United States) believes humans have the freedom to individual choice. Women do have the choice over their bodies. So once again, this is a stupid political title that encompasses the general population.
Aite, stupid politics aside, the issue here is it is not the women's body because a baby is an entirely different body, an entirely different individual. With the advances of modern science and the ability to study life from conception to birth there is no longer the excuse of being ignorant to this truth.
Politically driven feminism will say I'm anti-women, a women hater, anti-choice, and many other things that aren't true. Being a women, I'm pro-women, pro-choice, and pro the thriving of women. I will boldly make the argument that you can't be pro-women without being pro-life. I'm pro-women BECAUSE I'm pro-life.
At the second of conception, a gender is chosen for that life; male or female. You want to talk about fighting for women, fight for the 53% of those fetuses that are women.
I know I'm all over the place with this, but I am earnestly still trying to find a reason for why this injustice is legal, especially in this country that so proudly defends and advocates for human rights. There is truly no argument that supports abortion, none that make any sort of logical, scientific, or moral sense. None what so ever. Plus it is statistically a racial genocide, has been since the beginning of it's encouragement in this country by eugenics specialist Margaret Sanger... but I'll get into that another time.
Anyone will eagerly say life is a beautiful thing. As we discover more about it through science, and the miracle that it truly is, we as humanity can't help but marvel at it. We acknowledge life (nature) as precious and valuable, but we have failed to value human life with the dignity that it deserves.
I am pro the thriving of all life; human life, animal life, and nature's vegetation. We as humanity have devalued all these aspects of life and I pray and hope we do better in learning how to respect and honor all of it's forms. Just looking at the way we treat our natural environment, animals, and humanity, we are clearly failing miserably at treating life with the dignity that it deserves.
As a nation we are learning more and more to advocate the needs of marginalized groups without a voice. Well this is (literally) the smallest of people with (literally) no voice. So I stand to advocate for the right to life, for the value of life, and for this justice towards the innocent.
My God loves life and hates injustice, therefore I am called to love life and hate injustice. As I understand this injustice towards human life, my heart breaks with Gods, knowing that we are willfully destroying what He loves and what we are called to love.
It's been 7 years since God first laid this idea of inherited value on my heart, and I still don't fully understand it. But I want to challenge you, friend, on where you find your value. Do you know that you are valuable? Do you see others as valuable? Do you, as a form of life, value life?
These are challenging questions that I face myself with everyday, but I think being grounded in this issue is so central to any world view and that everyone should be challenged to seek this truth for their own life.
Apart from politics, apart from my opinion, you have value because God said so. Soak in that beautiful truth, and live in the understanding that this beautiful truth is for all life.
