Worth and Worthy

Driving back from a family trip to some springs, the Lovely One and I had a conversation that clarified for me The Worth of a Soul.

Let’s say you have a couple of little kids, close in age. One is around 18 months, the other is around 3 years old. The three-year old is a little late in getting potty trained so you are working with her intensively now. It’s finally sticking. Meanwhile the 18-month old is watching you and her older sister and she amazingly just potty trains herself.

Which child has more worth?

Your gut says they both have great worth. You want to reject the question. You strongly want to reject the question.

At the same time, as a parent you probably are just excited about the younger kid a bit in a way that you weren’t for the older one, even if you feel guilty for feeling that way and try to shove the feeling away.

So lets unpack why you have those feelings.

A toddler is incredibly valuable in itself. No matter what their different skills and abilities now, and regardless of their future outcomes as they grow, the love and delight you have for the child now, seeing it grow, seeing its own delight in the world around it, means the child has immense worth in the present.  To be a toddler is a wonderful thing.

A toddler is also incredibly valuable for its potential to grow into an adult. This little baby could one day raise monuments, green deserts, build up empires or throw down tyrannies, sing songs of beauty, and even create new human life of its own. And this is true even if the child potty trains precociously or is a late bloomer.  To have the potential to become an adult is also of great worth.

So I think the answer is that in a very broad sense of worth, the child who self potty trains early is ‘worth’ more. But that very small difference in worth is trivial in comparison to either the vast present worth of each child just for being a child or the vast worth of their future potential.

And I think our worth to God is exactly like that of these children. We are literally toddlers to divinity. All of our accomplishments now matter, but like a child being potty trained matters.