One of the ways to motivate people to a particular course of action is to convince them that they are worth something. This is a double-edged sword and cuts in quite a few complicated ways. For one, telling people they are worth something can be an immensely manipulative act, especially when this strategy is used to sell products that are associated with worth but whose sellers have the ulterior motives of profit rather than any genuine motive of building up the worth of others. Likewise, it is a common technique among those who abuse and exploit other people to give them a false and extremely low picture of their worth, since people would not be abused if they were worth something, right? Logic, in the service of abuse and exploitation, and be a great enemy to our understanding of our worth as human beings.
One quality that seems to be nearly universal among people is the fact that we associate worth with the way we are treated. This is, not surprisingly, one reason why we like to be around others who treat us well, because it helps us to feel good about ourselves. It also accounts for that paradox that is often noticed by writers of a certain kind of fiction, like, say, Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court that it is often difficult to distinguish a king or some other illustrious figure in peasants’ clothes, because the robes of the office clue us in on how to treat someone. Given another nearly universal tendency for people to judge on outside appearances, we use exterior means such as clothing or offices or positions or our appearance to clue to others how they should treat us, and there are certainly plenty of people (though by no means all) who will apply appropriately, whether tactically or genuinely, and others who will act out of envy towards us equally predictably.
We do not tend to have good means of determining our own worth, largely because we do not tend to be greatly confident in our own subjective evaluations, which we know to be subjective, in the light of the hostility of those around us. By and large, our worth is imputed by others, based in how they treat us [1]. Likewise, we too impute the worth of others in how we treat them. This is a sober responsibility, as the Bible makes plain in Mark 9:42: “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” One of the ways we make other people stumble is by making them feel worthless, and it is hard to feel precious and of great value when one is consistently mistreated. Likewise, those people who are mistreated and looked down on by others tend to be, sadly, very vulnerable to the designs of those who speak of their worth, whether sincerely or not, because something is said that really needs to be said, and even if there is a great deal of skepticism about such claims, there is also a great deal of longing to hear and believe that sort of message as well. Whether fear or longing wins out depends on the circumstances.
Our worth, therefore, is imputed, and who imputes that wealth has great power, even if is power that is often used for various evils. Our worth, as imputed by others, may not be very high. For example, as I have commented on before in another context [2], when I was a child, the worth of a life in terms of putting in a streetlight was about $8,000 or so. This is not a particularly high value. This may be compared to the five sparrows whose worth is imputed at two farthings spoken of by our Lord and Savior in Luke 12:6, and if such little birds are remembered by God, are we not worth much more than sparrows? Is not the measure of our worth as people to God demonstrated in the fact that Jesus Christ was sacrificed by God on our behalf, and that both the Father and the Son were so willing, so that we could be brought up as adopted members of the Family of God? Yet we tend to see our worth through the fulfillment, or lack thereof, of the deepest longings of our hearts. It is easy for us to see our worth when we are well-treated by others, when we have loving relationships, a good job, and good material conditions. It is less easy for us to feel as if we are treasured and valued when life has not been kind to us. Yet so much of success in life depends on acting according to a worth that is not yet recognized by others or even ourselves, in terms of considering our talents to be worth developing, to consider our characters worth being refined, and to consider ourselves worth fighting for, worth staying for, worth changing for, worth loving.
For this reason, the way we treat ourselves and other people is of the highest importance. For we are the ones who let others know what we are worth by the way we treat ourselves, and we are the ones who communicate to others what they are worth by the way we treat them. Even if we do not wish to be told that the most dishonorable way we treat others is how we treat Jesus Christ (see Matthew 25:31-46), we ought to recognize the immense importance of our behavior to others. How do we build up other people? Do we encourage them to live virtuously and honorably, do we comfort them when they are down, help them to avoid feeling lonely, give them appreciation for their acts of kindness and service, listen to what they have to say and value their time and thoughts and feelings, show kindly affection to them, be patient with their occasional silliness and irrationality, not for any kind of ulterior motive but simply because they happen to be worth the same kind of treatment that we would want for ourselves? For if we communicate the way that God feels towards ourselves and other people by the way that we act, ought that not to greatly influence the way that we act, so that we communicate a message of hope and graciousness and kindness to a world that is not used to being treated with love and respect and that is prone to view with suspicion those who do?
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/book-review-is-college-worth-it/
Edge Induced Cohesion 