Value is such a contentious issue in our world today. Everything has a price – everyone is measuring worth. Whether it is likes on Facebook or hearts on Instagram, your level of achievement academically, how many people listen to you or the type of friends you try to hang around, value has become a yardstick for your importance. The problem is, trying to find value in the external areas of life will result with you bending over backwards to make people happy. In that case you will lose your unique identity so that you can feel okay about yourself.
But there is another way. What you bring is unique. You add an aspect of diversity that is needed on the spectrum of opinion and conviction in this world. Your history, background, achievements, experiences and connections help express your uniqueness, but if you draw your identity only from these things you (and the world) are missing who you truly are.
If you value your individuality – how you are a different expression within the constructs of your family, culture, beliefs, ethnicity, social demographic and so on, – you will value the diversity of others as well.
Now, I don’t want to devalue the importance of family and finding a place where you ‘belong’, but if you only see yourself as others see you, you will lose your influence in all of those areas. You are a voice within your family, within your culture or wherever else you find yourself. Valuing your individuality, in turn, values diversity.
I believe this correlation is key to becoming a global society that gets rid of prejudice. If you can look beyond your own background to value the individual God has created, you will be able to do the same with others. I am holding out for a day when someone who is considerate and values people beyond skin colour, class demographic, sex or age is not an ‘exception’. I believe that day is steadily on its way.
But it will take all of us to question what dictates ‘who’ we are. Do you come from God first, or your family? Are you a result of your experiences and circumstances, or do you have unique qualities that God invested into you before you were born? This eternal perspective will change how you treat yourself. AND how you treat others.
But it all starts with God. It all starts with knowing the One who knows you completely. As you grow in what it means to be known by the Creator of your life and the life of the person you would consider your ‘opposite’, you will know yourself more. Humanity has tried to unite around many things… but the only true thing every one of us has in common is the same Creator. The same origin – God.
If you are struggling to reconcile who you are in the context of this world, the best thing you can do is to go to God personally. Click on the link below to find out more.