How then shall we value our selves?

In his article entitled The $65,000 Question, Chuck Colson reflects on the foundation from which human life has its value, describing things he has learned from his autistic grandson, Max. According to the utilitarian ethic that governs much of the world's philosophy and perception of value and goodness, Max really isn't much of a human being. He cannot produce much, if anything, in terms of tangible goods — rather his very existence costs society a disportionate amount of resouces; $65,000 per year just to keep him in his special school. Colson ends his article this way:

How should Max account for himself, and why should he have to? Max is more than happy to be alive, thank you very much. Max knows a joy and wonder that puts me to shame. Why is that?

Let me just suggest at this point it's because the good life is not about the sum total of what we contribute to the world. It's about loving. Utilitarianism knows nothing of love. Love is the beginning and the end of the good life, however, and it's in love that our lives must be centered. Truth matters because without truth, love is unreal. It's just another sentimentality. But we know in our hearts that within us is a love that calls out to the Love that we believe formed the universe. Otherwise, we're lost.

In many ways, the lessons that Max has taught his grandfather are similar to the lessons that the mentally handicapped adult residents of the L'Arche Daybreak Community taught Henri Nouwen. It is not what we can produce that makes us human. Nouwen extends these insights to the concept of leadership, and insists that it is not the great abilities and results that give us value as leaders either. Our greatest value as leaders comes in sharing our selves — broken and inadequate as we are — with those around us, so that in our very brokenness we may contribute to God's pouring wholeness into the world.

This is a profoundly liberating idea, and yet it is curious just how difficult it is for us to allow ourselves to own it — to grasp and live it. Perhaps we are not quite ready to give up the notion that we can generate our own value as human beings and particularly as leaders by what we can produce.

I know I desparately need to be reminded again and again that the things of greatest value in the world in general, and in my life in particular, are far beyond my power to generate — but that I am not called to do that impossible task anyway, and my value does not lie in doing it. Perhaps that is why I react so much against the language of the "pursuit of Leadership" — I know just how easy it is for me, and for others I care about, to measure our own worth by an impossible standard — and I just don't have enough Henri Nouwen's around me to keep me balanced.