Given the choice between a career as a bin man or a brain surgeon, most of us wouldn’t have to think too long; we’d choose to be brain surgeons. The reason’s obvious; prestige, pleasant lifestyle, good income, and yet when you think about it, those things can be hard to define. What is prestige? How do you define, pleasant lifestyle? Or a good income? Now that’s an interesting one, for Parkinson’s Law states; ‘Expenditure increases in line with increasing income, and usually exceeds it.’ In other words, who really is better off, one who earns £250,000 a year but who needs £275,000 to maintain their lifestyle, or ‘lesser mortals’ who can manage very nicely on a bin man’s wage?

But before you make your final decision, here’s an interesting question’ if all the brain surgeons and all the bin men in the country went on strike, which of those two professions would we miss first? Which would we miss most? And whose absence would cause the greater risk to public health? The answer is that while a small number of people might lose out if there were no brain surgeons around for a month or two, we’d all feel the impact immediately as rotting rubbish piles up and the rats get fatter and more arrogant.

Or look at it another way. Diamonds have great worth. The 530 carat Star of Africa, one of the British Crown Jewels held in the Tower of London, is thought to be worth something in the region of £245 million.  But does it have any practical value? Is it a prerequisite for a happy life? And what can a diamond, even the Star of Africa do for someone who is afraid, or lonely, or dying?

Water, on the other hand is of such immense value that without it, life as we know it would cease within days, and yet it has such little worth that we use it to shower, clean our teeth, wash our cars, flush stuff down the loo. It’s our culture that determines the worth of gold and silver; precious stones are precious because we say they’re precious, no other reason. It’s society’s arbitrary decision and we all play along.   

The apostle John wrote about this almost two thousand years ago, but he’s widely misunderstood. He said, ‘Do not love the world and all that it offers.’ When I was a young Christian attending a little Gospel Hall in North Belfast, boy was that drummed into me; ‘Stay away from wine, women and song. No smoking, no cinema, no dances, no parties,’ and while I don’t necessarily disagree with that, it’s not what John was saying. He was referring to society’s warped values which he defines as; the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in what we own. He was saying that we’re dying from thirst and yet we prefer the mad scramble for another pathetic diamond to a glass of life-giving water. He was saying that the world’s ‘I want what I want when I want it’ mind-set, has skewed our thinking and we place huge worth on things of limited value. He was talking about the difference between value and worth. Let’s not confuse them.