Have you ever worked in the corporate world? Then you know who has the final say on most decisions…the Bean Counters. They will be in to let you know how the company is doing financially: assets vs. deficits. When your group has a great innovative idea and wants to implement it, they will also be there ultimately to tell you if it is feasible. Great ideas and innovations are lost many times because the Bean Counters won’t take the risk of trying something new. They quantify everything, and it’s always about the bottom line.

Maybe you haven’t worked in the corporate world, but you do live in a society where everything is quantified in a numerical sense. You go to a school. You are administered an IQ test, have a grade point average and are judged in your college admissions by your SAT or ACT score. You want a loan. You fill out a form and you must put all of your assets are on one side of the sheet and your debits are on the other side. Then a Bean Counter will decide if you qualify for the loan based on the numbers.

A Bean Counter will assess the value of our house, but isn’t its real value in the warmth, protection, and security it provides as a home? Does your car only have the value it provides as a status symbol, or is its safety and reliability worth much more than that?

It is easy to let Bean Counters determine our value and worth. But should we? Don’t we all have an intrinsic value that cannot be quantified numerically? We know we do, but many times we accept our value based on the Bean Counter’s evaluation of our assets, i.e. our economic net worth. How can we get away from such a cold, crass evaluation of our own value and the value of everything around us?

We must choose a different paradigm in order to evaluate our worth. Many people let their religious beliefs help them determine their intrinsic value or worth. For me, I try to see myself and others through a Christian world view. Christianity holds a high view of humanity and of each person’s intrinsic worth. We are taught that God Himself sent his Son to die on the cross for our sins in order to purchase our ticket to heaven. If God would pay such a high price for us, we must have great value to Him.

That thought makes me want to love and value my neighbors, whether they live next door or on the next continent. Their needs affects me: their hunger, thirst, or lack of medical care affects me because God values them highly. 

That goes for you, too. Don’t ever think that you don’t have much value. You are worth more than you can ever imagine. You are precious in God’s sight and He paid the highest price so that you can live with Him forever.  In other words, you are priceless, so don’t let anything or anyone, especially a Bean Counter, take that away from you.