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 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 are 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 worldview. 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 affect 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.
The other evening, I watched a segment on the nightly news where a man received a gift from his family. He had not been able to see colour his entire life, and his family had gotten the money together to buy him special glasses that allowed him to see colour. It was a total surprise to him. He opened the box and stared at the glasses. He put them on and looked around, then he started crying. I was very touched by the man’s reaction as he saw what he had been missing all of his life. 
Last week, I took a survey from the Harvard Digital Lab for Social Sciences. The questions were about how I viewed politicians. I didn’t rate them very high and didn’t think that just because they were politicians, they had a better grasp on a lot of the issues than the average person. (This weekend, I am watching the government shutdown, and quite frankly, it is confirming my opinions.) At the end of the survey, possibly because of my answers, the last question was, “Are you a Populist?”
I had been blogging about a month when I sent a blog post to a magazine that publishes them. The editor sent it back stating that they only publish blog posts from bloggers who have been blogging for at least six months. I could understand her reasoning and thought, “Great, no problem, I will send one in about five months.”
Most of us like the show, “Flea Market Flip.” We love to see the contestants take old furniture and make the pieces into something beautiful. We are amazed at the creations; and can’t believe that something that looked so broken and distressed could be transformed into something people will pay hundreds of dollars for.
A New Year is starting, and it is full of the breath of promise of things to come. The past year is almost gone, and takes with it the successes, failures, blessings, and trials that came with it. I don’t know about you, but I am thankful for its passing and hopeful for the year to come.
Heavenly Father,
Have you ever been busy, I mean really busy at Christmas? I know I have. I have been running around buying presents, wrapping them, sending cards, going to parties, and preparing to travel. I remember several years ago, when I was in the middle of a flurry of activity, there was a small Voice in the back of my mind. What was the Voice saying? It was saying, “What about Me?”
It usually starts with a thought. The thought flies through my brain so fast, I cannot even tell you what it was. A few minutes later, another one comes; it lingers a bit and I focus on it. The thought usually starts with some form of “You don’t, You can’t or You aren’t.” The thoughts keep coming and if I dwell on them, I begin to feel discontented with my life.
In the last few weeks, we have had more revelations about people in the media who have taken advantage of people who have less power than they do. Most of us do not run in those circles, but we all have been in a position where someone older, stronger, and more powerful than we are has tried to take advantage of us. How can we do our best to prevent it?
Valerie Cullers 