"Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life." (Isaiah 43:4)
A recent article in the New York Times described an important logic informing our nation’s environmental policy. It is called "regulatory cost-benefit analysis." Our policy makers, we are told, depend upon it.
The analysis begins with an estimated dollar value for American lives; this figure, in turn, permits a comparison between the "cost" and "benefit" of environmental regulatory policy. We know what it costs, let’s say, to fit a smokestack with a sophisticated "scrubber" to remove toxic emissions before they hit our atmosphere – and wind up in our lungs. If this cost is less than the estimated value of lives saved by the technology, the investment is "worth it." But if the cost of the scrubber is more than the value of some few lives, the investment is harder to justify.
The tricky part, of course, comes in the figures themselves. There is no table or easy formula for calculating the value of a human life. Policy makers, we are told, estimate that the figure may be around $3 million per person. Yet some lives are worth more than others, apparently. The article reported, in particular, that citizens over 70 years of age are "worth" somewhat less than younger Americans – discounted by 37%, it seems. (By coincidence, these Americans are among the most susceptible to environmental hazards.)
I was surprised to read it: the analysis seems so crass and insensitive – and yet, oddly, so very American. We like to measure things in dollar figures. We believe in figures like these; they seem proper and compelling, somehow. So, if we are not wanting to install many scrubbers, we will inflate their cost while diminishing their benefit – the value of lives saved – and convince ourselves that we are making the most sensible decision in the world.
Scrubbers are one thing. What does it "cost," do you think, to undertake cross-cultural mission among the world’s least reached people groups?
Our Handbook advises: "It will cost a price in precious years of one’s lifetime, in concentration of all one’s faculties, in sacrifice, in prayer, and in…labor to leave home and seek the salvation of people in all parts of the world." We read that "missionaries must turn away from seeking after costly comforts, a larger income, material possessions, and places of personal advantage, honor and privilege, and deliberately choose instead to embrace the way of poverty, of loss, of privation…and whatever else it costs to bring the Word of God to as many people as possible" (¶105d).
Is it worth it, do you think? What is the "value" of men and women who have yet to hear the name of Jesus? What investment is "worth it" in order to reach them? Is it worth the effort to you?
"The Way I See It", May 2003
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