On Value and Obligation

I recently found myself pondering the question of whether we, as humans, derive our value from our obligations, or whether our obligations are derived from our value. From the very outset, this questions assumes a great deal; namely, that there are no more choices than these. While that may not be true, the question as stated remains compelling, particularly as the basis for both value and obligation are examined.

In one sense, we really don't need value to have obligation; all that is needed is existence. As I have often stated elsewhere, every thing in existence has a basic duty to what it is as a being. This, in my view, can be taken as a basic axiom. In other words, it is the basic duty of all things to be reconciled in being to that which created them (their formal cause, that is), or that from which their sense of functionality, purpose, or teleology derives. It is thus that the sun has the duty to produce light, heat, and gravity, the moon has the duty to create a tide, seeds have the duty to produce plants, and plants have the duty to clean the air, replenishing it with oxygen. In the same way, we have a duty, regardless of value, to fulfill our own role in the world, whatever that may be.

However, I would be in error to let the clause regardless of value stand, because value and duty are not unrelated, as I have in fact assumed from the outset. At least in a sense, the sun does have value based on its role as the producer of much needed energy. However, value is inherently resident not in doing, but in being, because value is never created as the product of any activity, but is that which eternally exists in the person of God and that in which He, through creation, has made manifest.

But this itself invokes and even larger question which is critical to this entire discussion: can the essence of something (what it is) stand independent from what it does? I would contend that it doesn't. What something does is part of the whole picture of what it is. Nothing is truly independent, and the essence of something in part refers to what role it plays in the universe. It is difficult for us to perceive how a rock, or even a supercomputer, floating in space as the sole object in existence, can have any meaningful existence by itself. However, although there is an absolute relationship between essence and activity, the nature of the relationship is such that activity is dependent on essence. However, essence requires a particular kind of capacity, or potential, for a type of activity which is intended of it, for the very reason that essence is manifest in the mind of the creator. Teleologically speaking, the sun is not what it is because it is bright; it is bright because it is the sun. It did not one day decide to shine, and thus create itself, as the existentialists would have it, but rather, it was created for the purpose of shining, and thus it shone. Its luminescence is necessary to it being the sun, but it being the sun is the formal cause of its luminescence. In fact, while what it is the cause of its characteristics, what it does is the teleological purpose of its being. While the activity of the sun (its luminescence) is derived from what it is, what it is is derived from the purpse given to it by that which gave it being, and therefore, it's purpose and obligation of being luminescent. While activity stands in a dependent relationship to essence, essence itself cannot be distinguished from it's obligation. In this sense, obligation seems to be prior to value.

In the same way, to step out of our analogy, we may ask from what our value as human beings derives. This is to ask what, indeed, we are, and from the Christian worldview, we are beings made in the image of God. But, as previously observed, this same question of what we are is also the basis for our obligation, because what a being is meant to do, what role it is made to fill, and what it is to aspire to be, are resident in that which provided and defined its being through an act of creation and will. Thus God's act of creating us in His image defined not only what we are, but what we are meant to do and, in our state of deviance from God's created order and will, what we are to aspire to become. At the same time, this is the very thing which gives us our value: being created in the image of God. God, who gave us the duty to be what He made us to be, has therein given us the obligation to use our fatuities of will, passion, reason, humor, creativity, and love. As it is through these things that we are set apart from nature and are given a particular essence in being, so we have a particular value apart from the rest of nature, which is derived from that for which we are intended. While action itself does not define value, (just as luminescence is not the cause of the sun) the capacity and purpose to fulfill some type of activity and essence does. In fact, much of this can be summarized simply in saying that essence of being and intended purpose are really one in the same and cannot be separated.

Therefore, it is true that we have value derived from our obligations, because our obligations (if not the practice of them itself) defines what we are. In fact, as we have observed, all things in creation have some sort of obligation because of what they are, (and we have seen that obligation and essence are really the same) and their sense of value must incumbent upon the particular role they play in existence. Seeing as mankind has an especially important role as being capable of relating to God and glorifying Him by displaying His image in a special way, we have a special value. This is what we were made to be, so this is what we are; this is our obligation, so this is our value.

Now at first, this strikes us as being horribly utilitarian. Are not things (and certainly humans) valuable for what they are, before and apart from consideration of what they do or are expected to do? One would be right to point out that God is not clockmaker who merely gives all of His cosmic cogs a special pin on which to turn, and cares for them only insofar they complete His machine. Is not our God rather a being of incomprehensibly great personality and passion? Yet pointing this out only serves to complete the point being made. We have come to see that value and obligation, and the nature of our existence itself, are all really the same thing. It is indeed true that our value comes directly from being made in God's image as the creation He lovingly breathed into being; that we are valuable because God valued us! Upon reflecting thus, we would desire to reverse our hypotheses and say that we have an obligation be what God made us to be simply because we have been given so great a value. But it is here that the great irony emerges, because in stating what we thought was the reverse, we have really said the very same.

Part of this confusion probably resides in the fact that we generally tend to dislike the terms obligation and duty. We often use them to refer to distasteful jobs that nobody really wants to do, but are necessary nonetheless. If we are obligated to do something, we have no natural desire whatsoever to do it, but we suffer it anyway either because it is necessary, such that the displeasure of doing it is outweighed by the consequences of not doing it, or else we are being paid or rewarded in some other fashion. This is not at all the sense in which I use the term. I might rather say that if a man loves his wife, he has the obligation to treat her kindly. Yet his obligation is not in spite of his love, but because of it. If he loves her, this obligation is a joy more than it is a burden. It is the natural response to his love, and is the very thing he longs to do. In fact, it is just as true to say that he loves his wife for the very reason that he has this obligation of desire to do what is best for her, for that is, in a large part, what love is. In the same way, our obligation as purposefully created beings is not at all a job for which we are rewarded by being valued; the obligation is, as it is for the man who truly loves his wife, itself the reward; they are inseparable. We are not like prostitutes, who do our "obligation" and then recieve our wages, but rather like the most pure and passionate of lovers, whose "obligation" to one another is in fact the truest and most powerful expression of depth of their love, which to express in it fullest is their longing. In fact, the most passionate and reckless intimacy is, between such lovers, the most proper and right thing to do. In the same way, the duty we have received as beings created to fulfill a special purpose is the very thing we desire most. If our value derives from our inherent obligation or role, we must remember that our obligation, being that purpose through which we were formed, is to participate in perfect and abounding joy; to be what it pleased God to have us be, to fulfill the passion of the unadultered heart.

A second point which should be made is that giving us value independent of purpose is, in reality, not at all what we want. The irony is that for however much unconditional value resembles arbitrary value, we yearn for one and deplore the other. Nothing is more contrary to love than to tell someone "I love you, even though I have no reason whatsoever to do so", just as it is an oxymoron to say "I extend to you my compliments, even though there is nothing for which you should be complimented." God's love for us passes our comprehension not because he had no reason to love us in the first place, but that he continued to love us even after we rejected his love. It is amazing for the very reason that he looks on us in our sin, looks past our undeservingness of His love, and says "I made you; I made you beautifully; therefore I love you and I long for you to be my child again!" His love is unconditional, but it is not arbitrary, and so has He valued us. He did not in some haphazard fashion decide that this lump of dirt was innately so much more valuable than the next, and therefore to give it some appropriately important duties. Rather, He created from a lump of dirt something made to fulfill the most important role of all: to express His own image as a personal being, and create another being with whom He could truly relate that would worship Him and take joy in Him, and thus did He create something innately valuable.

Here, at the end we see (and have probably suspected all along) that the question of whether obligation comes from value or the other way around, did indeed assume too much, for in all reality, both statements mean the same thing: that we are created for a special purpose as the image bearers of God. Although in the sense described philosophically, obligation as the essence and purpose of it's creator is prior to value, if value is a characteristic of such an entity's essence deriving from this teleological form, we must also recognize that value, in the ultimate sense, is a form which proceeds from the character of God Himself, and He expresses through all His actions, all His principles, all His created things, and even-especially-us. We are (or were intended to be) expressions of things which God indeed holds truly valuable. This value is our obligation; this obligation is our value. It is what we were made to be, and now, through the blood of Jesus Christ, have sure hope to be again.