Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the holy season of Lent. For many people it was just another workday. Being a national holiday it was just simply that for many people: a day of rest and relaxation, of catching up with friends or on things that have been neglected for sometime.

For those with a more religious persuasion, it was a time for meditation and worship, for reflection upon their relationship with God and for assessing their own personal lives within the context of personal wisdom allowed.

Whatever may have been one’s experience, very few will question the legitimacy of the Lenten period as an opportunity for personal introspection and reflection. And one of the things that should be of critical importance at this time is assessing the importance of the value that one places on one’s life and that of others.

In the midst of the hustle and bustle of daily life there are not many people who spend time on what are regarded as esoteric or abstract matters. Personal value does not put money in the pocket or food on the table. For some it is a waste of time obsessing about these things which, in any event, should be left to the most intellectually inclined.

Yet, the value that a person places on his or her life is critical as to whether he or she succeeds or not. For value speaks to self-worth and high self-esteem. Having a high or low self-esteem can have a determinative effect on one’s personal habits and behaviour in significant ways. For example, it can impact a person’s work ethic. If there is not a high value quotient to one’s life, things are taken for granted, including a robust work ethic, which is necessary to maintain a fair wage and fair purchasing power.

As value relates to the amount of worth that is attached to a person’s life, at its very core is the desire to be appreciated. It relates to the sense of personal significance that a person feels. If a person feels underappreciated in the tasks he performs, his productivity at the workplace and in his personal life is likely to diminish. This may in part account for the low productivity in the Jamaican workforce. A person who is constantly beaten upon and reminded that he is a no-good may one day come to that conclusion himself and become a scourge to society.

In fact, it is not far-fetched to suggest that a lack of personal definition of value is at the core of many of the heinous crimes we have in Jamaica. This relates to how children were brought up and the level of nurture for good citizenship provided by his environment. The hard-fisted approach to fighting crime, especially in inner city-environments, often ignores the reality of the impact that depressed households and communities can have on people’s psyche.

Yet, it does not have to be that criminal intent is the necessary product of deprived communities. The statistics on crime do not bear this out. For there are many people from these communities who maintain their dignity and who have placed high value on their own lives and those of their children. Many Jamaican families are poor but they work hard to instil the value of hard work in their children. They even get them to respect the drunkard in the community.

I well remember my mother chastising my younger brother and me for teasing the elderly men who would get drunk in my district. We imitated them and laughed at them but we had hell to pay when our mother found out. And she was concerned not because they were drunk but because they were older than we were; they were our elders and just for that alone maximum respect was due them.

But today the intrinsic value of life has been so diminished in our society that old women are being raped by young boys who could be their grandsons. Not only are they raped but they are killed. We decry as a society the lack of respect for the value of human life but the question is whether some of our more demented youngsters can appreciate this. For them, life is cheap; life is about getting one’s material appetites assuaged.

A person who does not value his or her own life; who cannot see beyond the material satisfactions to be derived from hurting another is unlikely to regard any other life as valuable. This is where the rub is, and the tragedy is that this kind of thinking is becoming more endemic in our society.

We may have 5 in 4 economic growth or even higher in the next four years but material gain does not necessarily make anyone more human. In fact, there is a sense in which great wealth can tend towards the dehumanisation of people if their labour is exploited for selfish gain. In fact, this is another spectrum on which we can identify the loss of value we ascribe to people. Any form of slavery epitomises this evil within the human family. It is also this evil use of power that is at the centre of abuse of children and women in our society.

So Lent then is a time when we are reminded of the intrinsic value that God places on every human life. It is because of this that He entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ. From the incarnation (God becoming flesh in Jesus) to the crucifixion and resurrection, God places a high value on each of our lives because He loves us and cares desperately about us. Just as He feeds the sparrows which do not sow or gather into barns and paints the beauty on the lilies of the field, so He takes care of us by creating a world in which there is everything for every single human being to live a joyful, wholesome, productive and healthy life. He does this because He views each one of us as valuable.

The reason that things are so messed up has nothing to do with God or His goodness but everything to do with how humankind has chosen to govern itself in the use or misuse of the resources God has provided. We treat others shabbily because we do not respect them or value them. Lent is a time that reminds us of what it means to treat people with dignity. May you have a holy, solemn and reflective Lenten season.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest and social commentator.

Stead6655@aol.com.