Why are people valuable?

In 2008 I flew to East Asia to visit a friend working there. One of the most fascinating things to see through the little airplane window on that long flight was when the sunrise revealed a vast snow-plain in the high north. As I looked down and saw no dwellings, no footprints or roads, just wide white frozen land I had the feeling of seeing some place that no one had ever seen before. It was uninhabited. Untouched and unknown. I imagine there's some undiscovered species of snow mouse hiding out completely alien to any human in history.

Snow plains in the Arctic Circle

In Perelandra, C.S. Lewis writes:

"[Unpeopled creation] waits not until created people have seen it or hands handled it to be in itself a strength and splendor of [God]"

There are places in this created universe no one may ever see other than God himself. He knows very well the undiscovered species in the High Northern Ice that no human being may ever meet. And it glorifies him no less for being unknown to us. Jesus is alive and 'holding all things together'. It is a glory far beyond our comprehension that our Creator is present to, knowing, and glorified by even a rock on a lifeless planet a million light years away. He delights in that rock.

What strikes me this morning is how much more then is it true that we who bear his likeness, for whom he took on flesh and died, are valued by him. Not for our usefulness. Not for our achievements or whatever. But because he created us. There is a deep sense of uselessness in me that is haunting. A constant ringing in my ears of the offense my unholy heart is to God. You don't need me to describe it because you have it too and you know all about it, don't you?

I know of no other religion that places such a high intrinsic value on persons or gives an adequate reason for human value as Christianity. People are intentionally crafted by a personal loving God who invested his own personhood into them. When we rebelled, he put on our likeness and purchased us out of the death we had earned. There is no other God more beautiful than Jesus.