“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”. (Part 2)

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 2: Our value judgement expresses the truth, not just about God, but also about ourselves, as we use our freedom to declare where we stand

However, the statement of faith, “Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you” is a simple, basic value judgement about the worthiness of God and a personal commitment in response. As such, they are self-standing or self-authenticating in that they need no external support. Each person is entitled to value whatever they value and to give their commitment to whatever they want. This is part of what human freedom means. Of course, we may argue that nothing can be entirely self-standing, in that we must give some reasons as to why we value as we do, or why we are prepared to commit ourselves in this way. If someone said that they valued what everyone else is appalled by, we would question as to why on earth anyone would do that. However, working within the realm of personal value judgements, where there are no verifiable facts to contradict our choice, and plausible justified reasoning to support our view that something is of precious value, in this respect, we are free to make such a choice. We are making a declaration: “In my view, what I have found in the Lord is of supreme value, and I can think of nothing better to do with my life than to follow his way, and try to live in tune with his nature and will”. As such, this is a stand that we are justified in making, even though the whole world were against us.

Thus, I believe we have found a sure foundation in life, in that we are allowed and free to make our own judgements about what is most precious in life. We are not insisting that everyone has to agree with us, or that anyone who judges differently has made a mistake – though we may well feel convinced that others would benefit from discovering the same truths as we have. Nevertheless, this is our prerogative, to make our own decisions about what is ultimately precious. I consider that this is where the philosophical difficulties of proving what is true lead us. The only things that can be known for sure are verifiable facts, but value judgements are not susceptible to verification, and so we can never be sure that our decisions are true, in the sense that we know that this is the best choice we could make. However, we can then turn this around and say that this is precisely what makes our value judgements so important: it is not possible to prove that we are right – though neither is it possible for anyone to show that we are wrong – but we can make our stand: “For me, this is what I hold most precious!”. And, as argued earlier, this personal judgement is within the remit of each person, and is of the very essence of being human.