Have you ever thought about the value of a human being – probably not, because in a civil society you can’t buy one or trade one, legally, anyway. Scientists have examined the chemical worth of a human being and as I recall, the sum value of our mineral makeup turned out to be only a few dollars. It is obvious, however, that our society, in general, must place a good deal of value on a living human being based on the penalty for taking one’s life. In some states, in this country, the penalty is death and other states sentence a murderer to 20 years to life in prison based on the circumstances. The Old Testament law required a life for a life. Over the centuries there have been many atrocities where the perpetrators have placed very little value on life, a human only had value, if that human furthered the dictator’s cause. The word dictator, in that scenario, could be exchangeable with king, emperor, etc..
I read a story many years ago called “A Cypher in the Snow” that squeezed my tear ducts and depleted my supply. The story also left me wondering, how could something like that happen to a young boy or anyone else for that matter? The story is apparently true and I am going to try to summarize it here. It was reported by Jean Mizer.
“It started with a tragedy on a biting cold February morning. I was driving behind the Milford Corners School Bus, as I did most snowy mornings on my way to school. It veered and stopped short at the hotel, which it had no business doing, and I was annoyed as I had to come to an unexpected stop. A boy lurched out of the bus, reeled, stumbled, and collapsed on the snowbank at the curb. The bus driver and I reached him at the same moment. His thin, hollow face was white even against the snow. “He’s dead,” the driver whispered…. “He never even said he felt bad,” he muttered. “Just tapped me on the shoulder and said, real quiet, ‘I’m sorry. I have to get off at the hotel.’ That’s all. Polite and apologizing like.”
At school the noise quieted as news went down the halls. I passed a huddle of girls. “Who was it? Who dropped dead on the way to school?” I heard one of them half-whisper. “Don’t know his name. Some kid from Milford Corners,” was the reply…
“I’d appreciate your going out to tell the parents,” the principal told me…
I drove through the snow …to the Evans’ place and thought about the boy, Cliff Evans. He hadn’t spoken two words in two years! I could see him in my mind’s eye sitting back there in the last seat in my afternoon class. He came in the room by himself and left by himself. “Cliff Evans,” I muttered to myself, “a boy who never talked. A boy who never smiled. I never saw him smile once.”
I blurted out my news somehow. Mrs. Evans reached blindly toward a chair. “He never said anything about bein’ ailin.”
His stepfather snorted. “He ain’t said nothin’ about anything since I moved in here.”… If Cliff hadn’t been so dumb, he’d have told us he didn’t feel good.”
After school, I read the file to write the obituary for the school paper. …Cliff Evans, … He had never belonged to a club, never played on a team, never held an office. As far as I could tell, he had never done one happy, noisy kid thing. He had never been anybody at all. How do you go about making a boy into a zero? The grade-school … annotations read, “Sweet, shy child,” “timid but eager.” Then the third grade note had opened the attack. … “Cliff won’t talk, Uncooperative, slow learner.” The other academic sheep had followed with “dull,” “slow-witted,” “low I.Q.” They became correct. The boy’s I.Q. score in the ninth grade was listed at 83. But his I.Q. in the third grade had been 106. Even the shy, timid, sweet children have resilience. It takes time to break them.
I stomped to the typewriter and wrote a savage report …. I slapped a copy on the principal’s desk but I didn’t feel much better. A little boy kept walking after me, a little boy with a peaked, pale face, a skinny body in faded jeans and big eyes that had looked and searched for a long time and then had become veiled.
I could guess how many times he had been chosen last to play sides in a game, how many child conversations had excluded him,… I could see and hear the faces that said over and over, “You’re nothing, Cliff Evans.” …When finally there was nothing left at all for Cliff Evans, he collapsed on a snowbank and went away.
I attended the services … and sat through it with a lump of cold lead in my chest …I’ve never forgotten Cliff Evans nor that resolve, year after year, class after class I look for veiled eyes or bodies scrounged into a seat in an alien world. ” Look, kids,” I say silently. “I may not do anything else for you this year, but not one of you is going to come out of here as a nobody.
How many Cliff Evans are there in the world, innocent children who need love and recognition. Only through love and recognition does a child come to know that they have value. Not all children respond the same way (die), who are ill treated and neglected, as was Cliff. Some rebel, and strike back at their accusers, and become destructive. They are the bane of society, the obnoxious, the mean, the drug users, the criminals. They were never given to understand that they had value over and above the few cents that their minerals are worth.
May God help those of us, who know we have value, to make every human being that we may have contact with, feel our warmth. That they may know by the way we respond to them and their needs, that they too have value. How many Cliff Evans are beyond the veil wondering if anyone on earth will care enough about them to take the time to find them and do their work. Why does it seem so hard for so many of us to catch the Father’s vision of this important work. To understand the eternal value of each one of His children offspring who was destined for this earth.