The door flew open. My anxious, driven pre-med roommate rushed in. I was sitting on my bed, snarfing chips and a coke, reading about sports. He looked at me in disgust. “What have you done today to justify your existence?” I smiled and replied, “Nothing!” I felt it was my mission to help him stop taking everything so seriously. He’d be happier if he joined me in savoring life and thinking deep English-major thoughts. “Worthless!” he snorted and went busily to his desk.

I acted like I had notched a victory. But his words haunted me. Did I actually need to prove my life was worthwhile? As I moved further through life, voices from my own upbringing became more insistent. “You’ve got to fulfill your potential. You had better answer your calling and then live up to it.” Or what? I knew what. Too often I had heard my grandmother speak of men who, in her eyes, stalled out at being worthwhile. “He’s just a no-count. He’s a non-entity.” In other words, fail to justify your existence through achievement, and you might as well not even be.

That’s a debilitating message. Only the gospel can countermand it. But before we hear how, let’s push a little farther into how ubiquitous these accusations can be.

Voices of Dismissal

You’re a waste of resources. There’s a diabolical logic that can rise from overly contemplating the fragility and finitude of creation. It runs like this: “I use a lot of resources to keep alive and comfortable. I take more from the earth than I put back. My carbon footprint as a twenty-first-century, well-to-do Westerner is enormous. There are too many of us. The planet can’t take this pillaging. Maybe it would be better if I never had children. Maybe it would be better if I stopped consuming and just ceased to be.”

Your body is all wrong. The children in our church preschool play without self-consciousness. Freely, they run, swing, climb, build, or sing. But the same children, through puberty and into adolescence, may well grow to hate themselves. They may constantly be trying to “fix” their image. Hair color. Piercings. Dressing in model-like fashion or goth-like alienation. Style in sync with their sex or sharply the opposite of any stereotype. They may be shocked at whom and what they desire. They may feel perennially scrawny or hopelessly huge. A mind at odds with its body can begin to ask, “Should I even be here?”

You don’t fit. We want to be distinct selves, clearly unlike everyone else. But at the same time, we desperately want to be included in a group where we matter, where we are somebody. If we can’t find a social home, it can seem like no one ever gives us a second glance. If we are in a tribe, but break a norm of the group, people quickly move past us. We feel we don’t fit if we lose a significant job, get left by a spouse, or develop a seemingly awkward illness, especially a mental one. We may start to wonder, “Would anyone miss me if I were no more? Or would they be relieved?”

You’re disposable. This ruinous evaluation comes in many forms. Parents whose work always took priority. Friends that found more advantageous companions. Loves that betrayed us for another. Swindlers who used us for cash, or more. Even worse, persistent abuse can send a spiritual virus flowing through us. It multiplies the message that your boundaries don’t matter, that you should disappear into the will of another, that you must comply or be demolished. In any of these scenes, we can get the same message: “You belong in the discard pile.”

A Better Word

How differently the triune God speaks to us! “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). These early words speak not only of our God-given value, but of God’s pleasure in our being. Through Isaiah, he speaks more personally to his people, saying, “You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:4). Centuries later, he would take on flesh to prove this: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

“God is love. Often, we say the words too easily and toss them aside as mere truism. But the news is vital.”

The incarnation may be the deepest possible dignifying of our being. In it, we see Jesus take his desire to have us all the way to the cross, through the realm of death, then back into heaven. Now there, he never stops being human, never releases the life-giving grip that clasps the redeemed to his heart. And lest we forget, he reminds us, “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also” (John 14:3). It’s like we can hear him saying,

I love you, so much so that I came to you as one of you. I have taken what you are as my own. I have gone to the places of deepest darkness and forsakenness to rescue you from your own sin, and so that wherever you go, you will know that my light shines even there. I want you to be with me forever, and I have staked my very life, even unto the cross, to keep you with me. I will get you home to my Father’s house. It is good that you exist!

Proof of Life

How can we know such words are true? Of course, at the core, this is a matter of the Holy Spirit confirming in our hearts that we belong to Christ (Galatians 4:6–7). He alone assures us that we are in Jesus. Because of that union, we are beloved sons and daughters of his Father. The experience of this affirmation in worship and prayer and Bible reading unleashes the hope that it truly is good that we exist. Yet to reinforce such a love, God sends us further approval of our being through our interactions with others. Let’s consider a few examples.

Holding a newborn, I look at her and know that she needs to do nothing in order to be endlessly compelling; just her unashamed stare into my eyes knits my heart to hers. A squeak, an arm she cannot control reaching forth, a tiny sneeze — her being is a delight. I’d face an army for her, give my life in a second. Oh little bit, how good it is that you exist! How just by your being here you make me rejoice to be alive!

Once, you took in a little discarded dog with mange and a broken leg. You nursed him back to life. For the last decade, he has looked at you and said, in all ways but words, “It is good that you exist. I’m so grateful you do.” This is the beast who keeps watch nightly outside your door, ever alert on your behalf. He daily awaits your return, ready to greet you with full-bodied joy. No matter the stress of the work world, this animal calms you with the reassurance that your very being means the world to him.

She doesn’t always remember his name these days. But when he comes into her room, she recognizes that face. She’s forgotten that six decades earlier, they stood at the front of the church and promised each other “in sickness and in health.” But his smile still soothes her, reassures her that she is okay. He sings for her, and, sometimes, the words to the old hymns come out of her own mouth. She can’t say what they mean, but she sees his joy as he hears her voice. Then he tucks her in and communicates more deeply than words how, even now, it is good that she exists.

I visit weekly with an elementary student. I’m supposed to be his mentor. My primary responsibility is to listen to him, to spend time with him in a way that affirms his life. It’s a ministry. Often, there are days when we get absorbed in a game or craft and forget everything about how our hour is “supposed” to look. One afternoon, he made a comment so funny that I belly laughed in a way I haven’t in years. He was delighted. His face told me, “It is good that you exist. It is good that we exist together.”

Vital News

God is love. Often, we say the words too easily and toss them aside as mere truism. But the news is vital. We need to receive it and share it to affirm the goodness of being alive. God is love and sends us to love one another. Love sinks the gospel deeper into our bones.

Think of all those who have loved you in a way that helps you to believe God’s assurance that it is good that you exist. Think of how much it matters that you show up, give heartily, and further prove through love how much someone matters to God. In all the ways we lay down our lives for each other, we render the deeper truth that God has heartily declared how good it is to him that we exist.

The thought sends me out with a spring in my step. I can’t ever justify my existence by achievement. But I can receive the affirmation of my very being through Christ, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).