What Is a Human Life Worth? To Some, Not Much.

“Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity?”  ― the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

What is the worth of one human being? One solitary soul? Or one high school kid from Milford, Massachusetts?

Chemically speaking, if the elements of my body like sodium, calcium or carbon were somehow able to be harvested, according to a June 2024 estimate by Anne Marie Helminstine, Pd. D. I’m worth about $4.50.

Is that really what you or I are ultimately worth, less than the cost of a Starbucks Vente?

Another measure of my human worth could be determined by lost wages in the event of my negligent death. If I had died at 29, my careers’ start, a jury might calculate money lost to my loved ones as a little over $2 million.

That is much more but can one life really be calculated as being about dollars and cents?

Last Saturday black masked, camouflaged and gun toting agents of  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) descended upon a vehicle full of teenagers on their way to volleyball practice.  They were members of a team at Milford High School, a town not far from where I write and live. Milford is known for its vibrant immigrant population and eighteen-year-old junior Marcelo Gomes Da Silva was driving his dad’s car that day.

How much is Marcelo’s one life worth?

Not very much, at least according to the brutal actions of ICE, who arrested the young man and brought him to a detention facility (let’s just call it a prison, ok?) where he is still being held. Then in a bizarre twist, Patricia Hyde, field director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Boston, said they were actually looking to arrest Marcelo’s dad, João Paulo Gomes Pereira.

Both son and father are undocumented, according to ICE and family friends.

But does that really provide any moral justification for their treatment as apparently “less than” human beings, “worth” much less than you or me, because, you see, they don’t have citizenship papers. No papers, no human worth, not really. No papers and Uncle Sam can snatch you off the streets, from your home or place of work, and now even from your school or church.

Son and father are not known criminals, or wanted by law enforcement, so they would seem to pose no threat to you or I or the community.  But in these dark days of the new administration’s crusade to rid the United States of anyone who is not a true blue American, anything goes. 

Did you hear about the 4-year-old U.S. citizen, suffering from cancer, who was forced to end his treatments here in the U.S. so he could be deported to Honduras with his undocumented mother? I guess he’s not worth that much either.

My faith tells me that our ultimate worth as human beings comes from being created by a loving God, who makes each of us in the divine image.  We are all children of God before any other title or label or condition.  I’m not claiming that the challenge of illegal immigration should just be ignored, no.

I am suggesting that there must, MUST, be a better way, a more dignified, merciful, systematic, transparent, and just way for our country to treat people like Marcelo.  He is a good young man, according to classmates and teachers alike, a dedicated student athlete, active in his church, trying to realize the promise of his young life. But now that is gone.             

What is a human being worth? A solitary soul like Marcelo?

Marcelo is absolutely worthy and worth it as a child of God, as are all guests from other nations who live among us. May God help them. May God help us to recognize their worth as human beings, our neighbors, and fellow children of God.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.