Value of a Soul
A columnist in a San Francisco paper wrote concerning the callous unconcern of the general public to those who are in real need. He had interviewed a man who had notified bridge police that a woman was attempting to climb over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The police had been totally unconcerned and a little while later the woman had succeeded in plunging to her death. Her life could have been saved. The columnist went on to tell a story of a destitute woman who lay unattended on a pallet, ill with pneumonia, in a nearly unfurnished apartment. The furniture had been repossessed by an installment store. A man from the water company had entered the apartment to turn off the water and was moved to indignation by the woman's enforced suffering. Later, after she had died and there was a great outery in the press, he expressed his indignation. But he had turned off the water. It was the same with the rent collector who had thought it was such a terrible thing and something should have been done about it, and then acquiesced to the janitor's turning off the heat in the apartment "as a matter of policy." The neighbor across the hall didn't like the dead woman because she had once given gay, noisy parties. Everybody, in this as in the bridge story, was busy minding his own business.
If life ended with death we would need have no concern about the going out of one more personality, but the soul lives on forever and Christians must show concern for those around them who are on their way to a Christless eternity. The Psalmist cries out, "No man cared for my soul" (Ps. 142:4b). It is quite understandable that the world in general should mind its own business, especially in teeming cities where life can be made very complicated for someone who is a witness or who helps a victim who may later die. Perhaps Christian unconcern comes from contact with this general attitude which is to be found in the world. It may also come from the fact that many Christians do not really believe that all souls around them are eternally lost, and that we have been ordered to witness to them of the saving power of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps a reader will say, "How can I increase my concern for the souls of men around me?" There is only one answer. Never can love for souls be induced by any other method than contemplating the price God paid to redeem them. As we look at the cross of Calvary and realize what the Lord Jesus Christ did for men, we shall little by little be willing to obey Him and to go out and tell others. Probably the callousness of the average church member toward the souls of the multitudes around him comes from a failure to contemplate the cross of Je¬sus Christ. True zeal with knowledge comes only from the realization of God's valuation of a soul.
1. When you spend time with people do you often think of their souls? What difference would it make in your relationships if you treated everyone according to their eternal destiny?
2. What is the best way you can care for your unbelieving neighbor or brother?
3. How does the cross teach us how to minister to the unbeliever?
