We must recognize the fact that we place different values on different aspects of life.  One person places value on health, wealth, success and a thousand other outcomes while others will consider quite different goals as more valuable.  The value we attach to various goals then affects which choices we make and what actions we take.  The power of these values often exerts their power through what we think and how we feel.  These determining values arise from a number of sources including our nature’s genetic tendencies and our nurture from socialization by parents, peers, and others around us.  Beyond nature and nurture which has been debated for decades by scientists, we also have the spiritual influence through our faith influencing what we value.  The fruit of our life will depend to a overwhelming degree on these values, yet we are not trapped by the forces of nature and nurture without opportunity to change what values we pursue in the future.  We are able to shape our values and mold them more in line with truth we discover throughout life, and this produces even more good fruit than earlier in life.

                In our world, filled with variety across the globe, different values are placed on different virtues and vices from culture to culture.  American culture values liberty and hard work along with individualism in general.  Eastern culture from Asian tends towards placing more value on conformity and family connection.  Yet other cultures vary in whether they prize strength over wisdom or vice versa.  Even within a relatively homogenous culture, different individuals place different values on different goals of life with some aiming for long life regardless of the life’s contents, others aiming for power regardless of its adverse effects on relationships, and still others aiming for pleasure without regard for the risk to life required.  The decisions come down to not just what someone wants, but what one considers important and values the most.  Faced with the human limitations of not being able have it all, we must choose which values we can pursue bearing in mind our time available and resources at our disposal. 

                The values we hold more intensely lead to feelings or emotions towards the different options available.  Valuing something but not yet having it leads to desire or disappointment while devaluing something else may not only lead to neglect but even to dislike or disdain of that value.  Beyond disappointment in not achieving something valued highly, resentment may also arise when the inability to attain continues or jealousy may arise when another is seen to attain what you cannot.  Anger and despair may take root in the feelings of the one who cannot attain what they highly value.  Ultimately these emotions drive the one under them towards different actions because they value something.

                As mentioned, such influencing values arise from many sources throughout our lives.  As created humans we are born with innate needs like for food, and we place high value on such basic needs because meeting such a need not only satisfies a growling stomach but also because it provides energy to pursue other needs and values.  Similarly, we value work because it produces not only food, but meets other bodily and mental needs and we value relationships not only because they enable us to meet bodily needs like food, but we were actually designed for relationships by our creator (Genesis in the creation of Adam needing Eve).  Besides these innate needs shared by humanity, our genetics nudge us in different directions in how we fulfill these needs.  Each person lives with different genetics which give different degrees of pleasure to different tastes of food, which give different degrees of pleasure from different types of work, and which give different measures of joy from different types, depths, and total number of relationships. 

                These inborn needs and drives of genetic nature are then further molded and shaped by one’s life experiences.  As children, our parents’ habits of daily life and their values shape our values for we learn much about what to value from them.  The depth and quality of our relationships with them will then affect whether we reflect their values or intentionally seek after different values.  Regardless, we watch them and learn what is important from them such that our family culture profoundly shapes what we are like later in life.  Despite this substantial influence we still have choices in the matter of what we value. 

                As we grow and our identity forms its own self, we begin to choose which values of early life and family culture to continue and which to diminish.  As noted, we may choose to reflect similar values to our parents, or we may adapt or even completely reject what we were taught to value.  As we mature in our lives, we have ongoing opportunities to alter values further and further, but such alterations require that we replace the rejected values with stronger and more desirable values in their places.  As we mature, the value of a longer life without disability may overcome the value of the thrilling experience like parachuting or fast cars.  Likewise, the value of security and stability may overcome the prior value of independence and freedom from relational ties.  Similarly, the value of remaining healthy may overcome the value of pleasure stimulating foods which, over time, harm one’s health.

                Ultimately, we are not controlled by our values in the sense that we can consciously alter them over time.  They do, however, shape our habits, our hungers, and our hopes whether they are directed at good things and true things or directed at the bad or the false.  Molding the innate drives and the socialization of childhood to strive after the values of our Creator will bear more good fruit than simply striving after our bodily hungers or following our family patterns.  Consciously molding our values according to the good of God’s design allows us to pursue that which will most fulfill our fleeting lives on this earth and prepare us for the life to come in eternity.

Next in this series… The Effects of Trauma on Thoughts and Feelings