How do we determine the worth of something or someone, and by what standard or plumb line do we gauge a man’s worthiness? I mean it’s easy to cry out against injustice to ourselves, yet we give it to others?

Since the bible has been removed for the most part from secular society, and religion has been categorized as just a set of ideas for any one group, I would venture to say the measure of a man today is NOT God’s Word for the majority. The reality is, society and our own opinion and actions are the gauge. We look at someone’s life and see immorality, but choose to overlook it when we gain something for OURSELVES. Maybe it’s money, entertainment, status or popularity. Somehow the fear of being labeled judgmental has eroded away at our capacity to deliver truth in love to others. The rust and the junk of this world have clogged our ability to not only receive, but to give the truth that comes from the living waters. At other times we may look at someone else who may engage in the exact same behaviors and we increase our shock value. Why? Because we lose something. The waters have become murky and we have lost our ability to see clearly. We follow the crowds that have latched on to a “crucify them” attitude and we need to join in to “belong”. Maybe there are bribes involved. Maybe we gain a feeling of righteousness and self respect. For whatever reason we have used society and our own view to measure the worth of something or someone.

Proverbs 20:9-10 teaches us that, Who can say, “I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin”? Diverse weights and diverse measures, They are both alike, an abomination to the LORD.

What does this mean? What is the plumb line of God’s Word teaching us? First, only the one who has come to a true, saving faith in Christ can say that they have made their heart clean and have been purified from their sins. Of course, the only way to measure that is to measure our hearts and our life back to the plumb line of God’s Word. This is why David, who had stumbled into sin, would ask God to test him and see if there was any wicked way in him. Only Yahweh and His Word can bring cleansing and measure our worth. That is the only standard we can hold ourselves to.

Of course many chose to measure the worth of others based on differing standards. One who practices evil we will call good, while another who practices good we will call evil. Of course at the very same time we also measure one person’s evil as acceptable and another person’s evil as deplorable, even though they are the exact same actions. In other words, we rationalize something as acceptable even when the LORD says it isn’t…period. Our worthless, fraudulent balancing scales of morality and worth are detestable to the LORD.  The Septuagint points it out as a warning against judging a neighbor by a standard which we do not apply to ourselves.

In these days of hypocrisy, wickedness and lawlessness, let the cry of our hearts be that we do not get washed away in the ideology of an immoral society, who use their own desires as a gauge for worth or moral direction. May we learn from what the LORD reveals to us in Amos 7:7-8. When God declared He was laying the plumb line among His people, it was because He was declaring an end to their attempts to justify their wicked ways. Let us return to His ways and instead lean on the foundation of God’s Word and His Son as our plumb line for truth. Only then will we remain steady upon these raging storms of deception in the coming months and years, and not come crashing down on sinking sand. Only then will we be found hanging our lives and our nation on fair and balanced scales which are of the LORD.