What is a human being worth?

This is the transcript of the Revd Prof David Wilkinson’s ‘Thought For the Day’ on BBC Radio 4, 1st September, 2025.

Good morning. Today is deadline day, with football’s transfer window closing this evening. An all-time record of over 2.6 billion pounds has been spent so far, with more deals to be finalised, including the long saga of Alexander Isak leaving my beloved Newcastle for well over 100 million.

Is a human being worth such money? Bill Byson in The Body: A Guide for Occupants suggests that the total cost of the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, sodium, chlorine and magnesium which make up a typical human body would be £116,000. Author and broadcaster Jenny Kleeman in her book The Price of Life looks at financial values placed on human life, from a hitman she interviewed who claimed the price for a murder was around £15,000, to statistical measures used in healthcare, warfare, government and industry. These calculations are used to make decisions on limited resources from investment in road safety through to compensation for those wrongfully imprisoned. As Kleeman points out, this putting a price on human beings can seem cold but it is a way of trying to be fair.

There are more exploitative ways of valuing the worth of human beings. Yesterday Radio 4’s The Body Shop explored the murky industry of the global trade in body parts. Then of course, the transatlantic slave trade made huge amounts of money through the capture, selling and forced labour of people from Africa and financial reparations are still contested. Further human trafficking continues in an ongoing modern slave trade.

In the world of the Old Testament, human slavery was widespread. But a person could be redeemed, that is released to freedom, through a payment of money. In the New Testament, Jesus uses this image referring to his own life, death and resurrection when he says he came to serve and ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’. Therefore, Christian theologians speak of the worth of human beings as being beyond financial price because each is loved and valued by God who lives and dies for us.

 Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher, also argued that human beings are irreplaceable and human dignity places their lives above all price. But by itself this does not recognise the way that the structures of the world devalue people through prejudice and injustice, taking away their ability to experience dignity. The challenge for me as a Christian is to serve and work for others in a way that they experience and know their worth to God, whether an in-demand footballer or an ignored victim of slavery.