On the one hand, we are taught that we are all God’s children and everyone is equally worthy before the Lord. On the other hand, the Lord is a little random about the distribution of his blessings and afflictions. Seems to me we’re just taking somebody’s hopeful word for the worthiness thing, without a lot of evidence from God to back it up.

What are we worth? Betty Grable famously insured her legs for an unthinkable $34,000, enough to buy a mansion then, or two months of nursing care now. Miley Cyrus insured her tongue for a smooth million. She is said to have developed quite a strong attachment to her tongue, which is just about the least you should ask for, in a personal tongue relationship. Clearly some people, even parts of some people, are worth more than others, although how much money they have to begin with tends to write that script.

Lawsuits are another good way to determine who’s worth what. Really, without the legal profession, we don’t know how much value to slap on a human. That became clear in the recent case here of an unfortunate cancer patient, John Murdoch, who was undergoing surgery for a tracheostomy. That’s bad to begin with. My dad had throat cancer and a tracheostomy, and the whole ordeal was grisly start to finish. He didn’t complain too much, especially after his larynx was removed, but he scribbled furiously, and illegibly. You’d think it was just about one of the worst things you could endure.

Unless, during the surgery, your face caught fire.

Mr. Murdoch’s face burst into flame midway through the surgery, a result of a stray spark from the instrument and isopropyl alcohol that hadn’t been allowed to dry. He is no longer with us, and his family sued the doctor and the hospital for $900,000. Which struck me, honestly, as a little low. He must have been sort of unattractive, I found myself thinking. Not that I’m proud of that. Or of this:

It reminded me of the poor fellow whose finger was cut off by a lawnmower blade. I was on the jury for that one, in which the victim was suing Kubota for enough money to take down the whole company. We didn’t find in his favor; it was pretty clear he’d tried to clear a clog in the machine by picking it up from underneath while the blades were running. Not that it should matter, but he also looked dim-witted in the extreme, his eyes at half-mast and his head the size of a yam. In the part of the trial when damages were being assessed, he was asked what he couldn’t do, now that he was missing a finger. No surprise to us jurors, he was not a concert violinist. The only thing he could think of was that he couldn’t climb the ladder to the attic to get the Christmas decorations for the kids. Oh no! we all thought. He had kids!

Well, I don’t want to be on record as saying some people are worth less than others. But just between you and me, although we may very well be equal in the eyes of the Lord, the fact is there are people I wouldn’t miss if they dropped into a sinkhole. If they drowned in rising sea. If they got et by an alligator on their own golf course.

We as a nation just lost a very, very good human. And we’ve elevated one without a redeeming feature to his name. That’s just a fact: doesn’t matter where the flag rests on the flagpole.