I’m going to talk about respect today, but mainly in the sense of ascribing the proper value to a person.
Every person upon which you cast your eyes is a person that God created, and He created them because He loves them. This person has a free will, a soul, a spirit, a mind. He or she is intrinsically valuable and precious. God Himself makes this so.
Yet there are some people who make it easy to disrespect them. There are some people who speak, dress, and act in certain ways that make it easy to ascribe less value to them. Many times these people don’t realize their own value, so they will behave in a way that makes it easy for you to think of them as they think of themselves.
Maybe someone lacks a few moral boundaries. Maybe someone dresses and acts promiscuously. Maybe someone tells people anything they ask, even if they shouldn’t. Maybe someone lets themselves be trampled like a rug in a busy hallway. Maybe someone is too self-deprecating. Maybe someone does anything and everything if merely asked, even if they shouldn’t. But just because a person doesn’t consider themselves valuable, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it along with them. You should always respect this person anyway. You should always treat them as valuable as they are, as intrinsically precious as God made them.
Give each person the respect that their intrinsic, God-given value deserves.