I think you missed the point of both the analogy, Chesterton’s words, and in sum the thinking of the Church, which may have been my fault in not clarifying: yes analogies will fall short of the truth, but they only can point towards the truth and not hold all of it, and in this case just like the $100 bill is both cheap and valuable at the same time, man is both worthless (even less than worthless) and of more worth than anything in creation at the same time.
Yes, what God decrees, it becomes; there is no “covering of manure” as some say of Protestant imputation. By the Father’s love, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit’s gift of Himself, man is able to participate in the life of God and thus has value that makes him stand above all creatures: “You are gods” (Psalms 82:6, John 10:34). He has more worth than any.
But man
is still a creature; being made from nothing like all creatures, he is still the chief of nothings. He is worthless. In fact, he is
less than nothing: of all the creatures of God, man and angels are the only ones that can defy God’s will.
In the end man’s value is based on Him bearing God. Even the worst sinner has the image of God indelibly imprinted in His soul, because his soul was made in the image of God, and that will forever make him worthy of being saved.
That is what Chesterton meant. And yet it is only the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as sanctifying grace that man can participate in the life of God. The more one bears God in them, the greater their value is.
As a parting note it is interesting to read St. Thomas Aquinas’ words on the virtues of humility and magnanimity. On humility St. Thomas quoted the twelve degrees of humility by St. Benedict, and he quoted the “seventh” (actually the sixth; St Thomas Aquinas enumerated them in reverse order) as “to think oneself worthless and unprofitable for all purposes” (ST II-II Q161 A6). On magnanimity on the other hand he quotes Aristotle: “whosoever is worthy of little things and deems himself worthy of them, is temperate, but he is not magnanimous,” and “the magnanimous deems himself worthy of great things, and despises others” (ST II-II Q129 A3). He explains the apparent contradiction thus:
There is in man something great which he possesses through the gift of God; and something defective which accrues to him through the weakness of nature. Accordingly magnanimity makes a man deem himself worthy of great things in consideration of the gifts he holds from God…On the other hand, humility makes a man think little of himself in consideration of his own deficiency. (Ibid.)
Or, as St Paul puts it more concisely, “we have this treasure in jars of clay” (2 Cor 4:7).
