POINT: If dignity is not bestowed, it must be continually practiced. It must be chosen every day.
Dignity isn’t something handed to us by God. It’s a verb—not a badge. It is something you do, again and again, especially on the days it would be easier to drop it.
Choosing dignity every day means:
how you speak when no one’s watching
how you treat yourself when you fall short
how you refuse to become smaller just to survive
how you don’t let bitterness make your choices for you
It’s not about perfection. It’s about recommitment. “I choose myself. I choose integrity. I choose not to disappear.”
That kind of dignity is sturdy. It survives neglect, injustice, even loss—because it lives in practice, not permission.
Perhaps most of the people who have ever lived practiced this. Those who say they get it from God as a given may often be only playing along with religion. It makes no sense for God to give you a dignity that you have to make for yourself. If you lose it when you do not act, that does not fit the teaching that has given an inalienable dignity to all.
Consider how we said that dignity includes, "how you treat yourself when you fall short". Maybe that is the most important aspect of dignity. Many people with dignity do not think of God there. They do not say, "It is of extreme importance that I turn to God and enjoy his mercy and repent." They just resolve to learn from their experience and move on.
Where Jesus said God must never be left out, we learn that dignity means, “I choose myself. I choose integrity. I choose not to disappear.” You are implying that if God chooses that you must indeed disappear, then you oppose him!