Human Dignity and the Image of God

The Enlightenment was a really interesting time in human history. That period produced some fantastic thinkers that shaped history and politics, and whose thinking still have influence today: John Locke, David Hume, Thomas Paine, even Benjamin Franklin. One such thinker that we spend a fair amount of time talking about in my classes is Immanuel Kant.

Kant is probably most well known for his ethical theory which centered around the concept of universal moral principles, otherwise known as the Categorical Imperative. Kant was a firm believer in concrete moral facts and taught that each human had a duty to live according to those moral facts. His was a rigid theory that placed no value in the outcome of one’s actions but located moral value fully in the intention that preceded an act. For the black-and-white, “check the box” type thinker, his was a theory that was actually pretty convenient, as the “dos” and “do-nots” were fairly obvious.

Unfortunately, Kant’s theory left no wiggle-room for situations where doing the “right” thing might cause more harm than not doing it, or for situations where the black and white blurred into a fuzzy shade of gray. Moral facts are moral facts, whether you like them or not, and regardless of the outcome that results in following them.

That’s a pretty tough moral stance to get behind.

But before we throw out the entire theory, there’s one more piece that is worth noting. The second part of Kant’s Categorical Imperative says to treat human beings always as an end and never merely as a means. In other words, remember that people are people, not tools.

Remember that people are meant to be regarded with dignity and respect.

Remember that people are not meant to be used only for your own benefit, but should always been seen for their own worth and value as humans.

In the church we say it this way: remember that every person has been created in the image of God.

Every person.

No matter what color, what nationality, socioeconomic status, gender, orientation, age, size, political affiliation…

Every. Person.

Friends, our world needs to be reminded of this principle. Our culture has forgotten what it means to look at another human and see a person. We look at one another and see disagreement. We see difference. We see opportunity. We see something worth despising. Or manipulating for our own benefit. Or maybe just something that is in the way, an inconvenience.

We have forgotten to see faces. We have forgotten that inside every chest, a heart beats. Inside every skull, a mind turns. Inside every person’s veins, the same red blood runs through. We all love, we all want to be loved. We all celebrate, and we all grieve. We all hope, and we all worry. We are all human.

I encourage my students to remember that behind every frustrating interaction with another human is a real person who is trying to live life just like we are. I encourage them to respond in difficult situations with kindness, treating others with dignity and respect even in their worst moments.

As a Christ-follower, I work daily to remind myself that every human I see, every person I interact with was formed in the image of our Creator, that they—like David—were formed with wonder and care in their mother’s womb (Ps. 139:13-14). It’s so easy to forget and to treat people like they’re worth less simply because they make me uncomfortable, or because I disagree with them, or because something else makes me think they don’t deserve to be treated with dignity. Shame on me.

If I want to always be treated with dignity and respect, I must also treat others always with dignity and respect. So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you… (Matt. 7:12). In philosophy this is called the “reciprocity principle.” Kant called it a universal maxim, which, ironically, brings us back to the first formulation of his Categorical Imperative.

Kant was not a Christian. In fact, he worked purposefully to develop a moral theory that didn’t rely on religion as its basis. (He was, after all, a good Enlightenment thinker.) His parents were Christian, though, and like it or not, the principles of his parents’ faith made it into his moral thinking. There is certainly much to value in Kant’s perspective, especially when his principles are laid back on the foundation of the real Truth founded in scripture.

We must always treat people as an end and never merely as a means, for every person was created in the image of God. For that reason alone, they deserve our respect and our kindness.

Shalom.

Think First

I’ve been lost in my own thoughts a great deal of late, wrestling with what the media is telling me is happening in the world and in my country, knowing that the media only ever provides a strongly biased report from one angle or another and that I can never really know the truth of what is happening. The only thing I am absolutely sure of is that chaos, anger, and a huge portion of emotionally charged rhetoric has become the status-quo for the American public in the twenty-first century.

It is difficult in the midst of so much noise to distinguish the voice of God.

How do we discern truth from pseudo-truth? How do we filter out the silt in order to find gems? Better yet, how do we know conclusively that we’ve found gold and not fool’s gold?

For some reason, the chorus of the old 80’s song Listen to Your Heart by Roxette has been playing on repeat in my mind for the last couple of weeks. I can guarantee you, the lyrics to that song are not true gold; they do not provide the kind of advice we should rely on as we’re trying to sort through the cacophony of information that accosts us from every angle.

Jeremiah 17:9 is often quoted as a warning against trusting your heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things…” “Heart” in this context, particularly considering the Hebrew concept of personhood, is a reference to much more than just a person’s emotions. Verse ten clarifies the concept when it partners “heart” with a Hebrew word that the NIV has translated as “mind,” but really comes closer to meaning “inner person.” Paired together, we can understand that the innerworkings of a person—both thoughts and emotions—are interconnected rather than disconnected one from the other. So while it’s not 100% false that a person’s emotions shouldn’t necessarily be trusted to lead in decision-making, they are not fully distinct from a person’s thoughts.

So can a person’s thoughts be trusted, either?

Romans 12:2 puts a stronger value on the intellectual aspect of human personhood: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” How do we discern what is truth? Well, it appears that engaging our intellect is a key element of the process.

Here’s where I’m going to bring a little bit of philosophy into the conversation. St. Thomas Aquinas (13^th Century Italian monk) was both a theologian and a philosopher. His greatest theological work, Summa Theologiae, contains no fewer than 3,000 pages, and details his ethical theory known as Natural Law Theory. Part of that theory is the claim that humankind is created with an inherent purpose, or telos, which is to “live according to reason.”

In other words, we were created to be thinkers. To use our brains.

When you go to church, use your intellectual capacity to discern whether what you are hearing aligns with Scripture. But also, use that same intellect to discern whether the lyrics you’re singing have that same theological accuracy and depth. (In other words, don’t turn your brain off when the music starts.)

When you open your social media app and read a post or watch a video, utilize your ability to reason out whether what you are reading and seeing is true, how much bias it might contain, and how it is designed to enflame emotions before you allow yourself to respond or react to it.

When you encounter new information or just a new presentation of information, before you allow your emotions to react, allow your mind to sift through and separate truth from non-truth.

Emotions don’t need to be ignored or completely disregarded, but they definitely should be tempered by intellect.

But now let me give some qualification to this entire conversation. Remember that Jeremiah 17 shows us that at some level, a person’s thoughts are as fallible as his or her emotions.

Let’s go back to Romans 12:2 – “…be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

While Aquinas taught that humans are created with a natural reasoning capacity and that certain "moral codes” are built into the human makeup, Romans 12:2 tells us that we have to do the work of educating our minds in order to have the framework from which to discern God’s will. Our minds are flooded every day with information, so we have to be purposeful about absorbing and assimilating the right kind of information. If we want to be able to distinguish truth from untruth, we have to know the characteristics of truth; we cannot simply decide from our own thoughts what we believe should be true and what shouldn’t.

Renew your mind. Through reading and study of Scripture. Through listening to trusted teachers of the Word. Through conversations with other believers who are also engaged in the same practices. Through willfully choosing to let your mind be formed in the ways of Christ.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world…” Don’t allow yourself to become a person of empty, emotionally driven, reactive rhetoric.

“…but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” Do allow your mind, your thought patterns, your worldview, your perspective to be formed by Scripture and by the wisdom of others who are sincerely engaging the Word.

“…Then…” (and only then) “…you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

The Problem of Suffering

Suffering is an undeniable part of the human experience. In philosophy, we equate suffering with evil, which—interestingly enough—is not a concrete connection that I make theologically. The problem with this sort of “evil,” philosophically speaking, is that it is extremely difficult (impossible, even) to reconcile the conflict with the nature of God and the presence of evil in the form of human suffering. How can a God who is all-powerful (omnipotent) and all-good (omnibenevolent) allow suffering to persist, especially in the measure at which it persists in our world?

This conflict between the reality of the human experience and the claim of Judeo-Christian believers regarding the nature of God has been a stumbling block for many people throughout history. I, myself, have been asked, “How can I believe in a God who would allow such things?”

And I’ll be honest: my heart empathizes with those who ask this. I want to cry out to God and say, “You could stop all of this, you know!” It really just doesn’t make any sense.

Philosophers and theologians alike have tried to craft logical solutions to the conflict. We call these solutions “theodicies.” A British religious philosopher by the name of John Hick developed what has become one of the most well-known theodicies over the years: the soul-making theodicy. Simply put, he proposes that human suffering is the tool or framework that provides the necessary conditions for humans to experience spiritual formation, moving them toward the image of God. (His full perspective is certainly more complex than this, but I am attempting to summarize his theodicy without chasing the trail of his full theology.)

Hicks’ theodicy has a number of flaws that I find irreconcilable, but for the sake of brevity, I will discuss only two of them here today:

First, Hick’s view proposes that human suffering is the will and design of God. If it is necessary in order to bring individuals into closer proximity to himself, which is according to his will or desire, then suffering must be by his design. This is incongruous with his benevolent nature. Anyone who has ever witnessed true and deep suffering firsthand understands experientially that to inflict such suffering is not a benevolent act. Indeed, this reality is part of the “problem of evil” in the first place. Hick’s theory does not solve the conflict between the reality of evil and the benevolent nature of God.

I propose instead that God redeems such suffering, reclaiming it from the power of evil and using it for good. James 1:2-4 speaks of the power of trials and tribulations in the formation of one’s faith, and the Apostle Paul’s life and ministry are a testament to the formative value of suffering. But formation comes not from the suffering itself, but from our response to it. Yielded and surrendered to God, even the worst experiences can be redeemed and made holy. (Isaiah 61:3)

Second, suffering was not part of God’s original design for creation. It was introduced as a consequence only after humans made the choice to listen to and believe the voice of someone other than God. The perfection of God’s original creation is detailed in the creation narratives in the first two chapters of Genesis, and suffering—including the first sacrificial death—is introduced in the “fall” narrative in chapter three.

Hick, however, denies a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-3, claiming instead that humans were created as less than perfect with a need for continual progress toward the divine image. Suffering, then, was inherent in creation as the catalyst for that progress. Hick’s view again works against the view of God as omnibenevolent, for if God looked at all of his creation and called it “good,” as described in Genesis 1, and that creation included suffering, then he has called “good” that which is evil. This is in itself a malevolent act, rendering omnibenevolence void.

If God is truly all-good, he cannot have included suffering in his original design for creation.

God did, however, include in his design of humankind the element of free will. The freedom to choose. And in order to have the freedom to choose, there must be options to choose from. He gave humankind two: to choose God, to choose to believe that his instructions were good and that his words were true, which would result in one “consequence” or outcome; or to choose to believe the words of another, who claimed that God was a liar, which would result in an entirely different consequence.

Belief motivates actions, and anyone who has read Genesis 3 knows whose words humankind chose to believe. They chose to believe the “other” and they acted on that belief.

With that one act, the perfection of creation was broken, and it couldn’t be undone. What seemed like one tiny crack shattered the entire reality, and humankind will live with the consequence until the end of time.

That consequence is suffering.

Suffering in the form of disease and sickness and the breakdown of the human body.

Suffering in the form of natural disaster and the breakdown of the natural world.

Suffering in the form of humans hurting and abusing one another and the breakdown of the human soul.

Suffering was not part of God’s design for the world. He created a world of perfection for us, but we chose to trade it away on the chance that he was lying to us.

In his omnipotence, God could remove our suffering, undoubtedly. But part of his goodness to us is his consistent adherence to his word. He promised that to choose to believe a voice other than his would have deep consequences, and now we are living with the consistent application of those consequences.

But in his goodness, God has also entered into our consequences with us—he has entered into our suffering and has not let us suffer alone. (Philippians 2:6-8) He has entered our suffering so that by it, we may be made whole again. (Isaiah 53:5) He has entered our suffering so that suffering itself one day will be abolished. (Revelation 21:1-4)

I know it is so very hard to reconcile the reality of suffering with the concept of a good and powerful God, especially when the suffering is deep and when the evil seems so overwhelming. Most theodicies seem grossly inadequate in the face of true suffering. I don’t pretend to have the perfect answer to the conflict, but I do know that I can’t place the “guilt” of suffering on God’s shoulders. God’s goodness is not nullified by the reality of suffering; it is heightened by his willingness to enter into it with us. Nor does suffering prove him impotent; Jesus’ victory over death and the grave have already proven the power that will be on display when God determines that suffering has had its last word. That day will come, rest assured.

Today I want to leave you with these words from 1 Peter, words of hope written to a group of people who were well-acquainted with suffering:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. ~ 1 Peter 1: 3-9