Guest Post by Al Stout
At Providence Church in Pensacola, Fl,[1] we have a regular Vespers’ service on the first Wednesday of each month. We sing the majority of the service, we read three lessons from Scripture– an Old Covenant, New Covenant and Gospel passage–followed by a short homily. This week we read Genesis 1:26-31; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; and John 3:1-8 and I delivered the homily.
Reading the news of the day, there were a couple stories about men being shot and killed while being arrested or detained by police. I saw some of the responses to those shootings. I began to contemplate what it is that gives men and women, no matter their level of sin or righteousness, dignity. This is what I asked those who were at Vespers…
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What is it that gives man dignity? What moves the Church to advocate for the unborn child and the prisoner? What compels us to give honor to the most innocent and the guiltiest, that they should be treated with dignity?
In Genesis 1 God declares that we are created in the image of God. Man was created in goodness and while still pure commanded to take the image of God to the rest of creation. They were to reflect the image of the Creator to His creation that did not bear that image. This is part of the subduing of creation mandated by Holy Spirit. By carrying the authority of God by way of His image, we would participate in Creation, its management, and husbandry. Even without sin man took the image of God to the world.
The fall did not undo this. Man is still to take the image of God out to the world, but with the fall came a haze over our eyes. Blindness is a type of death[2]. We could no longer see properly; not just creation, but we could no longer see God himself in those He created. So, when Cain kills Abel and he is confronted with his sin, he cannot see the value of his brother, his inherent dignity. He slanders him by declaring to God that Abel is not worthy to be watched over, cared for, ministered to… “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:8-9).
This cloudiness of eyesight can affect us as well. It is hard for us to see the image of God in an unborn child or in the man guilty of murder. If we forget that they are both image bearers we can trash them both. We can literally put the most innocent into the garbage, but we can also forget the prisoner; leaving him or her to physical assault and even rape. Turning such humiliation into a joke, we laugh with the world as fellow prisoners or guards strip men and women MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD of their dignity, or sounding support with glib comments like “Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime[3].”
When we forget that even the guilty bear the image of God, we can quickly find ourselves supporting or even participating in evil far greater than the crimes perpetrated by these guilty persons.
Governments around the world have authorized death squads to summarily execute vile men. Avoiding drawn out legal proceedings, they jump to the penalty phase upon discovery of a crime. In such cases, that which constitutes capital offenses is quickly downgraded from drug dealing, murder, prostitution and the like to petty theft, panhandling, and political disagreement or simply being poor. To get to this point, we must forget that the thief bears the image of God.
Paul, the forgiven murderer, declares that we are new creations. What was lost in the fall is regained. Your eyesight is restored. No longer subject to judgment of the flesh, or the outward man, you see with fresh eyes the value of both the innocent and wicked. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation (Paul harkens back to the first creation here). The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation…” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19)
We cannot look at extra-judicial killings (whether officially or culturally sanctioned), and the justification of those killings (as if they had it coming to them because of their criminal behavior), as anything other than blindness to God himself. We have been given new eyes and with the ability to see properly we have been given the same ministry of Christ himself, to reconcile such men to himself.
C.S. Lewis once observed:
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
Do not think that we can be ministers of this reconciliation if we don’t first see that this man, your neighbor or the one selling drugs; this woman, your coworker or the prostitute, bears the image of the triune God. It simply won’t happen.
[1] www.providencepensacola.org
[2] In physical death we note changes in the eyes as an indicator of the passing of life. Sampson was blinded and resurrected after this death to destroy the Philistines (Judges 16:21ff) Saul was blinded, spent three days (sound familiar) in that death, and he too was raised up to live for Christ. (Acts 9)
[3] An excellent resource for understanding the need to remember that even those guilty of great wickedness are deserving of honor as image bearers is Prison Fellowship, founded by Chuck Colson. Read this post as an example of what I am talking about: https://www.prisonfellowship.org/2015/07/seeing-the-face-of-god-in-prisoners/
