To the Reader: This is an extremely long blog post. It is probably not what most people see as conducive to one sitting, so I have broken it up into sections so you can return...
Part 1
In light of who we are before God, it is easy to beat
ourselves up, to look at one’s self and say, “I am a worthless sinner, but
praise God for abounding in love and grace to save a wretch like me.” The
rhetoric goes on and on: “God owes me nothing… I am nothing… I have nothing to
give…” Now, calling myself a wretch because of the totally depraved state of my
sinful being is, in a very great sense, true and proper. I am a guilty sinner
in need of grace. However, I wonder if this sort of thinking has led us to
holding a lower view of humanity as a whole than is warranted.
It is an easy logical step to say, “Well, the reasons I see
myself as a wretch are derived from qualities I share with every other human
being walking the planet; therefore, I am warranted to think of them as
wretches as well.” I think we often do make this step, and I think it leads to
conclusions concerning others that are less than Christian in their essence. The
question that this raises is this: Does the Bible afford us the right to think
in such a way, to think that humans (especially the lost) are merely despicable?
If our view of our fellow human is lower than perhaps is warranted, can this
low anthropology not misshape our theology?
Consider this: If the lost are merely despicable beings,
rotten to the core, with nothing of worth within their being, why are we
obligated to love them? I think the answer: “Because God says so!” is lacking.
Why would God have us love a purely sinful being? In a previous post: “Making
‘Sense’ of Calvinistic Election…” (Perhaps I should have entitled it, “Trying
to Make Sense of Calvinistic Election,” as I never really did make sense out of
it), I attempt to discuss the character of the lost and show the reformed
objection to my views. I think the point is worth restating here:
Whenever I, or any other person, provide any
amount of dignity to the lost, we are immediately countered by the fact that
the lost are utterly depraved and as such my value of the lost is misplaced. In
a recent discussion with a [Reformed] friend, I was chastised for appealing to
children or the tribesmen who are never given the chance to respond. This
attempt at a corrective of my view of such people was characterized by the fact
that the children and tribesmen in
question are utterly despicable and evil. If this was not an attempt to
justify their plight as damned without hope of grace, I cannot imagine why it
was brought up.
While the Bible certainly takes occasion to put us in our
place, to remind us that we are sinners before a just and Holy God, there are
usually two sides to the coin that we must consider. The other side of this
coin: The Bible often affords humanity with such dignity that for me to do any
less would be presumptuous and arrogant:
O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast
set
thy glory above the heavens.
Out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of
thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
When
I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which
thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than
the [God], and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all
things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
The
fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the
paths of the seas.
O Lord our Lord,
how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)
Here the Psalmist is pondering a great question: How can a
God so great care for beings that seem so insignificant in the grand scheme of
things? Part of the writer’s consideration is that God has actually made man
just below Himself (Note: The KJV as I quote here actually uses the term “angel”
in v 5, but notes that other translations use God, which is perhaps a more
literal reading). How can he say such a thing? How can he afford such dignity
to humanity? That is precisely his question: “God, why do you care about us?
Why give us such privilege? Why love us so?” The psalmist certainly sees
greatness within humanity. Not just God fearing people, but in the race as a
whole. He is considering how God sees man at the present, not just in the
future. He is not just saying, God you once made us great. He is saying God you
made us great!
Consider what Jesus tells us about loving others: We are to
love neighbor and enemy. So, let me ask you this once again: If it were the
case that nonbelievers are totally and utterly evil, black to the core, with no
goodness whatsoever in their being, no worth, no dignity,which was the position
my Reformed friend was taking in the portion I quoted from my previous essay,
why should I be told to love pure evil. Is that not sinful? Once again, it is
not just that God says so. He is not an arbitrary God. There is good reason to
love the lost.
Part 2
There must be something loveable about these persons. Does
this mean that they are not sinners, not capable of utter horror. Well, yes.
But, there can be silver in the midst of dross. A being can be a guilty sinner,
and yet exude goodness from within.
As a father, I know this to the deepest depths of my being.
My daughter, a baby still, almost two years of age, has yet to have a
conversion experience. She was born inheriting my sin nature. I can see pride
and selfishness in embryonic form within her. She is broken and, without
Christ, she will be lost. But, that does not mean that even prior to her
becoming a Christian, she does not abound with good and Godly qualities. She
most certainly does. That I see the imago
Dei emerging from her being is an everyday occasion. Love and joy burst
forth from the seams of her being, and no one can ever convince me that she is
utter evil. You might as well walk away if you ever want to say such to me. It would
be best that you do.
So, what is my point?
Simply put:
We need not have an extremely low and impoverished
anthropology to hold a high and proper theology that elicits awe and humility
to the greatest degree possible.
In other words, I need not see humanity and the lost people
of the world as despicable smut, nor do I need to forever see myself as a mere
pile of crap covered in the snow that is Christ (as Luther put it). As I have
said before, Christ is more than spiritual Febreze. Because of sanctification
we Christians are more than mere sinners saved by grace, and because of the inherent
grace given by God and His image within all humans, as fractured and damaged as
it might be, we all, even the lost, have real worth. That they are in need of
Christ and are dead without Him need not be denied for me to say that there is
something in them worth saving. I can afford humanity with dignity in my mind
without doing injustice to the high place God is to have in my thoughts and
beliefs.
Let’s move a little off topic for a moment:
To counter my statement that the lost has goodness in them,
one might wish to go a little off topic and talk about human works, which,
while not being the human itself, represent the human and his or her
capabilities. The point is often made that God sees our actions apart from Him
as filthy rags, that all our attempts to do good are not really good. Because
of our low anthropology, we hold a view that humans are fully incapable of
doing anything that reflects goodness within. This ignores that we are image
bearers, broken as we are, and it denies God’s working in us even before
salvation through prevenient grace, wooing us to His Beloved Son through the
Holy Spirit.
Some persons have questioned Christians about the goodness
they see in this or that person. It is often a common sort of statement: “I
know X, and X is an atheist. Yet, X does so many benevolent acts, more than the
Christians that I know. X works at the soup kitchen. X gives money to the
needy. X opens his home to all in need. X feeds the hungry, clothes the naked,
and looks after orphans and widows. Are they not doing good?”
What is the response? From many Christians the answer is
pure dismissal of the obvious: That that person is exhibiting Godly traits of
kindness, love, compassion and grace. Instead a response is formed because
persons think they are defending a biblical stance that states nonbelievers
cannot exhibit signs of the image of God: “Well outwardly the deed is seemingly
good, but it is not of God and is not good at the heart of the matter.” I’ve
heard this time and time again, and have even said it myself, but it is not as
warranted as I once thought. Humans are made in the image of God and grace is
given even before salvation, so how is it that it cannot be expressed? Yes we
are broken, but even a broken watch is even right twice a day! As many, I used Isaiah
64:6 as backing my assumption that nonbelievers cannot really do good: “But we are all
as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we
all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
Does this settle it? I think not. Better put: Does this actually tell
us that humans are incapable of doing good things if they are not Christian?
The prophet is discussing our state before God. We are
unclean, which in the ancient Hebraic context means that we cannot approach
God. He makes the point that not even our attempts to do good can cleanse us
for they are “as if” they are dirty, which is different than saying they are
dirty in themselves for one thing. So, in other words, they are incapable of
taking away sin. They do not have saving quality: A filthy rag cannot remove
filth and make us clean. To offer God any act of good will and genuine effort,
even if assisted by his prevenient grace (more on this in a moment) as an
offering for the atonement of sins is to offer to God a base and insulting
gesture. We cannot save ourselves. So, these works are called filthy rags when
they are offered for atonement. But, apart from atonement, we need not make
degrading commentary on their existence.
Are they filthy in and of themselves? Is everything a human
does before he is saved a filthy gesture of a seemingly righteous motive? Is
the person who saves another’s life not doing good if he is yet to be a
Christian? I think he is doing good. The point Isaiah is making is that it is
not an act that will save us. It cannot make us clean. Doing good does not
replace doing wrong. Good can be done, and it can be good in and of itself, and
will remain a good work especially if it is not offered up as a reason God
should save the person because it does not negate prior guilt.
To better understand my point, take for instance Cain’s
offering to God in the Genesis account. He offers God the fruits of his labor (Genesis 4:3). Now, we
are reminded that God’s creation, although subjugated to the fall, is still a
good creation. Thus, the fruits and vegetables gathered by Cain in and of
themselves are not inherently evil. In fact, if anything, they are inherently
good. He has produced a good crop.
His work has been good. However, for Cain to suggest that what he has created
through his labor, a harvest of fruits and vegetables, is sufficient for the
remission of sins is an insult. They are as filthy rags then.
Part 3
So, once again, the question arises: can a nonbeliever do
good? I think so. The deed is not worthy of the remission of sins, but it comes
from a place within the being that is still grounded in love, truth and beauty
because of the image that remains, as broken as it might be. God extends his
prevenient grace out to the lost, even before they have been converted, working
in their heart to bring them to truth. Is it not possible that because of this
grace, the person realizes something of what is right and good and acts upon it
even before fully committing to Christ and being filled with the Spirit? I
think so. And if it was the prompting of the Spirit, how then do we say it is
not good. In fact, it could be this action that God uses that leads the doer to
repentance, seeing that he or she want to dedicate this life to the cause of
God. But, meaningful goodness, as Isaiah points out, can only be sustained by
grace, and God wants this person to give his whole life over so that the
goodness within can be fully restored and salvaged from the grips of death.
Otherwise it will perish and disappear.
The issue is that the goodness that remains is in the clutches
of death, and God is on a rescue mission. He wants to save the lost because
they have something savable, a worth given to them by God’s image and grace.
What makes a human being? It is not simply a living body.
Bodies vary in all ways. Some do not even have full bodies. So, it is no one
part of the body. A human must have a body, but that does not make them fully
human. It is the image of God that makes us humans. So, we are broken humans,
but humans nonetheless, because the image has been damaged by our sin. Has that
image been devastated? Yes. Is it utterly gone? I think not, otherwise would we
even be human anymore? God wants to restore that brokenness for it is worth
restoring.
So, I submit that humans have worth. All humans have worth,
at least at some point (I assume a person can give themselves over totally to
sin and refuse God’s grace: the reprobate). If humans have worth, and that worth
is worth loving, then how could God predestine any of them, with no power to
choose otherwise, to Hell? To bring beings into existence with the express
purpose of designating the being to eternal damnation seems cruel. If you
assert that God loves all, wants all to be saved, then how can you assert that
he would not offer grace, but send some to Hell without ever a genuine chance
of salvation?
I once heard it said: Calvinists try to answer the question:
How does a sovereign God demonstrate His Love, while Wesleyans try to answer
the question: How does a God of Love demonstrate His sovereignty. God is Love,
and He loves all humans because they are lovable. He would not condemn an
object of love to eternal punishment without giving that object of love a
chance to love Him back. I base all this on the evidence of the revealed
Scripture, not on conjecture. So, when I say, “How could God do so-and-so,” if
I base that question upon what God has already revealed, the retort “Where were
you, O man,” need not be offered. That was a question for persons who were
without revelation, simply speculating on God. I am not merely speculating. I am
asking this question in light of Scripture. Moreover, to simply relocate this
to the realm of mystery is to ignore the question. I am saying, “This is
revealed by God, that He loves all and wants all to be saved.”
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