See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Colossians 2:8
I appreciate the above verse which the Apostle Paul has just dropped into a much larger section about the supreme status of Jesus Christ, the salvation he has accomplished for the people of God, and the charge to walk in Christ with obedient and grateful hearts. It is a helpful corrective and warning for all of us, no less so today than for the Colossians Paul has written to.
There is a steady pull we all feel while on planet earth from various philosophies and worldviews. These varying perspectives on life really do form and shape our opinions about everything that IS: God, people, nature, good vs. evil, justice, goodness/righteousness, etc. Whatever worldview we adopt really does shape and form us as people, and how we are being formed tells us more about our functioning worldview than what we profess with our lips.
And when one particular belief within this worldview is strongly held, it necessarily begins to alter and shape other aspects of one’s worldview…typically in harmful ways.
It is my experience that some Christians have a functionally unbiblical worldview which has led them away from compassion and mercy. Particularly faulty, as the title of this essay suggestions, is a their doctrine of man (though perhaps it starts with one’s doctrine of God…I am not sure which doctrine shapes which, but both end up “bent” as a result). A healthy Christian worldview is full of tensions, and a healthy doctrine of man is no different.
Man is made in the image of God and has uncancelable worth and value because of the value ascribed to him by his Maker. And yet, man is a child of wrath because of sin. We are spiritually dead and live in a constant state of rebellion against God.
Worldly philosophies, if they have God in the picture, tend to eliminate the tension and put undo weight on one of these two realities. If people are inherently good and nice and just need some help back to their feet, we will downplay evil and sin and wrongdoing and not hold folks accountable for their actions. This is a major criticism of Conservatives towards Liberals who are thought to not hold people accountable for their actions.
What is more grievous to me, however, is the other side of things. When we overemphasize the sinfulness of man, we harden our hearts towards people made in the image of God…we dehumanize those who are also incredibly valuable to God. Sin is very real. It is very harmful both on an individual level and cultural level. It is always wrong. And yet, there is always more to consider than the individual sinner. How has his/her upbringing shaped the current mindset and behaviors? How might a pent up feeling of injustice produce an anger that, though wrongly expressed, is perhaps closer to the anger God feels toward injustice than we are willing to admit?
We must not snip the tension wire in overreaction to those who overemphasize a particular side of the tension. We uphold both sides. That is Christian. That is Christlike. The worldly philosophies of political parties have a bent doctrine of man. As Christians, we must do better. And because Scripture speaks clearly to these things, we can.
If we close our hearts to compassion, we have adopted a worldly philosophy, because Jesus was always compassionate while on earth. Sure, he spoke with sharp-tongued woes to the Pharisees and religious leaders, but it was an opportunity to repent. He found an adulterous woman in Samaria and gave her living water. He transformed the hearts of tax collectors who were robbing their own people. He wept over the devastating results of sin. He looked upon whole regions full of sinners and had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
One of the things I love most about God is that he did not sit on his heavenly throne outside of the mess and issue his opinion of it in some holier-than-thou way…even though he would have been just to do so. He entered into the mess, sending Jesus to redeem and reconcile the mess we humans had made by willfully violating God’s good laws.
How can we then justify ourselves to speak into the mess of others as if we are the judge and jury of their lives…especially when we don’t have a real inkling of what they’ve gone through, how they are feeling, or what they are searching for in their responses? Is that really the best response we can formulate towards image bearers of the Almighty? I hope not.
We need to listen to Jesus and remove the growing plank of self-righteousness and enter into the messiness of others’ lives. And I don’t mean to enter, speak some truth bomb, and then bail! We enter as humble listeners wanting to really hear what is going on in the hearts of fellow human beings. Yes, we want to be able to speak against the present sin. We want people to repent. We want them to stop harming themselves and others.
But we will never see those results by sitting on judgment seats, aloof and far off, speaking our cold-hearted truth while feeling justified.
When Jesus looks at miserable sinners, He simultaneously sees image bearers of God who are valuable and worth the risk of entering in.
This is what I believe to be a healthy doctrine of man…one that will shape a biblical worldview for the glory of God that passionately pleads for us to enter into the mess of others so that they might experience the compassion of a gentle and lowly in heart Savior.
Heavenly Father, by your Spirit, transform our hearts to align with the compassionate and merciful heart of King Jesus. Be glad to do so for your glory on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
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