11 Dignity

As the crescendo act of creation, God dips his hand in the dust on the ground and breathes into it, and from nothing Adam becomes a living, breathing, and fully functioning human being. With the exception of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, there is no more wonderful, mysterious, important, and glorious moment in history. Reading the account in Genesis should stop you in your tracks and take your breath away. It should fill you with wonder and awe. It should send you to your knees in worship and adoration. And it should change the way you think about yourself and every other human being that has, is, and will populate this little ball we call Earth.

I live in Center City Philadelphia, so I walk everywhere. Of course, I don’t walk the streets of my city alone. I am on the sidewalk every day with men, women, boys, and girls, and when I am, I often think of that moment when God breathed humanity into humanity. I am constantly blown away by the majesty and anatomical, physiological, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual complexity and diversity of human beings. People are a wonder. We all need to stop once in a while and take in the wonder. Consider for a moment:

How various systems of a newborn’s body all turn on at the moment of birth.

How a little child begins to understand and form language.

How each child is differently interested and gifted.

The ability people have to learn a wide variety of things and apply them to life.

The ability we all have to craft, create, and design.

A composer’s ability to create a soundscape that takes you to a different world.

The ability of the eyes and hands of an artist to put beauty on canvas.

The skill of an author to put words on a page that capture your imagination.

The skill of a chef to manipulate food to excite your tongue.

The gift of a teacher to communicate scientific, historical, or theological fact.

The ability of an architect to create a beautiful, stable, and usable edifice.

The tender touch of a nursing mother.

The stern warning voice of a father.

The encouraging hug of a friend.

The collected wisdom of an old man.

I could go on and on. We need to allow ourselves to take time to be amazed at the stunning, multifaceted glory of what God created that moment when he breathed life into Adam. We can never allow ourselves to lose our wonder because if we do, we will not bow in awe to our Creator as we should and we will not respond to one another out of awe as we should. Every person is a walking wonder, an interdependent, interlocking system of wonderful things all working together, according to God’s design, to live, breathe, think, emote, work, laugh, worship, and relate. There is no boring person. To be a human being is to be a magnificently created thing, more wonderful than the awesome pyramid, the highest peak, the expansive ocean, the glorious sunset, the powerful storm, the grand piece of music, or the most stunning painting. On the mountain peak of creation dust was turned into something alive and glorious, a person. The glory of this must never be lost on us.

Made in God’s Image

But, yes, there is more. As he was creating the very first person, God uttered seven words that change everything you would otherwise think or know about people. He said, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26). These words not only fill this moment with even greater glory than what I have already described, but they separate mankind from all of the rest of creation. Every created being or thing reflects the glory of God somehow, someway. Every created thing was made to be a finger pointing to the glory of its designer and Creator. But what is said at Adam’s creation is said about nothing else God made. God said it and Moses recorded it so that we would forever acknowledge the distinctiveness and the superiority of human beings in God’s created order. It is not enough to say that people reflect God’s glory. We must also be careful to say again and again, to ourselves and to one another, that we are also made in his image, that is, in his likeness. Let this sink in. By means of the intentionality of God’s design, human beings are more like God than they are like the rest of creation. Without those seven words, we fail to know and accurately understand ourselves or others.

Think about the expansive implications of what it would mean for the way we think about our own identity and the identity of everyone else if we were to truly believe that every human being who has ever lived is stamped forever with the image of God. There is no human junk, there are no little people, and no one is lesser. People have been chosen by God to carry a position of dignity that nothing else in creation has. Consider the words of Psalm 8:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under his feet,

all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas. (Ps. 8:3–8)

I love the context of the question “What is man that you are mindful of him?” In comparison to the expansive grandeur of the heavens and the shining glory of the moon and stars, how do little insignificant people get any of God’s attention? The psalm gives the resounding answer, one we must never let ourselves forget. Man is unique in the economy of God’s creation because:

God made him a little lower than the angels.

God crowned him with glory and honor.

God gave him dominion over the works of his hands.

God put all things under his feet.

These four statements should stop us; they should alert us and amaze us. Here is a definition of who God designed every human being to be. This is the position and identity he created for each of us. The lofty, godlike dignity of every human being is not up for discussion, assessment, or vote. The decision was made by the Creator and communicated in seven clear words: “Let us make man in our image,” and further defined by him in four statements in Psalm 8. With this identity comes a calling: we are to treat one another with the dignity that God placed on each one of us as his image bearers. This means I am to treat you with dignity not because of your beauty, your race, your achievements, your money, your power, your position, your family, your education, your location, your possessions, your morality, your theology, your sexuality, your spirituality, your gender, your maturity, your emotional stability, your intellectual ability, your physical strength, or your gifts and abilities, but because you bear God’s likeness.

I should look into the face of any human being and see the likeness of God. I live in a densely populated center of a big city. I see more pavement than green. But I don’t need to travel out to the country outside of Philadelphia to have creation remind me of the presence and glory of God. All I have to do is leave my loft, and I see his glory again and again as I pass by his image bearers on the street. I am blessed to be surrounded every day by his likeness and reminded of his presence and glory. I think in physical, face-to-face personal relationships it is easy for us to forget who we’re looking at and, in God’s plan, what every human being represents. And when we forget, we treat people as less than image bearers. We get mad when a person is in our way, as if he’s more of an object than a person. We treat people as problems to be solved, not as those who bear God’s likeness. We see people as vehicles of our success and not those who bear God’s image. We separate ourselves from people because they are different and, in so doing, deny the dignity that we share. We let race, gender, social class, political views, religion, and a host of other things determine who we think people are and how they should be treated. When we forget the seven words spoken at creation, we will fail to treat people with honor and dignity, no matter what.

The world of the internet and social media makes what we are discussing here all the more difficult. In this world people are nonphysical, faceless, and often nameless. People become Twitter handles, posts, clicks, or electronic letters on a screen. People get reduced to their last comment or post. They are shrunken down to ideas we love or hate. They bear the likeness of a theology, a political position, a product, a worldview, or a tribe, but not the image of God. In this digital world, I don’t see you, I don’t know you, and I don’t share space with you. I am afraid that with the domination of the internet and social media over our communication and much of our connection with one another, we lose our humanity. When God breathed humanity into humanity, he at the same time crowned human beings with glory and honor by saying, “This one is made in my likeness.” When I am counting views, likes, comments, and retweets, people have quit being people to me. They are numbers that communicate some kind of value to me, but they have lost their humanity. And because they have, social media has become one big dignity black hole, where we give ourselves permission to treat one another in ways that most of us probably wouldn’t think of doing if we were standing face-to-face with the person and seeing in their face the face of God.

Most people don’t tend to go to social media to love their neighbors as themselves or to give grace to a person who desperately needs grace. Most people don’t go to Twitter to comfort, encourage, and instill hope. Most of us don’t go to our favorite sites to look for the latest acts of gentleness and kindness. The trending topics on social media don’t tend to be about human dignity, love, mercy, justice, or forgiveness. Hours on social media won’t tend to lift you up or cause you to be better prepared to treat your neighbor with dignity and love. Social media won’t tend to ignite and motivate your respect and appreciation of others. Sadly, social media tends to distort relationships and plunder our humanity. It is a place where Francis Schaeffer’s words, “man’s inhumanity to man,” seem to daily come true. And I have to say, once again, that this is not just true of the surrounding culture but it is true of the Christian community as well. It’s so easy for charges, accusations, judgments, threats, slanders, dismissals, and mockery to fly off our fingers and onto our screens, with little thought to whom we are reacting and the damage our words may do. For us who believe in a literal creation, dignity is not just a creational declaration but it is also a moral relational mandate.

We, of all communities, have the insight and mandate to use these powerful tools in a very different manner. I have determined to remember that everyone who reads my social media posts is a person made in the image of God. I have committed myself to use these powerful tools as tools of love and truth, and of rescuing, restoring, and healing grace. When I sit at my screen, I try to envision real people sitting in front of me so I will remember to post in a way that is filled with dignity and love. I have determined to stay out of the Twitter muck, to not rise quickly to my own defense, to stay true to my gospel calling, to resist reducing people to positions, ideas, or tribes, and with every touch of a key to love my neighbor as myself. I have determined to read and reflect way more than I respond and to never quickly react. I have restricted myself to posting the gospel of God’s grace to protect myself from the temptation to use these powerful tools in ways they should not be used. Some of you are models of the good that can be done through these powerful media tools, and I am convinced that all of us can do better. When it comes to social media, we should be that city on a hill, a light for all to see, showing the glorious good that can be done through this amazing media. But a whole lot of confessing and repenting is necessary to get us there.

Before we look at what it means to always treat everyone with dignity, I want to make a clarification. I am not calling here for a Hallmark card approach to social media, where we put on a happy face and deny the daily struggles of life in a fallen world. I surely am not saying that we should project faux joy to protect Jesus’s reputation. Life in a fallen world is difficult. Many of us are suffering, and we need to be honest about the trials of life. There are destructive lies to be exposed. The church fails, and where it does, it needs to be examined and lessons drawn from its failures. There are crucially important debates that we need to have. There is a place for righteous anger with evil. There is darkness that needs to be exposed and people who need to be confronted. The Bible never asks us to put on a happy face, spewing quasi-spiritual cliches while denying reality. Biblical faith never requires that we minimize, ignore, or deny the things we face in this fallen world. This chapter is not about denial but about the way we talk to one another about the things that are necessary to discuss. Because of who human beings are by God’s design and their lofty place in God’s economy, we should always treat everyone with dignity no matter who they are, no matter what they’re doing, no matter what they represent, no matter how wrong and reprehensible it is to us. There simply is no exception clause to God’s holy and all-encompassing command “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

How We Treat Others with Dignity

So what does it mean to treat people with dignity? It means:

I will treat every person with respect, no matter what. This is respect that does not have to be earned. It is the honor that is yours because you bear the image of God. I must be careful not to give myself permission to be disrespectful and cruel because you are the enemy of what I think is good, true, and beautiful. I respect you not because of what I think of you, but because of whom God has created and declared you to be.

I will intentionally do harm to no one. Scripture clearly forbids that we would act in any way to harm our neighbor. The Bible prohibits murder, forbids any act of vengeance, calls us to be angry without sinning, and commands us not to gossip. Scripture is clear that all of our responses to one another are to be shaped and directed by love, even if that person is your enemy.

I will take seriously the experiences of others. It is so easy to dehumanize the person I do not know but whose opinion I dislike. It is easy to forget that there is a real person behind the post that has just riled me up. It is important to remember that behind the post, opinion, click, like, or rant is a real person with all the pressures and stressors of life in a fallen world. I might not know what leads people to the places where they are, but I do know that life in this broken world is hard and requires patience, sympathy, and understanding.

I will respond to differences with appreciation and grace. Scripture calls us to unity not to uniformity. God has made us different from one another in many ways. He has written different stories for us, with different shaping influences. We don’t come to the same things in the same ways. We don’t express the same things in the same ways. We don’t see and experience the same things in the same ways. Even those of us who have submitted our hearts and lives to God’s truth don’t see that truth in the same way. There is such a thing as moral right and wrong, but not all our differences are a matter of moral right or wrong. So we approach one another with humility, kindness, graciousness, appreciation, patience, and grace.

I will look on others with sympathy, not apathy or antipathy. People who seem lost to us, who are morally wrong, who are convinced that what is false is true, or who live as functional enemies of God should not draw hatred out of us but sympathy. When someone who is lost comes to you and asks for directions, you don’t hate him, you don’t mock him; you sympathize with his plight and you gladly give him the directions he needs. If what I have I didn’t earn but rather got by grace, shouldn’t I want that same grace for the person who doesn’t have it?

I will require myself to remember that other people are image bearers. We cannot do this enough. In every encounter, personal or digital, keep saying to yourself, “This person is an image bearer, this person is an imager bearer, this person is an . . .”

I will think of no one as beyond redemption. We must view no one and respond to no one as if he or she is beyond the reach of God’s redeeming grace. No one is a lost cause. There is no sin so great, no darkness so deep, and no rebellion so strong that it lives beyond the rescuing, convicting, forgiving, transforming, and delivering power of God’s grace. We need to respond to everyone, remembering that no matter how deep the hole of darkness and sin is, God’s grace is deeper.

As we close this chapter, I am reminded that the ultimate fulfillment of the words of Psalm 8 is Jesus. He is crowned with glory and honor. As the conquering Savior King, all things have been placed under his feet. And because of that, he is our help and hope. It is not natural for us to love our enemies. It is not natural for us to speak with words of grace to those who oppose what we know to be true. It’s not natural for me to treat someone with respect whose lifestyle God says is immoral. Sinful anger is easier for me than righteous anger. So I am again confronted with the fact that I am a person in need of help, and I suspect that you are too. That help is ours for the asking because of who Jesus is and what he has done. Why don’t you reach out for that help right here, right now? Confess your failure, receive his forgiveness, and cry out for his empowering grace.

Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, in The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990), 118.

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