As Go the Seminaries (Sign #3): Failure to See God’s Image

Yes, the Church needs a new Reformation, one with a better understanding of the Image of God. That is why a myth worth dispelling is that “Christian Truth Doesn’t Apply to Politics.”

Our whole Christian worldview—with God as our focus—is supposed to be lived out, not just observed as a museum exhibit, open on Sundays.

Returning to Pastor J. D. Greear’s commentary, he paraphrases “Thomas Sowell [noting], the Christian worldview teaches incredibly unique things about the nature of man, the value of life, the principles of justice, and the dangers of power. We assume most of those now as givens, but they aren’t. Other worldviews come to different conclusions about all of this, and the vision for public life is accordingly different.”

Different is a kinder word. A world of decreasing Christian understanding and of theological misapplication is a downward spiral toward hate. A melting pot world with many true religions leads people away from valuing the Christian worldview.

The social justice movement in our seminaries causes some like a national pastor to ask whether Jesus would be more at home in the migrant caravan or at a Trump rally (seriously, are those my only two choices???) to which the echo chamber proudly proclaimed in reply after reply, “The CARAVAN!” (I’m trying to wrap my mind around sinless Jesus storming the border of Mexico and Guatemala to force His way in.)

This social justice movement clouds people’s vision. Consider a woman I’ll call VM who chastised me, “You are delusional because you are blinded by your white fragility and white centric worldview that bars you from seeing clearly…You are misreading scripture! Perhaps you need to bone up on your hermeneutics.” (ouch!)

In one of the articles I was reading, a pastor named Lee Hull Moses wrote,

“Can we call ourselves followers of the Prince of Peace and not condemn violence born of bigotry and hate? Likewise, I don’t see how we can read the story of Jesus welcoming the children and not have something to say about the migrant children separated from their parents at our southern border.”

All this to say that the social justice movement in our seminaries has caused people to focus on the red-and-blue wrong things (skin color, gender, nationality, political beliefs, etc.) and not on the right things (Christ, sinless, perfect sacrifice for sin…for Jew and Gentile alike). They turn Jesus into another migrant crawling under barbed wire and giving sin a pass instead of a sinless Savior providing atonement.

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Worth asking is how we’ve come to believe a person has more (or less) of the Image of God based upon such dividing points. It’s not just liberal theologians and shallow thinkers… (to be continued)

Think about it:

If we saw the Image of God in our fellow man, how would that help us to love our enemies? To forgive them? To show them grace and point the way to Christ?

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I pray for today’s election, Lord God, that Your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. I pray that all true Christians would have sought Your perspective as our King before voting and would have confidence in You alone. Help us to take refuge and comfort in Your Word and to live out the high calling to love others as You have loved us.

Luke 6:22 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets…27 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”