Proverbs 18:17 says, The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. The rising generation is being catechized into destructive worldviews by loud voices on the Internet that seem right to them, and will continue to seem right to them, unless we, the men assigned to lead our homes and churches help them see how misguided these views are and how far superior the wisdom of Scripture is. Such wisdom, says, God, is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare to her (Prov 3:15). Today we examine the popular idea that science is the only accurate arbiter of what is real and factual—the axiom that only the things we can prove empirically are worthy of being called truth. Thus, secular, non-religious values are the only objective values to be trusted. This episode examines the deficiencies of secularism—the under the sun view of life as described in Ecclesiastes—and the far superior teaching that man is more than a blob of protoplasm; he is the very image bearer of God, Himself.
The worldview we are examining—that there is no spiritual realm, and that man is merely a piece of decaying matter is expressed by a commenter to a New York Times article on meaning in life. When the Hubble space telescope pointed to a black spot I the sky about the size of an eraser head for a week, it found 30,000 galaxies over 13 billion years old with many trillions of stars and many, many more trillions of inferred planets. So how significant are you? You are not a unique snowflake, you are not special, you are just another piece of decaying matter, on the compost pile of the world. Nothing of who you are and what you will do the short time you are here will matter. Everything short of that realization is vanity. So, celebrate life in every moment, admire its wonders, and love without reservation. (Cited by Tim Keller in Making Sense of God).
The first part of this article provides a bracing, no-hold’s-barred materialistic view of the world. You are strictly matter without any soul. You were not created for any specific purpose. There is no afterlife. The world will eventually burn up in the death of the sun. Nothing you do here, be it kind or cruel, loving or hateful, good or evil will make any difference in the end. But if we are just decaying pieces of matter in a decaying universe, how does it follow logically that we should live a life of love towards others. It doesn’t. The materialistic view that science is the only arbiter of truth fails to correspond to what we know about reality. Loving others, protecting human dignity, equality, and human rights—all values that most secular people embrace—cannot come from a materialistic view of the universe. However, such values do derive and in fact historically have derived only from the biblical worldview that man is made in the image of God.
Before digging into this study today, let’s review where we have come in this series, Guiding Our Loved Ones Into a Biblical Worldview.
1. The first worldview truth is that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Everything in human experience reinforces the truth that when you see order, there has to be an orderer. But human sinful nature causes humans to suppress this truth rather than admit that as created beings we are accountable to serve our creator.
2. The second worldview truth we examined was that man is made to exercise dominion over the created order, shaping culture in a way that pleases God. Human sin impacts this fundamental human calling to exercise dominion in two ways. A) First, fallen man turns “dominion” into abuse. From strip mining, to plundering resources, to pollution man has raped the environment instead of cultivating it. It is a fundamental tenant of environmentalism to blame the biblical teaching of exercising dominion for destroying the environment. But exercising selfish dominion was never the command of God! B) The second way sin has impacted the fundamental human call to shape culture is the formulation of secularism, which divides life into slices of pie and argues that religious values may not influence the rest of culture. Rather, they must but locked away in the religious pie-slice of life, only.
3. The third worldview from Genesis 1 is the goodness of creation. Sin has corrupted our understanding of this truth at two points. We blame God for the evils that occur in life rather than our race’s rebellion. Secondly, sin makes us think God wants to deny us the pleasures this world offers. So, let’s move to the fourth worldview principle in Genesis 1—this from vs 26-27. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Let’s examine three aspects of being made in God’s image that ironically have very significantly shaped Western culture even though man’s identity as God’s image bearer is denied by secular people. These three human values of our culture cannot possibly be logically derived from a secular, materialistic, evolutionary, explanation of the origin of man. But remember, lurking in the background is man’s sinful nature that suppresses the truth about God being the creator and the Bible being his revelation to us. Logic is always on the side of Christianity and Scripture. Jesus IS LOGIC. That is what John said, when he claimed that the WORD (Gk LOGOS) became flesh.
Being Made in God’s Image is the Basis for Human Dignity
Being created in God’s image gives humans eternal value because we are created to be an earthly representation of an eternal divine being. The phrase, image of God, in the ancient Near East was used of a king who was the visible representative of the deity. Thus, the king ruled on behalf of the God. Dignity is bestowed on humans because God designed them to exercise dominion over earth on his behalf. This assigned value by the eternal creator provides the only real foundation for human dignity and human rights. Tim Padget writes: In Christianity our value is in our essence, not our effort. Human beings are created with a dignity conferred by God Himself. Dignity is not a side effect of abilities and ethnicity. It is an honor, which we do not earn, nor is it determined by others, but is attached to our very nature, Human dignity is not the sole property of the strong, the healthy, the wealthy, or the powerful. It belongs in equal measure to the weak, the sick, the handicapped, the unborn (The Image Restored). This special role as God’s image bearers sets us apart from all other animals. And God takes this role very seriously—so much so that in a very real sense God considers our treatment of HIS IMAGE BEARERS as our treatment of HIM.
- God explains to Noah why murdering a human being requires the death penalty. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image (Gen 9:5-6).
- Understanding the significance that God places on a human being BECAUSE HE IS GOD’S IMAGE BEARER helps us understand Jesus’ teaching in Matt 25. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (vs 34-40).
- So important is the treatment of every human being because she is God’s image bearer, that James exhorts Christ-followers to be careful what they say to and about them! (The tongue) is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people WHO ARE MADE IN THE LIKENESS OF GOD. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so (3:8-10).
From its inception, the church has cared for the widow, the orphan, the fatherless, the imprisoned. Christians have fed the hungry, brought medicine and built hospitals for the sick, and provided for the poor. Just this past weekend I found out about a group called Good Neighbors Home Repair that has been repairing home for the poor in southern Chester County, PA for 29 years. That is what Christians do. Despite a huge black eye concerning the African slave trade and the southern support for it, only eternity will reveal millions of Mother Teresa stories lived out by Christians who understand the inherent dignity of every human—because he or she is made in the image of God. Though himself an atheist, Luc Ferry, in his book, A Brief History of Thought describes Christianity’s unique contribution to Western Culture. “Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity, an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.”
Though most secular people don’t realize it today, they hold a set of ethical beliefs about human rights, equality, justice, the supremacy of love, the betterment of others, even strangers beyond our shore that CANNOT be rooted in their materialistic worldview. If we are nothing more than a random collection of DNA strands, then why should any human being be valued? We need to help the rising generation see this inconsistency, not to arm them with verbal bullets to judge unbelievers and shoot down their views, but to the contrary—to be so confident in the superiority of the biblical worldview that they are NOT THREATENED by other’s views and can reach out towards the lost with the love of Christ.
Being Fully Made in God’s Image is the Basis for Women Being Equal to Men
Gender is specifically identified in the first chapter of the Bible and in the first mention of mankind being created in the image of God. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27). The text pointedly identifies the image of God with both male and female. They are both endowed with intrinsic value as his image bearers and are equal in value and dignity. It takes femininity to fully express who God is! That fact is unequivocally stated in this creation text. Both exercise dominion over earth in the name of God. It is nearly impossible to overstate how revolutionary this idea was in the ancient world. Authors, Tim Padgett and Glenn Sunshine point out, Women were considered inferior to men in almost all ancient cultures. Aristotle, for example, considered women to be essentially the result of birth defects—they were “misbegotten men,” incomplete and inferior physically, morally, and intellectually… In Rome wives came in a distant third behind parents and children. As for children, Romans typically kept all healthy boys and their first daughter; the rest were discarded and left to die. These problems were not limited to the Graeco-Roman world. All major civilizations in the ancient world and the majority of minor cultures held women as distinctly inferior to men, with far fewer rights, privileges or opportunities (The Image Restored). In contrast was Israel’s culture because of Genesis 1:26-27. Although the decalogue commanded children to be obedient to fathers and mothers, Leviticus 19:3 commanded children to be obedient to mothers and fathers, lest anyone conclude that the decalogue mention of fathers first meant they were to be more highly honored. How has sin affected the worldview truth that women are of equal worth and dignity to men?
1) Toxic masculinity is real. Men of every culture have used their strength to control women. Some Christian men have abused their wives in the name of the biblical teaching that wives are to be subject to their husbands. A great number of women in the feminist and LGBTQ movement have been mistreated by men.
2) Sinful humans resist authority of any type. Paul insists that human authority is instituted by God at all levels of society. The rising generation is being taught that in both Old Testament Israel and in the early church, women were abused through “biblical patriarchy.” The term, patriarchy that is mistakenly claimed to be prescribed in the bible means absolute father rule. I refute this argument in an entire podcast (S1 Episode #33 6/21/20). But we need to help our loved ones see that this claim is based on ignorance of the facts. Rome embraced patriarchy. It was never true of Israel nor of the church. Both OT Israel and the NT church were governed by the rule of law and husbands and fathers were held accountable to that law by the elders. The OT elders of the city required men’s treatment of their families to be consistent with God’s moral law. The second table of the law was summarized, love your neighbor as yourself. Christian men were accountable to the elders of their church to live out what James called, the law of love.
It is an historic fact that the spread of Christianity around the world has done more to elevate the plight of women than any other movement.
Being Made in God’s Image Means Having a Spiritual and Moral Nature
Consistent secular thinkers believe that right and wrong are merely a human construct. One common worldview, known as materialism or naturalism, says that the physical world of matter and energy is all that exists. This view is particularly popular in the scientific community, especially among those who believe that the natural sciences provide the only reliable approach to knowledge. But, as Padgett and Sunshine point out,
To believe this runs counter to our experience of life. First it argues that our consciousness is nothing more than brain chemistry; that free will is an illusion since everything we do is the result of physics and chemistry. Love, hate, self-consciousness, self-awareness, all of these are just chemical reactions. Good and evil and right and wrong do not exist since they are neither matter nor energy. You can’t even call them cultural preferences since a preference is neither matter not energy….You are nothing more than a robot carrying out the necessary and inevitable results of biology, chemistry, physics, and math. While some people claim they believe this is true, it is extremely doubtful that they really believe it deep down, and it is certain that they do not and cannot live as if it were true (Ibid).
The biblical explanation of the origin of mankind’s spiritual nature, including his desire for meaning and awareness of right and wrong makes far more sense. That explanation is that man has been created by a moral being, a holy God who created humans in his image to also have a moral/spiritual nature. Adam had free agency to make moral decisions to disobey God and eat the fruit or not. Paul tells us that all humans have the moral law of God written on their hearts. Those who did not have the written Scriptures show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them (Rom 2:15). Does any logical person doubt the empirical evidence that humans experience a sense of right and wrong? Who would deny that Hitler was evil? But if we are nothing more than blobs of protoplasm, what is wrong with German chunks of DNA strands gassing Jewish chunks of DNA strands? The secular materialist view has no answer. Former Atheist A. N. Wilson later renounced his atheism and came to faith in the Creator. The evidence he found particularly compelling was modern secularism’s problem of explaining the origin of the human conscience—the sense of right and wrong. Tim Keller explains Wilson’s thinking,
“Materialist atheism is…totally irrational,” he said bluntly, and went on to explain that it could not account for the significance of love, beauty in art and morality. Morality was a particular problem, he felt, for the strictly secular point of view. He wrote that one of the last pieces that moved him out of unbelief in God was “writing a book about the Wagner family and Nazi Germany, and realizing how utterly incoherent were Hitler’s neo-Darwinian ravings, and how potent was the opposition, much of it from Christians; paid for, not with clear intellectual victory, but in blood….Ask yourself what sort of mad world is created by those who think that ethics are purely a human construct (Making Sense of God).
If the leaders of our kids’ homes and churches remain silent, the rising generation will be shaped by destructive worldviews. Incredibly, these worldviews are illogical and even silly. The biblical worldview makes so much more sense! Nevertheless they will believe these lies if we do not raise up strong men who will love the spiritually blind well and also help our own loved ones see how misguided these views really are. The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- Why do the leaders of our homes and churches need to step up and winsomely guide the rising generation away from destructive worldviews and into the biblical view of the world?
- Why does being God’s image bearer endow humans with inherent worth and dignity?
- Why do you think that in the creation account of man and woman in Genesis 1, God decided to make it very clear that BOTH are made in his image?
