Last week I continued sharing the final application that Kevin DeYoung of The Gospel Coalition recently wrote about “Thinking Theologically about Race Relations: The Image of God.” Today, he shares with us his concluding thought.
1. The image of God speaks to the inherent worth and dignity of every human being.
2. If the image of God reminds us who we are, it also directs us to what we ought to be.
3. We would do well to start with what we have in common rather than with what separates
us.
4. As image bearers, we are free moral agents, responsible before God for our choices.
5. We should seek to understand our fellow image bearers as whole people, not as
truncated versions of the worst parts of their life and character.
6. We should be slow to attribute to individual image bearers the unfavorable characteristics associated with a broader group identity—especially when that broader group identity was not freely chosen or the broader group denounces those unfavorable characteristics.
Concluding Thought
Several weeks ago, a Juneteenth street party in north Charlotte erupted in violence. Hundreds of shots were fired, with more than a dozen people either dead or wounded. Charlotte City Councilman Malcom Graham, who serves the district where the shooting happened, expressed sadness over the renewed violence in an area that has been making efforts to improve itself. “This does not define us, but is certainly something very tragic,” Graham said. “What happened last night in the city and on that corner, which has a history of being self-sufficient, a lot of good work going on by neighborhood leaders and organizations. Last night certainly won’t define who we are, but certainly it is giving cause for concern about how we conduct ourselves.”
I agree with Councilman Graham. The actions of a few should not define the character of the many. And what goes for north Charlotte, goes for the whole country. At the heart of our current racial tension is a feeling shared by almost everyone: Why are you judging me based on the worst examples of my skin color, my ethnicity, or my profession?
There are 330 million people in this country. If all our thoughts, words, and deeds were known, you could make the case for a horrifically dystopian America. If we look hard enough, we will find justification for our worst fears. We will always have examples of our tribe being picked on by the other tribe. We will always have examples of our side behaving nobly and the other side behaving dastardly. It assures all of us that our preferred narrative is utterly unfalsifiable.
Some of God’s image bearers commit acts of atrocious wickedness. They should be deterred, denounced, and punished. Some institutions and laws in God’s world are unjust. They should be changed and their affects ameliorated. At the same time, surely loving our neighbors entails giving the benefit of the doubt to others wherever possible—not assuming the worst about the individual and not assuming the worst individual is indicative of the whole group. If we are going to burn the country down—figuratively and literally—every time we see their bad guys doing bad things, we give power to the worst people to set our agenda instead of to the best. We ought to reject any narrative that tells us that “those other people”—black, white, Hispanic, Asian, cops, protesters, Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists, rich, poor, Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals—are as bad as the worst people of their kind. We should not curse people made in the likeness of God. More than that, we should have a good reason before we castigate them too.