Two Views of Humanity: Controlled or Free?
I wish every person could see themselves in the more positive light, but most do not. Many spend their hours in mindless, repetitive activities, not much better than the drugs and alcohol the numb the minds of many others. People often approach sex in the same way. Many feel themselves to be victims, blaming others for their own misery; yet those who have what the victims lack are themselves often just as unhappy and disillusioned with life. In a world filled with misery and pain, is it possible to enjoy life? No one totally escapes the troubles and tragedies of life, but how we handle them is a choice. Is having every need met a requirement for a positive outlook? If it is, then we are doomed because no one has every earthly need met, not even the most wealthy and powerful (nor the most profoundly spiritual).
The key is how we see ourselves and others. People and organizations view humans in only one of two ways. The more common view is the one that began in a garden when a serpent used a twisted message of freedom to enslave the first man and woman to himself. Since then, our corrupted human nature, the systems of this corrupted world, and the continuing influence of that same adversary have sought to control humanity. Kings and governments do so to empower and enrich themselves. Companies seek to control their workers for profit. Ethnic groups strive to dominate other ethnic groups to advance their power and prosperity. Many churches and religious leaders, more the rule than the exception I fear, use religious fear to keep their people in line. Even in personal relationships, marriages and families do not escape the manipulations and power games of spouses or parents seeking to impose their vision of happiness on each other. The common tendency seems to indicate a compulsion to control in order to satisfy a need to dominate. Do people feel better when everything and everyone is under their control, or at least seem to be? It would seem they do not because most never stop trying to gain even more control.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a radically different vision. By grace, God liberates believers from sin that controls them and from the need to control. The only Person with a legitimate claim to power over an person has chosen not to demand subservience or force control over his children. His remarkably radical plan is to free each person to become the unique individual he created them to be and allow them to use the gifts he has given them in satisfying, original ways. He encourages us to join with others in the same freedom as communities where each individual may then contribute as he or she is uniquely gifted to the benefit of all and to the glory of the God who so blesses them.
The way of domination and pressured conformity is destructive to the individual. Whether the means is force or promise, the end is a life of dissatisfied victimization or bored discontent. The ideal subject for such intentions is a mindless, obedient drone, who will be provided the bare necessities in exchange for its work and compliance. Often a message of equality is distorted to persuade people to accept this imposition of order from those with power, but it is a false, simplistic message. Equality is an illusion and contrary to reality. Men and women are not the same; each person differs substantially from other men and women. Being equal before God or law is far different than having lives that are the same in every way. Wise parents, for example, love every child equally but recognized that each one is unique.
God did not create humans to be the same. He indeed loves each one, but he knows he made each person to be an individual as different as a snowflake or fingerprint. Is there a more satisfying alternative for such individuals than the compulsion to control? We struggle to control the one person we think we ought to be able to manage, our self, and often divert ourselves from that struggle by seeking to control the world and people around us. If we are to function in God's economy, we, too, must release those around us or under our authority in order to embrace their uniqueness and accept them as individuals. Legitimate authority may allow us to direct the activities of individuals, but does not authorize us to control the person. To free them, however, is delightfully satisfying and enjoyable as we see each unique person emerge and exercise their own special gifts and abilities, both to their own ends and in more effective service to those whom they serve.
For example, a senior pastor needs an associate. He needs very specific skills to complement his own, and the church hires a person who seems perfectly qualified. Yet, as he settles into his position and the church gets to know him, it becomes obvious that he is not a perfect match. In cases such as this, churches openly pray for the Lord to bring the “right person” to fill the position. Did he fail to answer prayer? If not, what should happen next?
Often, the process of trying to force the person to fit the job begins. He wants to keep his position, so he works hard to meet the church's and pastor's expectations, even as he grows increasingly unhappy in his job. The pastor is also dissatisfied and begins to make negative evaluations and perhaps even complains to others in the church. Many members love the associate, and they begin to complain about the pastor. The struggle for control escalates into a major conflict and perhaps even splits the church. Does that sound like God has answered their prayers? Or did he?
The appropriate alternative is to believe that God indeed expressed his will in bringing the associate. Pastor and leaders should look at his areas of true giftedness and see if they might meet some other need in the church, one perhaps previously unnoticed. The associate, just like other members and leaders, must be permitted and encouraged to use his gifts, not suppress them in order to fit controlling preconceptions of the pastor or church leaders. The same principle applies to the larger issues of pastoral leadership; a congregation should be encouraged to grow according to its gifts and not by some imposed vision. Pastors, church leaders, business owners, classroom teachers, and even individuals must learn to accept the differences in their relationships and organizations and stop trying to control them. (Parents, teachers, coaches, and military instructors do have an obligation to train with discipline to create self-discipline, but that does not originate in the sinful urge simply to control children, trainees, or recruits). Husbands and wives, too, need to recognize that God sovereignly leads us into relationships for our good, however we may perceive the process. Problems may indicate a need for us to change but not entitle us to demand others change to suit us. This is a universal principle, I believe, that applies to all dimensions of life, including government and even international relations.
The United States began with a vision of freedom anchored in Biblical ideas. The founders did not create a central government empowered to rule or control the nation. Instead, they sought to shape the leanest form of government they could imagine. In this plan, the people controlled government through elected representatives with limited powers; the government did not control the people or rule the country and was intended never to do so. Kings and tyrants, oligarchies and dictators, and even many so-called democracies control, demand, and enforce obedience on the people, but this was not to be the case for the United States.
However, the urge to dominate and control infects people, deeply colors the various world views that have arisen, and remains the strategy of the devil who, unlike God, despises liberty. Those who gain a measure of power seek, often, to increase it. The elites in government, business, and academia seem to share the same agendas, working in concert even as they wrestle among themselves for control. We have reached a time in our history where their strategies are bearing rotten fruit, feeding their need to dominate by demanding increased compliance from the people. Sadly, in ignorance or in a misplaced willingness to entrust themselves and their security in the often empty promises of others, the people have allowed their leaders to become rulers, who seem to be expanding their control rapidly.
Public schools and universities are prime examples. In the training of teachers and professors and in creating curricula, students are expected to accept control as they are encouraged to trust the controllers. Compliance becomes the virtue, creating drones in the hives of a new order. Personal freedom, beyond sexual immorality and worldly entertainments, is neglected. In place of goals like hard work, excellence, and worthy achievement, students learn to accept mediocrity and lowered expectations in a social order where everyone is supposedly treated the same. Such “equality” isn't measured by a high standard, because a ruling government cannot force production effectively; therefore, no one will enjoy prosperity, excellent health care, or personal achievement except the few elites. Those at the top will steal the more and more of the resources of the achievers with less and less finally reaching the general population. Producers will lose heart and produce less. Most who have expected more will not get more, and the rulers will encourage them to blame the producers (the evil rich). Only the elites and rulers will prosper. Call it oppression, call it abuse, or call it big government; at any level of life, this view of humanity is simply wrong, and it doesn't work!
Assuming my analysis is correct, this isn't an optimistic view. What are we who accept God's view of mankind and choose a Biblical vision of freedom to do or say? Unfortunately, many of us already buy into the controlling message, lulled by the promises of good for everyone. We, who know about universal sin, ought always to be skeptical of those who make such promises. Even Jesus objected to the label “good rabbi,” saying only God is good. Clever promises of a “greater good” are just like those of the serpent, and the Bible has given us clear warning. History, too, should make us cautious because such promises have been made and broken many times and, to my knowledge, rarely if ever kept. The Hilters, Stalins, and Maos, along with numerous lesser tyrants, come to power on such promises; we recognize their evil but overlook their persuasive and charismatic rise to power, speaking words that carried no obvious message of evil. Of course, many of us ignore the lessons of history, and too few schools teach them.
Many rulers, like tyrants of the past, seek to replace God, offering a lesser kind of salvation, transformation, and hope. They urge the people put their faith in government instead of God, but the result of such trust is disappointment, disillusionment, and despair. Many in our country already see this, but it remains to be seen how they will influence the future. Others, however, remain deluded by false promises, made not just at enormous cost, but even to the mortgaging of the future with feckless borrowing. This kind of deception will never end; it is as old as the story of Eden and will only end when the Lord himself ends it!
For believers, our first and strongest response must be to choose only to trust God and to reject the alternative. In doing so, we must affirm and practice the Biblical view, that which is filled with freedom for the individual, encourages his or her personal uniqueness, and renounces the controlling model. This is crucial. The message of salvation and hope is for this world, not just the next. Those who truly believe discover a new way of seeing. The result are contrasts like the following:
Joyful poor versus Discontented rich
Hopeful uninsured versus Well-insured yet fearing death
Fulfilled workers versus Workers who hate working
Lifelong learners versus Smug pseudo-intellectuals
Free and accepting freedom versus Enslaved wanting to enslave others
In other words, freedom, contentment, and joy depend on nothing in this world. While no one wishes to suffer, whether from illness, impoverishment, ignorance or from the demands of others, we who know Christ know that our lives ultimately are his, that he loves and cares for us, and that he will do justice in the end, if not in the present. In dealing with this world's powers, he suffered and promised that his followers would also suffer. We are tempted to heed the serpent in order to escape suffering; this we must not do! As with that story, yielding to false promises robs us of what we already have; we gain nothing and lose everything.
However, our response must not only be personal and spiritual. Jesus gives us the task of ministering to those in need, our fellow-sufferers. We are called to sacrifice to meet their needs, but we are not called to yield our duties to the government or any other entity, not even a congregation or mission board. Many Americans have taken on a kind of modern indulgence by which they think to “buy off” their spiritual obligations. Is this a sin? Yes, technically, this is sin, but for the purposes of this discussion, it is also a self-destructive choice. When we make it, we move from the world of freedom and sacred accomplishment to the world of conformity and control.
I am uncomfortable with the phrase “social justice.” It too often seem to imply giving the government the task of making things right. Government already has that task as it relates to broken laws and punishing law-breakers. Social justice implies righting perceived social wrongs that cannot easily be traced to individual sinners, if they can even be proven at all. This phrase plays too easily into the hands of controlling powers, whose interest is power not justice, whatever they may say (I don't doubt there are a few sincere politicians and activists who want to do good, but they are never the ones in charge!).
For example, believers who feel the need to help those without insurance should find a way to help, not vote for leaders to do it. The record is crystal clear: private, Christian agencies accomplish far more with their resources than any huge government bureaucracy, just as private businesses work more effectively and efficiently than government-run businesses or, even worse, crony capitalism. Schools and the post office, respectively, are prime examples. I am appalled at the ease with which most parents entrust their children, their most precious possession, to government schools, where the teaching of prayer and faith are banned and where values contrary to Scripture are fostered. I guess, for those who have done so, and for those who have been so taught, trusting the government for “social justice” is a logical next step. In taking that step, we not only yield up our freedoms, but we substitute the sacrifices which we ought to make personally to help others for a kind of “shared sacrifice,” with the government determining who sacrifices and how much. Involuntary “sacrifice” is not sacrifice; it is oppression. We do not meet our divine obligation or fulfill our spiritual duty when an outside agency takes from us and dispenses by its rules, often taking a healthy share for those in charge, at the price of our liberty and personal dignity.
First, then, we must look to God for our life, joy, and hope. Second, we must reclaim our God-given obligation to minster to those in need and not continue to relinquish it to government. Neither of these need be political, although politics does encumber congregational life. The Christian life is supposed to be communal, and American churches grossly neglect community life, compared to the rest of the world. While I believe strongly in individual freedom, spiritually and politically, I am saddened by the extreme expression of individualism so common here. This is important enough almost to warrant an fourth point, but I will save it for another time.
Finally, however, I believe we do have a duty actively to oppose the rapid accumulation of power by government. Christian and non-Christians alike argue over whether the United States was ever a Christian nation. I think they miss the point. God's sovereign influence is evident in nearly every aspect of our nation's beginnings. Christian ideas, some would say Judeo-Christian, plainly speak out of countless historic documents, not the least, the “Declaration of Independence” and the “Constitution of the United States”. Others as early as the “Mayflower Compact”, “Lincoln's Gettysburg Address”, and more recently, Martin Luther King's “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” demonstrate the clear presence of divine influence. The founders may not all have been Christians, but Christian ideas are our heritage; we ought not to let it be taken from us by revisionist history or government fiat.
This is history, but it's being ignored. Schools are suppressing this aspect of our history to wipe these ideas out of our culture. Political correctness, another form of control over people, presumes to become a moral authority superior to the Bible or any other religious book or historic document. In replacing these ideas, the government is reaching for greater power over the people, ignoring that we have “certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” rights not given by government but “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” according to our Declaration of Independence (If you've never read it or haven't read it lately, I highly recommend you do so, here).
For believers, this line is stunning: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Politicians and jurists have tried to use the Bill of Rights to undo this, somehow, when clearly our Founders did not find such statements contrary to their own convictions or those of the people. Those who find religion a problem have tried to erase the Founders' belief in God, their assertion of natural rights, and the idea that government answers to the people, not the other way around. They would replace such ideas with rights granted by the government, putting the government plainly on top. Obviously, this should matter to citizens, but should it matter to us who are Christian believers? I say it should!
Can true believers, genuine Christians, “rejoice in the Lord” in poverty, sickness, adversity, or tyranny? They are “more than conquerors” through Jesus Christ, no matter what (Romans 8). “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus!” Should believers give priority to charitable work, regardless of the government's or community's efforts to “provide a safety net?” Indeed, we reach people through serving them, not merely in “giving them the gospel.” Believers are wrong to turn these duties over to the secular powers, who often fail to do them well, waste resources immensely, and demand that “religion” be far removed from such activities.
With those two points established, is it also necessary for believers to seek the renewal or restoration of our civic heritage of freedom, so closely tied to faith? I believe it is although we must avoid either of two extremes. On the one hand, we must not become theocrats, seeking to install our Christianity in the government. First of all, the plan of liberty rests on a small government, on that “governs best as it governs least.” When Christians have tried to assume power, the power seems to have corrupted them, as power is so prone to do. I believe the vision of the founders was almost inspired in simply keeping the government from intruding on the Church and assuring that no religion, including atheism, overshadows any other. When the time comes for God to reign on this earth, I don't believe we will need to “install him.”
The other extreme to avoid is isolation or insularity. Too many congregations act as if they're serving God in secure little fortresses cut off from their communities. Jesus commanded his disciples to pay their taxes to Rome to fulfill their civic obligations as citizens of that empire. In our country, those obligations involve more than just voting. Every level of community and government needs the wisdom and abilities of believers—cities and towns, schools, counties, states, and the nation. As with other callings, God will call out those who are gifted to serve as representatives and civil servants, but the simple act of voting requires knowledgeable voters. We need to be aware of what governments do and stand ready to challenge them when they do wrong, “speak truth to power,” as John Whitehead says.
Perhaps no area of involvement is more critical that that of virtue and integrity. It is so easy to decry the shameful things that public figures do, but it is much harder to work to restore the moral framework that has been lost. Most people, even those convinced that religion has no place, will acknowledge that rampant dishonesty, deviance, and corruption undermine our trust in those who serve us. Sadly, instead of challenging the morality of our fellow citizens, many Christians have allowed themselves to become tainted by their moral emptiness and drawn into their sinful perspective. In other words, if we're not fighting for godly values, then we, our children, and their children will be drawn into their valueless way of thinking.
This brings us back to my initial perspective. With only two ways to see humanity, we must fight on all fronts for the view that values each individual and his or her uniqueness. I believe this is the ultimate battle we face. While the gospel, often described as simple, is the heart of what we teach, if we allow our understanding to be too shallow and too simple, we will find ourselves living under all manner of oppression and subjugation, some even in the name of Jesus! This is both a public battle that we must fight and a private challenge we must face. In the end, it is the nature of fallen humans to want others to be like themselves, to be inclined toward that conforming, controlling view of humanity. As such, it leads us to slip too easily back into that perspective and not to notice when others have done so. We must learn to see people and the world as God sees and fashion our lives, relationships, and activities in in with that view. Only then will we be leading people into that perfect way of living that is uniquely individual, fully creative, gloriously alive, and awesomely joyful, all to the glory of our Creator.
Comments
Fortunately for me my church has unknowingly given me much freedom to try things.
I gotta get my work done. We'll talk about this someday.
Shalom