CIVIL REVOLUTION: SAINT

 

Biblically speaking, a saint is someone who has been “set apart” by Jesus in order to fulfill their part in the kingdom agenda – primarily to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.”* But what about those who do not profess to be Christians? Where do they fit in this “set apart” status? In God’s view, there are no little people or places. All have equal value. Every person you meet has been “set apart” from the rest of the created order, majestic in the reality that they are made in God’s image: 

Then God said, “Let us make man [and woman] in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.** 

Unfortunately, the wrong idea has taken root in the world – the idea that there are lives out there that matter less than other lives. Much of this problem stems from the sources of our identity: “The only thing that shapes your identity more than the pursuit of your passions is your internal narrative: the story you tell yourself about yourself.”*** If our identity is performance-based, we will eventually lose. No matter the endeavor, no matter how hard we strive, everyone comes to a point where they can no longer perform at the same level as earlier in life. The height to which we can ascend drops dramatically. Christianity resolves this identity crisis with the knowledge that every single person is made in God’s image. People are valuable solely because of that fact – not because of what they do or achieve, or where they were born or the color of their skin.

So what should our response be to this good news that every single person we encounter is an image-bearer of God, unique in all of creation – no matter how marred that image may be during our interaction? “When we hear the word that we are not lovable, we are not hearing the word of God. No matter how unlovely, how impure or weak or false we may feel ourselves to be, all through the ages God has still called us lovable.”****  Or as Dostoevsky so perfectly wrote, “To love a person means to see him as God intended him to be.”^ So how can you help those you encounter who feel they are unlovable? “If you do not give up, but proceed to love the unlovely in a sustained way, they will eventually become lovely to you”^^  – and to themselves!

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal… And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. ^^^

Video: Valued

Music: Beautiful

 

*Luke 10:27

**Genesis 1:26-27, 31

***Steve Magness & Brad Stulberg, The Passion Paradox, Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books, 2019, Kindle – location 2270

****Shea Tuttle, Exactly as You Are, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019, Kindle – location 414

^Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002

^^Tim & Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2013, 103

^^^C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, New York, NY: HarperOne, 1980, pgs. 45-46