The Most Important Idea
Humans are believing machines. Who are we? Where did we come from? What is worth pursuing in life? What should we avoid? What, if anything, gives life meaning and purpose? What does success in life look like? How does life work best? How should we relate to others?
Everything we do, every action we take, is based in a belief. What we believe shapes how we live. What we believe together determines the types of communities and societies we form. Therefore, it is important to examine the beliefs we build our lives around.
The most important belief that anyone could hold is “All human beings are created in the image of God.” Every human being was uniquely created to reflect the identity of a being of infinite power, creativity, beauty, and goodness.
Believing in a creator God is foundational to – and comes before – anything one might believe about Jesus.
Believing in a creator, moral God is foundational to morality. Without a higher power who establishes a moral framework, there is no such thing as right and wrong, but only opinions and preferences. Or on a larger scale, these individual preferences combine to form cultural opinions or preferences. Without God though, there are no moral absolutes. Nothing is truly right or wrong.
Vladamir Solovyov sarcastically commented on the moral framework of secular (atheistic) humanism when he wrote, “Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another.” He is not making a statement about evolution. What he is saying is that you don’t get to “we must love one another” from a God-less, materialistic worldview. In other words, if the atheistic, materialistic belief about the world is true, then right and wrong don’t matter. They don’t even exist.
If we are all un-created material, murder as a moral evil doesn’t exist. It is simply one object acting on another. Without a moral law giver, the strongest statement we could make about someone murdering us or someone else is, “I don’t like it.” On the group level we might say that murder is wrong because “we don’t like it” but that isn’t a moral absolute. Without a moral lawgiver and the belief that all people are created in the image of God, a moral framework based on group preferences always works out where there are certain people “we” are okay with killing, exploiting, or enslaving because they aren’t one of “us.” History and the world today abound with examples.
The belief that all people are uniquely created in the image of God is the origin of the concept of universal human rights. The connection should be obvious. The United Nations “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” doesn’t mention God, but is full of faith claims. Article 1 for example says, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Where did these ideas come from? What are they based on? They are certainly not self-evident. The tools of science cannot establish that people are “born free and equal in dignity and rights.” If humans are endowed with reason and conscience, who endowed them? Who had these things to endow or give in the first place?
For a season of my life I regularly had breakfast with a man who worked for the United Nations Human Rights Council. He isn’t a Christian, but he said his job was mainly using whatever limited tools he had to persuade non-Christian countries to accept and abide by the concepts of the UNDHR, which they saw as Christian beliefs and not their own.
The belief that you and all people were created in the image of God also means that each and every one of us was born with a purpose. We didn’t just happen, we were created and created for a reason. It then becomes our primary vocation to look to the God who made us and figure out what that purpose is and live into it. It becomes the aim of parents and adults to teach children that they were made for a purpose and help them find it and live into it. It teaches us to look to all people as having something unique to give and teach and gives us a desire to see every bit of that human potential come to its fullest flower.
The most important belief is that “All human beings are created in the image of God.” It is the foundation of morality and human rights. It is the origin of our purpose – and knowing that we have one. It is the key to human flourishing and the Christian story only gets better from here.
– – – – – – –
You may also be interested in:
