What are these competing truths held in tension? The prime example is the doctrine of the Trinity. God is one (in nature), and God is three (in persons). The tension between those two poles is essential. When it is lost we see objections like, “Was Jesus in the garden praying to himself?” This person has lost the threeness. The “divine child abuse” charge, on the other hand, has lost the oneness.
The nature of Christ is another. He is fully God. He is fully human. The tension between those truths is necessary to understand the atonement. Heretics will eagerly list verses that show Jesus was human. They’ve dropped the “God” end of the rope entirely. Modern Christians, though, can lose the tension on the human side. Jesus was not born walking, talking, and potty-trained. It’s unlikely he knew anything about quantum physics during his earthly life. He was a normal man unless his mission required something more.
A place the church has struggled with in the last couple of hundred years is over the tension on our mission and the nature of the kingdom. Bible scholars will talk about the kingdom as “already and not-yet”. Jesus came to inaugurate God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven — right now. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is among you” (Luke 17:20-21). But the kingdom will not be fully realized until Christ returns to destroy evil and make all things new (Rev 21). When we overemphasize the “already”, it’s easy to lose sight of the future judgment and think our mission is merely to feed the hungry or try to soothe social ills. When we overemphasize the “not-yet”, it’s easy to think our mission is only about saving souls and lose sight of God’s commands to care for the poor and the brokenhearted. When we maintain that tension, as I think is becoming more common today, we see that our mission is both.
There’s one particular tension we struggle to maintain today, a place where our society really needs us to get it right. In both the pulpit and in the pews, people struggle with the tension required by Christian anthropology, that is, what we believe about humanity.
On the one hand, Christianity teaches that each individual is of inestimable worth. Each is made in the image of God. Each is a precious soul. Every believer is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit.
On the other hand, Christianity teaches that each individual is horribly corrupted. The image of God is marred in every human, and each soul is born at enmity with God.
When we overemphasize the one side, we end up believing that we’re all so wonderful that God just counts himself lucky when we pay any attention to him. When we pull too hard on the other, we can end up believing that we’re so dirty, so rotten that we’re little more than parasites in the world.
There’s a second axis on this one. Yes, each individual human is precious. But “no man is an island”. We are made for community. We are not complete unless we are part of a whole. And we are the company we keep. On this axis, we can over-value the individual or we can overemphasize our corporate identity.
In our society, even in our churches, we have people who see only the corruption of the fallen state. They see the church as teaching, even themselves as being so irredeemably wicked, so morally filthy that there is no hope and no value in a human being. It is sad when this view is used to attack Christianity; it’s heart-breaking when this view is actually turned inward to attack the self.
The opposite view may be more dangerous to the soul. When people over-value the individual, they seem to lose sight of sin and the need for repentance. Since we are so wonderful God is lucky to have us, he must not be overly concerned about our little foibles and lifestyle choices. God, in this view, doesn’t care about our behavior as long as we are generally “nice” as defined by our society.
On the other pole, we have people who see their identity entirely as part of their community. Their tribe is who they are, and they may see it as undesirable or even impossible to separate themselves from that. Unless they go the opposite direction and believe they are entirely independent from all other human beings. So we can get either identity politics or an extreme individualism that fails to recognize our role in a healthy society.
None of these errors are healthy for an individual or in our society. All of them represent truths Christianity teaches but taken to an unhealthy extreme, truth out of balance.
What can we do? We can make sure we present the truth in balance, that we do not leave people with the impression that only one of those strands is true. And we can correct people gently when we see that they have lost the tension on one of these truths. People are hurting themselves and others because they misunderstand what we say we believe. We can come alongside them and try to correct their course before they wash up on the rocks.
Tim Keller wrote, “The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone.”
Believe that. Teach that. Live that.
Related articles:
Humanity: Made in God's Image
Humanity: The Broken Image
Humanity: God's Image Restored
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