Why am I a Christian? Not only because Christianity explains who Jesus was and what he did on the cross, but also because it explains who I am. It explains what I am up against as a human being. It tells me where I fit into the greater scheme of things--where I came from, who I am, and where I am going.
What is man? (Ps. 8:4; Job 7:17). What does it mean to be a human being? What is our essence? Without knowing the specific answer to these questions, most of us can identify with the little boy who responded when his irate dad ask, "Who do you think you are?" I think I are in trouble.
I. My person--image
I am made in the image of God. That is who I am. What does that mean? Thinking, rational ability, abstraction, social, environment relationships, spiritual--all are a part.
Generation X--X standing for the unknown identity of the generation. They don't have a name so they are Generation X. So what makes humans human. We know what dog behavior is- -dogs do doggy things, chase sticks, stick their heads out of moving car windows. But what do humans do? Aristotle said we are political animals, Thomas Willis laughing animals, Edmund Burke religious animal, and James Boswell (the gourmet) a cooking animal.
Aristotle may have had it more right than we know: Ideologies are really anthropologies, wrote J. S. Whale, different doctrines of man. Do we have value? Absolute value? Is value relative to contribution? Relative to the state? May humans be exploited?
If we do not get this point right, we become pessimistic and deluded. Some say there is no God so there is no image, and thus no values.
Mark Twain wrote, If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man and deteriorate the cat. But such is too cynical, for it fails to think about love, joy, self-sacrifice, heroism, and the beauty of humanity.
II. My potential--glory
Gen. 1:26-27. Want to expand the image concept to show how gloriously we have been made. Thus we have great potential.
III. My problem--shame
IV. My paradox--overcoming, integrating, I am free.
Richard Holloway: This is my dilemma...I am dust and ashes, rail and wayward, a set of predetermined behavioral responses...riddled with fears, beset with needs...the quintessence of dust and unto dust I shall return...But there is something else in me...Dust I may be, but troubled dust, dust that dreams, dust that has strange premonitions of transfiguration, of a glory in store, a destiny prepared, an inheritance that will one day be my own...So my life is stretched out in a painful dialectic between ashes and glory, between weakness and transfiguration. I am a riddle to myself, an exasperating enigma...this strange duality of dust and glory.
In closing, study from Romans 6, familiar passage.
Free for...but that is next week's final installment. Free for the future, the foundation of my hope.