"Danger, Danger!"

Its much worse than being lost on an alien planet

I grew up in a small town in Michigan as the eldest of three kids. My father was a school teacher, so our summers were spent as indentured slaves under the watchful eye of my dad. It wasn’t a bad life, but the days were filled with either mowing grass or working in the family’s massive garden. The days seemed long at times, but hanging out with Dad was fun, and the reward after a backbreaking morning of weeding was that we could go in the house and watch ‘Lost in Space.’ The family TV was an ancient relic located in the basement, so getting a much-deserved break to watch a favorite show was a cool respite from the hard work and heat of the day.

The premise of the show was fairly simple: The Robinson family crash-landed on an alien planet and had to figure out how to stay alive. Each week, they had some new harrowing adventure that would nearly make them extinct, but somehow they managed to survive. There was a robot that was pretty cool looking in a 1960’s kind of way to a 9-year-old , but when something awful was about to happen, the robot would shout, ‘Danger, danger!’ so that everyone could spring into action. That usually got things moving.

It feels like this might be a ‘Danger, Danger!’ kind of moment for us as Americans if we really begin to reflect on the nature and scope of our cultural moment. The Bible states early on, as a backdrop to the entire narrative, that every human being is created in the image of God. This is true without exception, regardless of your culture, race, or background. God imbues us with value, every one of us. It is also important to recognize that each person is a neighbor whom Jesus commanded us to love. When we devalue any person for whatever reason, we are taking this foundational principle and trampling on it, besmirching the image of God in that person or group.

Many of the founding documents of our nation carry language that recognises this fact: “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” The United Nations document “The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” asserts that the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world,” and that “these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.”¹ Such language is also present in Greek philosophy and other historical documents, but its deepest roots are found in the book of Genesis.

The Latin phrase, ‘imago Dei, or “image of God” has served as the most common description that sets humanity apart from all other creatures. God called the creation of mankind “very good,” which sets all humans as special creatures above all the rest of creation. This is drawn from God’s own words in Genesis 1:27:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

An anonymous fifth-century Christian beautifully expressed the church’s countercultural teaching:

The image of God is not depicted on gold but is imaged in humanity. The coin of Caesar is gold; that of God, humanity. . . . God imprints His image neither by hammer nor by chisel but through his original divine intention. For Caesar required his image on every coin, but God has chosen man, whom He has created, to reflect His glory.²

Every human being carries the full dignity and potential of God’s image in their whole being, from the most depraved sinner to the most angelic saint. Martin Luther argued that “God gave to human beings not only intellect and a will to know about God, but also to know God and to seek that which he desires.”³

Anyone who looks at the world around them knows that something went wrong. There is a flawed view of the image of God in people brought about through sin. Our rebellion through Adam against our Creator marred the image of God in all of us. The sinful hearts of human beings led to hostility, competition for resources, and a perpetual disparity between rich and poor and the broken aftermath that results. We have income disparities, class disparities, castes, and almost any other distinction that can separate us. At its core, us versus them is sin. But the incomprehensible news is that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise that one day all will be made right, and what has been broken will be restored. God sent his son, Jesus, to be born from a human mother, with completely human flesh and blood (Gal. 4:4) through what is called the incarnation of Jesus. “The Word became flesh”(John 1:14), extolled by the monk John of Damascus in an eighth-century song:

He whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth shall be held in the womb of a woman. . . . Wonder! God is come among humanity; he who cannot be contained is contained in a womb; the timeless enters time, and great mystery. . . .God empties himself, takes flesh and is fashioned as a creature.⁴

The incarnation of Christ changed everything. It provided the most transparent image of God in the flesh and blood of a human being—including his kingdom character (Heb. 1:3). Simon Chan observes, “Human dignity is predicated on the incarnation, which reveals God’s ultimate goal for humanity in Christ.”⁵

God’s kingdom came to earth in a human body and was seen. Jesus’ eyes saw outcasts. His arms welcomed and hugged children. His fingers touched lepers and the eyes of the blind. His feet became dirty and calloused as he walked the dusty streets of the towns and villages of ancient Palestine. His voice proclaimed justice for the poor, the oppressed, and the captive. Eventually, his body bore the signs of ultimate sacrifice as he paid the penalty for the sins of the very people he created.

It is in the incarnation that the imago Dei meets the missio Dei—God’s mission. This was God's plan from the beginning: just as Jesus would come to ransom people from their sins, he would redeem God’s image, which had become marred in his creatures. And just as Christ perfectly embodied the imago Dei and missio Dei in word and deed as a man, so he also commissioned his church to carry forward this restored imago Dei in missio Dei for those who so desperately need him.

Here’s the rub, as we might hear Shakespeare whisper. American Christians are well-known for applying imago Dei to defending the sanctity of life for the preborn, which is a good thing. Defending the inalienable human dignity of a life inside the womb is God-honoring. At the same time, pro-life means more than just being for life prior to birth, but also recognises that to be pro-life means we value human life as long as life remains.

It is one thing to affirm the sanctity and dignity of all human life in general terms or when speaking in broad categories. But the question is how supportive we remain when specific people who occupy the same spaces as us make choices that may positively or negatively affect us. They might need to draw on some of the same resources we use, or subscribe to a different belief system than we do. They might even side with our opponents or enemies, or arrive illegally in our country. When any of these things becomes true, we might not affirm their human dignity in the absolute terms that we did before they were born.

Objectification is a form of idolatry as it cheapens a person and is a gateway to full-fledged dehumanization. Objectification and dehumanization are the gateway for a new classification that describes all whose appearances, lifestyles, and cultural views are different from our own: we call them “the other.” The way many American Christians have spoken about immigrants lately is a stark example of what it looks like to dehumanize people. Christian ethicist William Barbieri Jr. notes that the same Christians describe the sanctity and dignity of human life with objective terms like “innate,” “God-given,” and “inseparable,” but use subjective language for immigrants as if dignity can somehow be lowered or raised based on one’s documented status or choices.⁶ Narratives from mainstream and social media often inflame such ways of thinking into an unfounded fear of “the other,” though in the vast majority of cases, no personal threat exists.⁷

Stereotyping a person or group as “other” commonly leads to racism, marginalization, hostility, or looking the other way when such things are present. The President of the US and his administration have been remarkably open by their objectification of immigrants in their use of language referring to immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country” and claiming that they are ‘criminals and rapists.’ This inflames feelings against ‘the other’ and pairs naturally with idolatrous tribalism. Such attitudes are clearly incompatible with the image, person, work, and example of Christ Jesus. When “the other” is viewed through the lens of his kingdom, there is no “other”; there is only neighbor.

Using a quote I referenced in a recent post, I would like to bring this discussion full circle to close the loop on the gospel moment we find ourselves in. White Christian groups are significantly more likely than Christians of color, non-Christians, and unaffiliated Americans to approve of the job that President Trump is doing handling immigration, including most white evangelical Protestants (78%), Latter-day Saints (65%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (64%), and white Catholics (63%).⁸ We know that “handling immigration” has included the suspension of due process, the abduction of individuals from the streets by masked agents, and the detention and removal of immigrants to foreign prisons. The administration is also considering the removal of habeas corpus for immigrants, which would remove their right to be brought before a judge.

Are we, those claiming to be Christians, really ok with this? As pro-life evangelicals, is this not at odds with recognizing the imago Dei in all people? Do we unashamedly support life for the unborn, but then fail to cherish life when it is our undocumented neighbor? Can we justify such behaviour according to Scripture? Remember, Jesus leaves no room for exclusion based on whether your neighbor has legally entered the country. The requirement is to love—even if your neighbor is your enemy. And love might mean protecting a neighbor whose life is at risk if they are deported.

It seems to me like this is a “Danger, Danger” moment for people of faith. Unfortunately, it's not an old TV show about a lost family trapped on an alien planet, but is instead the real-life struggles of the neighbor who is in danger while living among us. And you can’t just turn off the TV so it goes away.

1. “The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” United Nations Human Rights, December 16, 1966, https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx.

2. Unknown, Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, in Patrologia Graeca 56:867-68.

3. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 1: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1-5, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan et al. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1999), 337.

4. John of Damascus, “Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos,” in The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber: 1969), 440, 443.

5. Chan, S (2014). Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

6. Barbieri W Jr. (2020). “The Migrant Imago: Migration and the Ethics of Human Dignity,” in Christian Theology in the Age of Migration: Implications for World Christianity, ed. Peter C. Phan. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.

7. Various studies have found that immigrants, whether lawfully present in the United States or not, commit crime at significantly lower rates than native-born US citizens (see Michael T. Light, Jingying He, and Jason P. Robey, “Comparing Crime Rates between Undocumented Immigrants, Legal Immigrants, and Native-Born US Citizens in Texas,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 2020, www.pnas.org/content/117/51/32340/tab-figures-data).

8. https://www.prri.org/research/democracy-at-a-crossroads-how-americans-view-trumps-first-100-days-in-office/.