Errant Worth and Dignity?

Unpopular Opinion: Human’s as God’s image bearers (Gen. 1:26-27) only works as a basis for the “inherent worth and dignity of every individual” in a modern sense if we remove it completely from its original context.

I mean, have you seen how God has his people treat their fellow “image bearers” throughout the chapters that follow Genesis 1? Dignified it is not. Take the slavery, genocide, sexism and religious intolerance for starters. Just what was that “image bearing” worth to the biblical authors and their God exactly?

If we think it through, we’ll quickly realize that the divinely sanctioned treatment commanded in the Bible does not exactly respect or reflect a modern list of human rights (it’s not even close), so how can it be the source of said rights? Seriously, we can’t even get past the first of the ten commandments without encountering the very opposite of modern religious freedom (only their one God or else... yikes!).

If biblical ethics has served as a “foundation“ for modern moral ideals (several cultural and historical layers down there somewhere), it is largely in the sense that continually learning from the mistakes of our past has been invaluable to western civilization continually evolving and in its finer moments, moving a smidge towards something better (i.e. you know, like a modern biblical interpretation that keeps the flowery “image bearer” language and throws out its contextual meaning: failure to reflect God’s nature as we ancient men see fit will not be tolerated).

Think of it this way: If the Bible were software, it would be an early beta version of human ethics full of poor design and software bugs (often crashing) and yes, a good idea or two worth keeping hidden in that ancient code here and there. That said, as far as modern moral sensibilities go, we largely have generations of cultural “upgrades” to thank for what that looks like now. But hey, you‘ve got to start somewhere.

In the end, looking back and reflecting on the Bible’s idea of ethics (like the highs and lows of the collective childhood of humanity), we can perhaps take an attitude like Edison did when rejecting the idea of failure. The Bible? What can we say? We just successfully discovered 1,000 ways not to do it.