2025-01-23 A Meditation on Theology of Man

“10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. 12 What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13 And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14 So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” (Matt 18:10-14 ESV)

The desire to fix all things, the quest for a theology of Man, the wild-eyed alternative narratives: this is an illegal intrusion; this is just the birth pains; all this poses the question: can our ambitions halt at the violation of the Human Spirit? Can our inebriated, careless, foolish decisions be submitted to a plain Assessment: is life honored? Is individual agency, contribution, uniqueness, respected? Is the quilt and fabric of Mankind bolstered at a groundswell level, in situ, all around us, Life most positive and Affirmed?

So our theology of Man is simple enough: that all inputs, all scenarios, all hypotheticals: these we cleanse and obscure, make minimal, ignore intentionally, insofar as we stay attuned to a prayer network: simple human needs voiced; individual authorship humbled; joint mission enacted. And we are the first to point out when we’ve erred: life is a litany of errors and costly mistakes, but to make the loving gesture, to make the obnoxious-seeming (implicit already?) apology, to reassure despite that alarm bell that our interlocutors, and we, so easily leap at; this is a refusal to see Warmongering, Signs, Declarations of War, of Intent, of point-counterpoint, as the dominant spirit.

We dominate through love. We dominate through a real high-tensile yet subtle and beautiful, sheer and sheen of a spider’s web, a quilt, a veneer, a soap bubble. To be rooted and grounded in the value of Each Human Life. Not just with bald live-on mandate, but with education available, with contributions possible, with life, liberty and pursuits of happiness available; with continuity and family available. With art for art’s sake and that winning Word that speaks more than a thousand funeral pyres. Sensitively, in mind of a fine Operation scarcely evading the charge (we all are under spiritual attack) of organized mischief, scarcely Carrying On a daring raid and a huge Legitimacy. Our legitimacy: it is ideas of Freedom, that Christ inaugurated to the people chiefly known for Freedom, the Jews. Ancestral worship gone. Polytheism gone. Megalomania or oligarchy gone: care for the poor, in. Care for the dispossessed, in. Sincere appeal to our better angels, in.

It may be that we needed some “language” of might against might, but not of might-makes-right. Might does not make right. More, to be known as a Freedom-fighter, this exemplifies that the pen is mightier than the sword. We fight for the Freedoms Christ bore in His earthly testimony of a life lived well, and in His choice to Die Well. This is a thing of meditation, kind of like how we remember the strangest little blips of conversation or witness from our myriad growing up experiences: it isn’t the scale of the attack, but rather some spiritual eyesight and music that drops the beat on this or that subtle point. Something unhealed, or indeed healed. Something curious. Something life-affirming. Something posing a broad existential question: whose side are you on? And if we cannot go the route, in any good conscience, of might makes right, if we cannot boast of arms and stockpiles and legitimacy therein, then let us rightly boast of a Theology of Man, that sees such low anthropology to wit, sees a need for a highly anthropomorphisized Entity called Christ. How vulnerable, this one is. How susceptible to the wind and the breeze, to a hangman’s legislative deed for the day, to a society drunk on power and false legitimacy, yet to a people Individual and Important, disciples, healed women and men, demons cast out, repentance and reform discovered. He died so that we could invent—were it not front and center already—Resurrection Power.