The Picture Frame Makes a Difference

Many years ago, I discovered that the frame around a picture makes a big difference. Framing, as well as painting, is an art. The color and design emphasize certain aspects of the painting and causes the person viewing the painting to focus on particular parts of the artwork.

As I'm rethinking different parts of the picture of God's story and His love for His creation, I'm learning to re-frame that picture, and it is helping me a lot. The Lord is using many means to help me re-frame the story. One means is through the writings of authors I have discovered, one of which is Richard Beck. In his very interesting and wonderful book, The Slavery of Death, he presents why he believes that humanity's predicament has more to do with our mortality than with our morality. In other words, our fear of death is the better framework for the picture of humanity's basic problem than is sin.

Beck says: "Death, not sin, is the primary predicament of the human condition. Death is the cause of sin. More properly, the fear of death produces most of the sin in our lives."

As I have read Beck's work and looked into some of the theology of the early church fathers, I've come to appreciate this framing of humanity's problem over the framing that many of us in the western stream of Christianity have been given. Many of God's people in church history and today as well understand humanity's need to be more a need for a Deliverer than for a Judge. In other words, we are born mortal and fearful of death rather than sinful. Sin is the result of fear of death which has us hopelessly trapped and in need of a Deliverer.

This in no way denies that we all sin, but it sees sin as the symptom of something more profound.

In a society in which lack of food is not a threat to physical life for most people, the fear of death takes on the form of neurotic anxieties, such as fears related to self esteem or having significance and acceptance from others. In our desire to be immortal, we attach ourselves to causes or organizations or religious groups that will last beyond our lifetime; or we place our hopes in our children's success as a way to ensure our success; we compete for positions and for recognition...etc.

I can see advantages to framing humanity's primary problem in mortality and fear of death rather than framing it in moral behavior. I'll share 3 reasons I like this framing:  first, it highlights God's graciousness and compassion towards humans.  The legal framework emphasizes God as angry Judge who demands that law-breaking humans be punished; but God is loving Creator and Father who in great compassion for His creation comes in His Son to rescue humanity from the grip of this fear of death by defeating it in His flesh (Heb. 2), forgiving and healing and reconciling us back to Himself to live in fellowship with Him; in that living fellowship we are empowered to walk free from anxieties that drive us to sinful practices.

The second reason I think framing the story of man's predicament in mortality is better is that it doesn't pit Jesus against God. In other words, it doesn't present Jesus as taking our side against God's anger towards humans; but rather it shows that God and Jesus have always been of one mind in unconditional, unchanging love for weak humans and that they are in agreement about our need for deliverance from the one who holds the power of death over us: (Heb. 2:14,15) "By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death."  (2 Cor. 5:19) "In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them."

The third reason I believe framing humanity's predicament in this way is good is that it sees humans through a more compassionate lens and moves us away from our tendency as western evangelicals to see people primarily as sinners who ought to know better and so should be judged and condemned. Rather than seeing ourselves and others as primarily law-breakers of God's holy law, we see humans as born fearful and driven to sin because of the desperate need to escape death in its many forms. In my own experience, since changing how I frame the picture of humanity's fall, I find myself slower to judge and condemn others because I now see them (and myself) as captive to a fear that only Jesus can deliver us from. This awakens compassion and desire to help people know that there is freedom from the fear of death.

(Much of the way we frame God and His story is rooted in our beliefs about the atonement. If you're interested in viewing an interesting presentation of the eastern and western views of the atonement, you can go to this link:  The Gospel in Chairs.)