The Divine Image

Other people. “Important” people. “Unimportant” people. Since the legal profession is a service profession, you’re always dealing with people, inside and outside the firm/company/ agency/office.

What is a person? For our purposes, we’ll limit it to a human being created by God, the ultimate Person. While there are persons in other orders of creation, like the angels, classifying them is not our business, and we’re a little short on information about them. It’s fairly well established that we’re not even sure how many angels can dance on the head of a pin—should they desire to do so in the midst of their more pressing services. And there could be whole categories of created persons we've never heard of.

And who is “important”? Human cultures clearly define who is important and who is not. There are the bosses and the not-bosses, the rich and the not-rich, those with status and those who are sadly lacking. Gifts matter too. If you are smart, beautiful, charming, athletic, musical, or otherwise talented, that may be currency to buy importance. The very word “talent” is derived from Latin and Greek words for a sum of money. If you’re not some or all those things, too bad for you.

When we look at other persons through the eyes of our culture, are we seeing rightly? Since all human cultures are fallen, and we are deeply affected by ours, probably not. For one thing, we wrongly evaluate human life, as to both its value and its length.

Defining the Value of Life

As to the value of human life, these ways of defining “important” are wrong. Each person is made in the image of God, and both male and female reflect the image of God. This means each person. Not only smart, or beautiful, or healthy, or fully developed, or strong persons. Each person. When we look at another human face, we look at something that goes beyond physical presence. It may touch our heart like a baby’s face, be evil and arouse horror, or deformed and arouse pity, but we don’t know or understand God’s work in that soul. And we can’t presume to limit that work, when we understand neither time, space, nor the human soul.

As to our cultural judgements about who is important, God has spoken to that:

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. [For if an important law firm partner comes into your church, and the Mexican immigrant who cleans the bathrooms also comes in, and if you pay attention to the partner and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the cleaning lady,] “You stand over there,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? (James 2:1-5 ESV, slightly modified)

Showing partiality might be an associate attorney who will work hard to give the partner the work in a timely way, but doesn’t see any problem with throwing a lengthy brief on an administrative assistant’s desk at 5:00 p.m., and saying, “Get this corrected and filed tonight.”

Or it could be partners overlooking the toxic or harassing behavior of another partner because he is a big rainmaker.

Let’s also give a positive example. I met the late Ken Starr a couple of times at Christian Legal Society. When he gave a presentation, he was witty and brilliant, he had presence, and his amazing legal career made sense. In a gathering of attorneys, he was completely different. His demeanor was quiet and gentle. He listened—at length—to the least important attorneys in the room and encouraged them. He gave me the impression that he looked at people and saw the image of God in them. He’s with Jesus now, so he is even more like Him than he was.

Defining the Length of Life

Another mistake we make is to evaluate the length of human life in a shortsighted way. Our current human bodies (1.0) don’t live very long. Shakespeare, for example, says,

"Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more." (William Shakespeare, Macbeth)

The Scripture also says:

"The years of our life are seventy,

or even by reason of strength eighty;

yet their span is but toil and trouble;

they are soon gone, and we fly away." (Psalm 90:10, ESV)

The poet goes on to ask God to teach us to number our days that we may be wise.

This all looks different because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. C.S. Lewis put it this way:

"If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment." Mere Christianity, bk. 3, ch. 1

George MacDonald talks a lot about the development (positive or negative) of the human soul. His theory can be summed up like this. Your fellow humans are being made (if they will accept it) into a glorious image of God. Or, if they will not accept the work of Christ, they are sliding into a horror. One person may have more of the mind of Christ in them than we can imagine from what we know about them. Another may be turning into a beast, and if we had Curdie’s gift of discernment, we could feel the paw of the beast when we shake his hand. (see George MacDonald, The Princesss and Curdie). People may pass each other at the same point on the road, but one is going up, and one is going down.

As we deal with eternal beings, we may be accountable for more than we know, especially if we accelerate the downward slide of another soul.

As we consider principles for running a law firm, let’s keep in mind that they are not just important as a way to run a business well, but as an opportunity to respect the divine image in our fellow humans.