When I was little, I always took Genesis 1:27
God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them
to mean that God looked like a person. When I was little, he was always a bearded, old man on a throne in the clouds.
At the gym this morning, I was listening to Jonathan Pageau's podcast where he was talking with Peter Leithart about using the Bible as a way of seeing the world. It's an excellent conversation, filled with wisdom, but here I only want to talk about one aspect.
It struck me that "made in the image of God" refers, in part, to creativity. Birds make the same nest over and over again. The males sing the same mating songs they've always sung.
Yes, I know, evolution and change and no, sparrows weren't singing those songs 350 million years ago and all that, but work with me here, people.
When I drive around San Diego, I see things people have created, things unique to the individuals who created them. When I walk around my house, I take in the aesthetics of our recent remodel from the change in the layout of the house to the art on the walls. The design and overall feel is unique to wife kitteh and me. We created something distinct from all other houses.
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters. Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good.
We created something unique and we saw that it was good.
Made in the image of God is an assertion of how different we are from the animals. Some creatures might deviate from their species norms slightly, but no other living thing exhibits our imaginative effects on the world around us.
1 comment:
That's fair. This would also be an argument against the people who say that we "shouldn't meddle in God's domain", because if our desire to create is built-in as part of God's image, then that's clearly what He wanted us to do.
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