Made in God's image, so what?

I recently got looked at with one of those blank stares again. This is a particular blank stare that I am becoming familiar with.  I know why it happens.  The content of what communicated before the blank stare happens is something potentially so radical and so life-changing that I imagine that it kind of hits people a little off-guard.  Like, wow….I’ve never considered a thought quite like that. 

This is far beyond a religious idea.  This touches the core of humanity and the heart-core of every person.  This touches identity.  This touches relationships.  This touches work.  This touches life goals and vision.  This is the real standard of morality. This touches origin and destiny.  This raises up the valleys and levels the mountains.  It makes every crooked place straight.  It destroys the false image of human glory that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed about.  This does away with distance and maintains utter uniqueness, and yet perfect likeness.   This touches every detail of our lives and has proved to be one of, if not the most powerful ideas that entered into human history, especially in terms of social equality. 

The other day I had a conversation with a friend of mine, that will lay a foundation for a small series of posts that will relate to the question of whether or not our origin is significant…like mankind’s beginning, and whether or not being familiar with that has any real weight in our lives.

This particular conversation between my friend and I resulted from a small study on man that we did a few weeks ago. We used a chapter out of a book to aid us in our study, which contains chapters of different biblical themes with a few questions at the end of each chapter relating to each particular chapter’s theme.  So after taking a look at the “Who is Man?” chapter, one of the reflection questions that followed was, “What is the significance of your origin?”.  So I asked my friend,

“Do you think that this whole, being made in the image of God stuff is significant?  Does it carry meaning in our life today or in our relationships with people?”

 

This is where the blank stare came in….he said,

 “I don’t think that it means anything. Why would our origin have anything to do with us now?”

For two and a half years now my heart has been engaged with this theme of our origin, and how important it is to be connected with it in our hearts, as the basis of our identity, relationships with one another, and our relationship with God.   It throws light on everything….everything.

But as I have shared with people that they are made in the image of God, the initial response that I receive is a blank “so what” stare (similar to my friend’s), as if they wanted to say (to put it nicely), “and what is that to me?”   

What’s funny is that the answer is so huge, so enormous, that I can’t even begin to answer it when I receive one of those looks.  I feel as though within my heart Niagara Falls is trying to flow through a small crack.  Even as I write this I wanted to find a quote that would be a good opener to this topic….so I quickly skimmed through 50 or so articles that I’ve printed (there’s tons that I haven’t printed….tons), and 15 or so books that I’ve collected over the last year or two relating to this topic.

My goal is to communicate this idea in a way that would be relatable to anyone in any context of life. A problem that I have is that I’ve read so many academic books in the last few years, even religious ones, that I have a hard time communicating in average Joe’s tongue or just saying things in a normal relevant way, that does sound academicky....so forgive me for that in advance.  Average Joe has sparked in me a remembrance of a certain quote that would fit well in this post!

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

-          C. S. Lewis,  The Weight of Glory

 I’m finding all of this to be a wonderful paradox.  It is so much greater than I feel like I could ever comprehend, and yet I’m always receiving something tangible and substantial that keeps me passionately moving forward in the discovery of what it means to be made in the image of God and the significance of our origin, and how it relates to my daily life!

So having said that, I think that the easiest way to begin to introduce….

The significance of our origin….

….would be to show how it relates to three very important things in the lives of each one of us:

1.    Our Selves

2.    Our relationship with others

3.    Human history

I would just give a couple of small points regarding why it matters to people, why it matters to the young and old, male and female, every nation, and most importantly…..to you!

Well why would our origin matter?

Book Review: Fill These Hearts by Christopher West (Originally posted on November 6th, 2014)

Before I really get into the book review, I want to say a quick word about how this book even came into my hands, or why I would be interested in a book that is title "Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing" (emphasis added).
It all started about two and a half months ago.  It was mid-August and I had just returned from a trip to Oklahoma.  An older friend of mine had told me about an interesting YouTube video by a guy named Christopher West that he suggested that I check out.  The title of the video contained  the words "Playboy and the Pope," and I'm thinking, what the....... I'm not really interested in anything catholic post-St. John of the Cross (late 1500's), so this is probably a waste of time.  BOY WAS I WRONG!  That video has changed my life.  Now I know that it is Jesus alone that changes lives, but that was a tool that He used to do it, being the carpenter that He is.
Since that time I have dove head first, from the highest point I could find, into Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body teaching, which is basically what that video was about. My...is it wonderful!  The glory of this teaching is beyond the adorning ability of my vocabulary.  In the context of learning this material, there have been moments where new light was dawning upon my mind and heart and got beside myself.  I felt like I jump through this 3-story apartment building I live in, through the roofs.  I could hardly contain myself.
What makes this teaching so powerful to me is that JPII has meditated deeply over what it means that we are made in God's image, and what that has to do with us being male and female, because it is in that, that we see a revelation of the eternal plan of God for us.
So, two weeks ago, I went to see Christopher West speak at a half a day seminar in Pennsylvania.
It was mind blowing.  At the end of the day, I picked up a couple of books including this one; Christopher signed it for me, we exchanged some very beautiful heartfelt words, and now a few weeks later I finished reading this first book.

Book Review:
Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing.  First, the backdrop of this book is today's broken culture, and one of the deepest and most obvious ways in which it is broken is in the realm of sexuality.  Remember that God made us in His own image, and He made us MALE and FEMALE.  We are made in the image of God who is Love. We experience that as this deep call to and need of union, call to intimacy, call to love, and That meaning of our existence is told and shown forth in the design of our own male and female bodies.  We embody this call and need of love, our bodies show forth these things, and in our bodies we can ultimately see what life is about.  We exist for God, because of His love and good pleasure, which us destined for a union with Him.
The design of our bodies correlates to the deepest longings and aches of the human heart.  This is so plain, yet so radical.  I don't know how, but I have never thought of things in that way.  Right now it is so clear, but in the 26 years I have been alive, I have never even once come close to thinking about something like that.  I doubt you have either. And this is all still new to me, so if you are not getting what I am communicating, it's probably my fault.
Anyways, FILL THESE HEARTS.  What I really took away from this book is this ache of the human heart, this longing for something eternal, it has become something very real to me....and more and more I am being un-deceived as to what or Who can truly fill that ache.
Eros is the word that some of ancient Greeks used to describe this Ache in the human heart....an ache for something/one Good, True, and Beautiful.  West in this book does a great job at surveying the contemporary culture: music, movies, art, etc. to discover where that ache is showing it's face, where in our culture it is surfacing.  The truth is that it is everywhere.  Turn on the radio, pay attention to the words, and before long you will catch it.  Our origin is love.  But we were separated from God's love as our origin, and now experience a deep ache for it, although most people are not conscious that that is what that ache is pointing towards.  By the way, you might say, "that is just your interpretation of it....."  Sure it is, I probably wouldn't have interpreted the ache in that way until the last month or so, but right now...I AM EXTREMELY CONFIDENT that the union, the utter closeness, and wanting to know and be known utterly, that our hearts ache for was made by God for Himself.
That's the kind of stuff this book talks about.

"What we experience as an urge toward union with another human being is, in fact, at its deepest level, a longing for something far greater than anything another human being has to offer.  Eros is a longing for the infinite." (page 65)

One thing I have enjoyed is that our desires, or our capacity to desire is something very, very, very, very, very, very good.  We can say, human desire is wonderful, in and of itself, it is something very beautiful, very good, like Genesis 1 very good.  However, because a certain decision by the first man and woman, our desires got very, very, very twisted......but that doesn't make it bad in and of itself. God loves to satisfy the desire of our hearts!!!!  He likes doing it!!! (Obviously not evil desires) So a lot of what this book goes through is talking about this process of untwisting our desires so that we can really find them fulfilled in the Eternal Lord.  This is the good news, that God's Son comes into our hearts and His desires are birthed within us.  That is salvation.

Okay, I could go on and on and on...so I'll just close with some more quotes from the book.

"if a Christian is not passionately pursuing the satisfaction of his deepest yearnings, then he's not really following Christ." (37)

That one blow my mind

 "Think about it: if "the banquet"- infinite satisfaction of our desire in God - is real, then there's no need to repress desire as the "starvation-diet gospel" would have us do, and there's no need to reduce desire to addicting, finite pleasures as the "fast-food gospel" would have us do.  Rather, if the banquet is real, we can and must learn how to unleash desire so God can fill us full." (80)

 "God wants to fill us full with his own divine life...Oh how we long for this infilling! It's the fulfillment of the creature's deepest "ache"....the collective cry of humanity is "fill these hearts!..." (93)

 "The yearning of Eros reveals that we are incomplete, and that we are in search of another to make "sense" of ourselves.  Although that yearning originates deep in our souls, it's also manifested in our bodies.  Our very bodies tell the story of our incompleteness: more specifically, those parts of our bodies that distinguish us as male and female.  Think about it - a man's body makes no sense by itself; and a woman's body makes not sense by itself.  Seen in light of each other, the picture becomes complete: we go together!....might a loving God be trying to tell us something fundamental about who he is and who we are by creating us in this way?"  (8)

Yes!

Imago Dei (Image of God) Video (originally post February 9th, 2014)

O my...I found this video very powerful.
This video is a poetical reflection on what it means to be made in the image of God.
Genesis 1:26-27 records the origin of mankind (that includes all of us), in which our Creator declared,

"Let us make man in Our image, and after Our likeness....So God created man in His own image. In the image of God created He him, male and female created He them."

But I'll be real (to my feelings at least), much of the time, words haven't had any significance to me.... as if they were just another bible story. I have discovered that it is indeed not. But that is for each one of us to personally discover.  Please reflect on this video as offering something of the reality of who you are.

But if that is the reality of who we are, the next problem might be that we don't feel like we resemble God at all.  He is so God and perfect and Loving, and Almighty, and we seem to be very opposite of those things.

While in part, it is true that we are not wholly like God, that is not the whole story...........HIS SON HAS COME! and as this video says,  Jesus "reveals my very self to me."  Jesus is the revelation of who we were meant to be, and when we receive His Spirit, He causes us to get plugged into to this original plan and story of God (His(story)).  I am excited!! I can wait to share this video with people.

Book review: Identity Theft by Mike Breaux (Originall posted January 6th, 2014)

Well, firstly, this book was recommended to me by a brother in the Lord, telling me that it had some good content regarding man as created in the image of God, which is a theme (and much more than that) that has been upon my heart for a period of a little less than a year,  and something that I have been finding very significant to understanding the gospel, and God's purpose for man (humanity).

So I got this book in the mail after having purchased it on Amazon, and read it while riding on the DC Metro train  on my way to work and back.  Before I get into the content of the book...the book is divided up into four chapters (each chapter dealing with a specific way that our identity can get stolen). Obliviously, this book is not dealing with your U.S. identity, such as birth certificate, social security information.

So on my way to work, I got through about 50 pages, and up to that point the content seemed like any number of articles that you could find of the web (except in a longer presentation since this is a book) that basically deal with some problems we get into in relationships: unforgiveness, control issues, etc.  I appreciated what Breaux had to say, but it wasn't anything exceptionally deep, helpful, or new.  But I persevered in reading.

When chapter 2 (out of 4) rolled around, titled "Mugged by the mirror," the nature of what was being communicated in the book started to change.  Breaux in chapter 2 deals with self-image, aka how we see ourselves. He gives some contemporary examples to kind of open the topic up a little bit (plastic surgery, images of famous people, etc.)  There was some neat stuff in there, but still nothing really touching and resonating within me.

Then I arrived to page 68, and I would like to give a couple of quotes from the book.  I really began to sense that Breaux hits the nail on the head with some of his statements, and he began to touch something that was really coming from the heart of God, like "that which was from the beginning" (1 John 1) type stuff, like God's original intention for humanity.  And the valuable thing is that he is communicating it in the context of our contemporary culture.

On page 68 he says,

"And as the lie is perpetuated and reinforced, way too many people - especially young girls - are literally dying in their efforts to achieve an unattainable image. I don't know about you, but to me the hole thing sounds incredibly sinister...
and you know why? Because it's all based on a lie that comes straight out of the depths of hell. It's a plan that the enemy of our souls has had from the beginning to distort our image, to distort the image of God, and to steal our identity...
In facet the whole image thing started a very long time ago, when that identity thief entered a garden called Eden. Take a look: Then God said, "Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves...""

So that quote in particular really being to awaken something in me and resonate in me (perhaps the image of God in me), and at that point this book took off from being another cultural outcry book... Breaux at some points in this book really touches the heart the problems, or shall I say, the origin.

Later Breaux uses an awesome example related to a person's battle with their self image (it had a mind blowing and heart touching effect on me).  He relates the story of a lady that had been battling for years and years with an eating disorder, sometimes with victory, and at other times the compulsion overcame her.  So the lady wrote Breaux and explained her situation, really broken, hwo she battles with her self image, and in the end of the letter, she asks if, in the light of all the other problems going on in the world like aids, or poverty, or starving children, does her wrong self image matter to God?" The thought was 'how insignificant to God it must be that I have a screwed up self image....like I need to get over myself.'

Man, when I read that, I don't know how many times I have thought about people with similar problems (Struggles with their self image) and even told them the answer was to think about people who had it worse off then them, as if to belittle this problem of a false self-image were the solution.  But when I read that story, it hit me, that this battle is probably the most important thing that it going on in this universe (Not poverty or hunger or aids). The battle of the recovery of life in the image of God.  That mankind would discover that they were created in the image of God, and that it has been restored in Christ, and made available to us all in Him.

Mike Breaux

I will close this book review by recommending this book for all who find in themselves an interest in developing a proper view of humanity, a proper worldview, a proper self-image, and I will close with just a few more quotes that struck me...

"It is critical that we grasp the truth that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in His image." (75)

"I will not be held prisoner by the reflection in some silly piece of glass.  I will pursue no other image than the image of God in me." (77)