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?
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