In God’s Image

When I was a little girl, I remember looking at Barbie dolls and thinking, “I don’t know anybody who looks like that.” The dolls were patterned after women, but were certainly not faithfully descriptive of them. Yet, there they were, defining for a whole generation of rising women what the female body ought to be. Shrink the waist, carve out the hip-line, enhance the bosom and make it all fit flawlessly into a skin-tight dress.

The Barbie doll was not created in the image of the woman. It was created in the fantasies of men. It (and the culture it symbolized) captured the imaginations of countless little girls and set them on the road to body-dysphoria. The healthy female form was now viewed with contempt, in need of dietary manipulation, targeted exercise and possible surgical correction.

We do that, you know. We manipulate our expressions of the things (persons) we find beautiful to enhance the aspects we admire and mute the aspects we find ugly or unsettling. When we do, we often forget that living entities are more appropriately self-defined. We cannot impose our own suppositions on them and expect them to conform mindlessly.

We hear it all the time: we are made in the image of God. Shouldn’t it be natural for us, then, to understand divine nature? Well, the real problem is that we tend to get things turned all backward and upside-down. We think that the fact that we are made in the image of God means that God must conform to our likeness and meet our specifications, rather than the other way around. We set out to civilize, acculturate and domesticate a God who is far beyond our limited comprehension.

Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?” Romans 9:20b 

God is not malleable. Idols can be turned out to please the idolater, but Yahweh formed the world, and will not be subject to the world’s attempts to reform divine nature. Jesus made all things before He stepped into His Bethlehem Self-expression. He is not subject to revision by human whimsy. The Holy Spirit is offended when we try to manipulate divine presence to work the will of the created over that of the Creator. We are just no big enough to pull any of that off, now, are we?

Do we see that when we twist divine expression out of its true form to serve some lesser agenda, we are touching the Holy One with unwashed hands? We have forgotten that humility is more than a virtue – it is a spiritual necessity if we are to stand in the presence of God and find mercy. Let God be God (as if we had a choice in the matter) and if someone must change to find harmony with the will of God, let us do the changing, because God will not.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9 

Behavior Gap

Many denominations within The Church are racked with confusion and division right now.  We think we know why, but most of us act on the assumption that the surface explanation is valid. It is not. The division in the post-modern congregation is not racism, gender misunderstandings or views on sexual preferences. Our primary problem is the gap between what we think we believe and what we (functionally) show that we believe.

The fissure is developing along the line of scriptural authority, but it is not a clean line. Why not? One does well to believe that the Holy Bible is inspired and authoritative, but that makes virtually no difference in the individual adherent’s life if the one who believes scripture has full authority has no personal grasp of the content of scripture. In that case, the Bible is reduced to a magical book in the hands of the wizard the adherent follows. Those adherents are not disciples of Jesus, filtering the content of each passage through the Lord’s teaching, but are dancing along behind the wizard, swallowing whatever is poured out to them and going where they are led.

What do we say that we believe? If we look to Scripture to self-define, we believe the words of Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NASB)

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

But sometimes what we say is fully eclipsed by what we do. If we believe that the Holy Bible is authoritative, we will read and study it. If we do not read and study scripture, I would argue that we do not really believe what we say we believe. If we believed that our souls depended on obedience to our calling into grace (discipleship) we would be actively learning the will of God and actively applying what we learn to our behavior.

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By keeping it according to Your word.

Psalm 119:9 (NASB)

If that is not what we are doing, it does not matter what we are saying. We will dance along behind whatever wizard leads us. Willing ignorance disembowels our belief-set. 

Jesus led a handful of disciples who would become shepherds of the sheep. The crowd followed, but not as disciples. Sheep are far more easily swayed than are disciples. We who are called to grace through faith in Jesus must choose whether to be sheep or disciples. If we are sheep, we hope we have the right wizard to interpret our magical book. If we are disciples, we will crack the Book and do the work of following faithfully. Then we will lead with compassion those sheep who follow us, turning as many as we can into disciples along the way.

Psalm 1 addresses the issue for us:

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so,
But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish.

Crack the book. Do the work. Live what you believe.