42 Sermon Illustrations on Image Of God

The social theory of the Trinity has been popular in the twentieth century.

Herodotus (“A History of the Persian Wars”) amused himself in his Mediterranean travels with noting how much Persian gods looked like Persians. The tendency to make God in our image has had a long run. We still project both our best and our worst onto the object of worship. Modern Americans depict Jesus as an industrialist, a labor unionist, a revolutionary, a feminist, and a success preacher. About a decade ago, a reviewer of Hans Hugn’s best seller “On Being a Christ” noted the similarities between Kung’s Jesus and Kung himself. Jesus, in Ralph McInerny’s immortal phrase, emerges as “The Man Who Would Be Kung.”

The social theory of the Trinity views the Godhead through the relationships within a human family. It has its limitations but also offers insight into the Trinity. Reality at is core is not only personal, but tri-personal and communal.

Wilcox’s daughter wanted to know what the tooth fairy looked like. Later she wanted to know what God looks like. She decided the best explanation is that Jesus shows us what God is like. In another sense, our love for our children shows them what God is like, too.

Self-love in our culture has become a cult. Moses and Jesus don't command us to love ourselves. Self-love is a fact but not a virtue. Self-love is the biblical notion of sin (2 Tim. 3:1-4). But neither should we hate ourselves.

1. One key: Self-denial and the cross.

2. Second key: Self-affirmation and the cross.

a. Brought out by Jesus in is teaching about people.

b. Brought out by Jesus in his attitude toward people.

c. Brought out by Jesus' mission and death for people.

3. Resolving the paradox.

a. Affirm what we are by creation.

b. Deny what we are by the Fall. [1484]

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Full article: Am I Supposed To Love Myself or Hate Myself? (The cross points a way between self-love and self-denial) by John R. W. Stott

How should I think of myself? What attitude should I adopt toward myself? These are contemporary questions of great importance, questions to which a satisfactory answer cannot be given without reference to the Cross.

A low self-image is common, since many modern influences dehumanize human beings and make them feel worthless. Wherever people are politically or economically oppressed, they feel demeaned. Racial and sexual prejudice have the same effect. As Arnold Toynbee put it, technology demotes persons into serial numbers, “punched on a card and designed to travel through the entrails of a computer.” Ethologists like Desmond Morris tell us that human beings are nothing but animals, and behaviorists like B. F. Skinner say that they are nothing but machines programmed to make automatic responses to external stimuli.

Further, the pressures of a competitive society make many feel like failures. And, of course, there is the personal tragedy of being unloved and unwanted. All these are causes of a low self-image.

In overreaction to this set of influences is the popular movement in the opposite direction. With the laudable desire to build self-respect, it speaks of human potential as virtually limitless. Others emphasize the need to love ourselves. In his perceptive book Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship (1977), Paul Vitz cites the following as an illustration of “selfist jargon”:

“I love me. I am not conceited. I'm just a good friend to

myself. And I like to do whatever makes me feel good....”

Another example is this limerick:

There once was a nymph named Narcissus,

Who thought himself very delicious;

So he stared like a fool

At his face in a pool,

And his folly today is still with us.

A COMMON ERROR

In spite of widespread teaching to the contrary, the Mosaic injunction, endorsed by Jesus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” is not a command to love ourselves. Three arguments may be adduced.

GRAMMATICALLY, Jesus did not say that the second and third commandments are to love our neighbor and ourselves, but that the second commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Self-love here is a fact we should recognize (and use to guide our conduct, as with the Golden Rule), but it is not a virtue to be commended.

LINGUISTICALLY, agape love means self-sacrifice in the service of others. It cannot therefore be self-directed. The concept of sacrificing ourselves to save ourselves is nonsense.

THEOLOGICALLY, self-love is the biblical notion of sin. One of the marks of the last days in which we live, Paul writes, is that people will be “lovers of self” instead of “lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:1-4).

ONE KEY: SELF-DENIAL AND THE CROSS

The question is, How can we renounce both self-hatred and self-love? How can we avoid a self-evaluation that is either too low or too high? In biblical terms, how can we “think soberly” about ourselves (Rom. 12:3)? The cross of Christ supplies the answer, for it calls us both to self-denial and to self-affirmation.

Jesus' call to self-denial is plain: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Now, the Romans had made crucifixion a common sight in all their colonized provinces, and Palestine was no exception. Every rebel and criminal who was condemned to death by crucifixion was compelled to carry his cross to the scene of his execution. John wrote of Jesus that “carrying his own cross, he went out to The Place of the Skull” (19:17). To take up our cross, therefore, and follow Jesus is vivid imagery for self-denial. It is to “put ourselves into the position of a condemned criminal on his way to execution” (H. B. Swete). For if we are following Jesus with a cross on our shoulder, there is only one place to which we can follow him: the place of execution. As Bonhoeffer put it, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

To deny ourselves is to behave toward ourselves as Peter did toward Jesus when he denied him three times. The verb is the same. He disowned him, repudiated him, turned his back on him. So must we do to ourselves. Self-denial is not denying ourselves luxuries like candies, cakes, cigarettes, and cocktails (though it may include this); it is actually denying or disowning ourselves, renouncing our supposed right to go our own way. Paul was elaborating the metaphor of cross bearing when he wrote that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). We have taken our slippery self and nailed it to Christ's cross.

ANOTHER KEY: SELF-AFFIRMATION AND THE CROSS

I wonder how you have reacted to the last couple of paragraphs? I hope you have felt uneasy about them. For they have expressed such a negative attitude to self that they appear to align Christians with the bureaucrats and technocrats, the ethologists and behaviorists, in demeaning human beings. It is not that what I have written is untrue (for Jesus said it), but that it is only one side of the truth. It implies that our “self” is wholly bad and must therefore be totally rejected, indeed “crucified”!

But we must not overlook another strand in Scripture. Alongside Jesus' explicit call to self-denial is his implicit call to self-affirmation (which is not the same as self-love). Nobody who reads the Gospels as a whole could possibly gain the impression that Jesus had a negative attitude to human beings himself, or encouraged one in others. The opposite is the case.

Consider, first, his teaching about people. He spoke of their “value” in God's sight. They are “much more valuable” than birds or beasts, he said (Matt. 6:26; 12:12). What was the ground of this value judgment? It must have been the doctrine of Creation, which Jesus took over from the Old Testament. It is the divine image in us that gives us our distinctive value. In his excellent little book The Christian Looks at Himself (1975), Prof. Anthony Hoekema quotes a young black who, rebelling against the inferiority feelings inculcated in him by whites, put up this banner in his room: “I'm me and I'm good, 'cos God don't make junk.”

Then, second, there was Jesus' attitude toward people. He despised nobody. On the contrary, he went out of his way to honor those the world dishonored, and to accept those the world rejected. He spoke courteously to women in public. He invited children to come to him. He spoke words of hope to Samaritans and Gentiles. He allowed leprosy sufferers to approach him and a prostitute to anoint and kiss his feet. He ministered to the poor and hungry and made friends with the outcasts of society. In all this, his love for human beings shone out. He acknowledged their value and loved them, and by loving them he increased their value.

Third, and in particular, we must remember Jesus' mission and death for people. He had come to serve, not to be served, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Nothing indicates more clearly the value Jesus placed on people than his determination to suffer and die for them. He was the Good Shepherd who came into the desert to seek and save only one lost sheep, and who laid down his life for his sheep. It is only when we look at the cross that we see the true worth of human beings. As William Temple expressed it, “My worth is what I am worth to God, and that is a marvelous great deal because Christ died for me.”

RESOLVING THE PARADOX

We have seen so far that the cross of Christ is both a proof of the value of the human self and a picture of how to deny and crucify it. How can this biblical paradox be resolved? How is it possible to value ourselves and to deny ourselves simultaneously?

The problem arises because we discuss and develop alternative attitudes to ourselves before we have defined this “self” we are talking about. Our “self” is not a simple entity that is either wholly good or wholly evil, one that should therefore be either totally valued or totally denied. Our “self” is a complex entity of good and evil, glory and shame, which therefore requires that we develop more subtle attitudes.

What we are (our self or personal identity) is partly the result of the Creation (the image of God), and partly the result of the Fall (the image defaced). The self we are to deny, disown, and crucify is our fallen self, everything within us that is incompatible with Jesus Christ (hence Christ's command, “let him deny himself and follow me”). The self we are to affirm and value is our created self, everything within us that is compatible with Jesus Christ (hence his statement that if we lose ourselves by self-denial we shall find ourselves). True self-denial (the denial of our false, fallen self) is not the road to self-destruction, but the road to self-discovery.

So, then, whatever we are by creation, we must affirm: our rationality, our sense of moral obligation, our masculinity and femininity, our aesthetic appreciation and artistic creativity, our stewardship of the fruitful earth, our hunger for love and community, our sense of the transcendent mystery of God, and our inbuilt urge to fall down and worship him. All this is part of our created humanness. True, it has all been tainted and twisted by sin. Yet Christ came to redeem and not destroy it. So we must affirm it.

But whatever we are by the Fall, we must deny or repudiate: our irrationality; our moral perversity; our loss of sexual distinctives; our fascination with the ugly; our lazy refusal to develop God's gifts; our pollution and spoliation of the environment; our selfishness, malice, individualism, and revenge, which are destructive of human community; our proud autonomy; and our idolatrous refusal to worship God. All this is part of our fallen humanness. Christ came not to redeem this but to destroy it. So we must deny it.

DIGNITY AND DEPRAVITY

There is, therefore, a great need for discernment in our self-understanding. Who am I? What is my “self”? Answer: I'm a Jekyll and Hyde, a mixed-up kid, having both dignity, because I was created in God's image, and depravity, because I am fallen and rebellious. I am both noble and ignoble, beautiful and ugly, good and bad, upright and twisted, image of God and slave of the Devil. My true self is what I am by creation, which Christ came to redeem. My fallen self is what I am by the Fall, which Christ came to destroy.

Only when we have discerned which is which within us shall we know what attitude to adopt toward evil. We must be true to our true self and false to our false self. We must be fearless in affirming all that we are by creation, and ruthless in disowning all that we are by the Fall.

Moreover, Christ's cross teaches us both attitudes. On one hand, it is the measure of the value of our true self, since Christ died for us. On the other hand, it is the model for the denial of our false self, since we are to nail it to the cross and so put it to death.

Gender roles are ambiguous in Bible, and may be for a good reason.

I. Ambiguity over gender roles may be God-inspired.

A. Both sexes are in the image of God. Gen 1:26-28

B. Side-by-side complementarity is God's intended plan. Gen 2:18-25

C. In Christ, the curse is substantially reversed.

1) Formerly politics of rule and revolt in the home. Gen 3:16

2) Now grace of mutual submission. Eph 5:21-33

D. Full equality in Christ. Gal 3:28

E. Joint heirs of spiritual gifts and co-leaders. 1 Cor 12:1-31;

Rom 12:3-8; Eph 4:11-16; Acts 2:17-18

II. Observations:

A. Great physical differences, incorporated in norms of societies.

B. Male priority is found in creation, not culture. 1 Cor 11:8;

1 Tim 2:13

C. Sexual distinctions must be made in ministry. 1 Cor 11:2-16;

1 Cor 14:34-36; 1 Tim 2:11-15

D. Husband is head of wife, as Christ is head of church. Eph 5:21-33

E. Much feminine imagery of God, but God is not to be called

Mother. God is our Father. Ps. 22:9; 36:8; 123:2

III. Two genders, one image.

A. Gender is a paradox that can only be understood from God's height.

1) Rational stance is inadequate.

B. Creation in God's image is a social metaphor.

1) Cleaving is evocative of life in God.

2) "Sex" means to cut or divide; to be one, we need each other.

3) Sexuality is meant to turn us Godward.

C. Culture reduces sexuality to a physical act.

1) Conservatives reduce sexual identities to roles and

hierarchies that require no faith.

2) Liberals dissolve the mystery into egalitarian togetherness

with no differences except for the genitals.

IV. Two into one.

A. The Trinity is a social being.

B. To Orthodox Christians, spirituality is the participation in the

mutual love, order and interdependence of the Trinity.

1) Becoming a Christian is to be taken by the Spirit into the

actual relationship Jesus has with the Father.

V. Becoming what we worship.

A. Full emancipation of the sexes requires a spiritual solution.

B. Confusion of the sexes.

1) Welcome liberation.

2) Refuse to undermine sexual distinctives. Resist unisexing.

VI. Shared ministry and marriage.

A. Both sexes are needed in church leadership.

B. One NT reference to decision-making in marriage, and it stresses

mutuality. 1 Cor 7:5

C. Scripture is silent on marriage roles.

VII. Male headship.

A. Headship is PRIORITY within a relationship of equals.

1) Not heirarchial, but sacrificial.

B. Submission is not intrinsically bad; neither is headship.

C. Bow and string: sexuality requires both sexes.

Beginning faith is often “vending machine” faith - I am obedience or faithful, and God fulfills my desires. Although faith of this sort may suffice for a time, it cannot bear the full weight of life. It is a subtle form of trying to conform God to our own image of Him.

One of Stacy Rinehart’s seminary professors used to begin his fall semester freshman class with this question: “Students, I have one question for you. What is God like?” His students would get out their pencils, hem and haw, and wait for the professor to dispense the prescribed answer. But he outwaited them. In desperation, one student after another would attempt to fill the awkward pause. “God is love, God is just, God is like this, God is like that.” The professor would just sit there, unimpressed.

Finally, after they had exhausted everything they knew or had ever heard about what God was like, he would lean over and say, “Men and women, let me tell you something. God is not like anything. He is His own standard. And the tragedy is that you are going to build your little theological boxes around what you think God is like. Someday when you really need Him, you’re going to race to your box and open the lid, and He won’t be in there.”

God does not allow us to continue to reduce Him to a size and shape we can manage. He moves in our lives in ways that burst our categories and overwhelm our finiteness. When we realize He’s bigger than anything we can get our minds around we can begin to relax and trust Him. Ironically, the crisis of disillusionment is what shakes our preconceived notions and beckons us to deeper faith.

ONE MORE TIME: 'WHO AM I?'

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God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness...

So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over... every living thing that moves upon the earth.' When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them...

When I look at your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that

you have established;

what are human beings that you

are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.

Jesus said, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.'

God... is rich in mercy, [and a] great love with which he loved us.

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him. ...We must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings...

Do not lie to one another, seeing you have... clothed yourself with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator. With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

Genesis 1:26-28; Genesis 5:1; Psalm 8:3,4; 1 Corinthians 15:49; Jeremiah 29:11-13; John 6:35; Ephesians 2:4; Colossians 2:6; Ephesians 4:13 & 15; Philippians 3:9-10; Colossians 3:9,10; James 3:9; 1 Peter 5:7.

.....

'Going once... going twice... gone! Sold to the gentleman with the green tie!' cried the auctioneer. One by one the man's possessions were offered - the stereo, the car, the TV. Finally only the man remained. 'And what am I offered for this man?' the auctioneer continued. 'A fine specimen...!'

Trembling with horror, he woke from his dream. But the thought troubled him. What would they have paid for him? Two thousand dollars, five thousand? More? Less?

How much am I worth?

Our inorganic elements would bring about $10: our bodies have enough fat to make a few bars of soap, enough iron for a couple of nails, enough sugar to fill a small shaker, enough phosphorous to make a box of matches, and enough lime to whitewash a shed...

The biblical question is not merely 'What are human beings?' but 'What are human beings... that you care for them?' It's about how we relate to God; how God values us. Each of us is on this planet not by chance or accident, but by design. You and I are God's idea, and very special to him. We resulted from a special creative act of God. Genesis says 'God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good.' Man/woman comes into being 'trailing clouds of glory'.

Humans were/are the apex of creation, made 'in the image of God'. This means we are 'like God', not in physical form (God is Spirit) but as the visible representatives on earth of the Divine Being. Nor are we simply more like God than the other animals, because we weep and laugh, or because we are the only primates to walk upright (but we begin and end life horizontally rather than perpendicularly), or whose brain is larger and cleverer (so that we can use equipment outside our own bodies, or manufacture striped toothpaste. But then, as James Thurber once wrote, dogs are raising families of their own before the first anniversary of their birth; but the young of humans are practically no good at all until almost a quarter of a century'). We are more than naked (or trousered) apes. Humans are creatures who sense the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

D. H. Lawrence sees humans in terms of 'blood, soil and sex'. Camus summarizes his dilemma: 'Everything which exalts life adds at the same time to its absurdity.' In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot human life is reduced to waiting - for someone who never comes.

Some ancient philosophers regarded humans as encased souls or animated bodies; the Bible rather emphasizes the unity of our personhood. Naturalism says we are a little higher than the tadpoles; the Bible says we are a little lower than the angels. Scientism says we are an accidental arrangement of molecules; the Bible says we are crowned with glory and honour. Behaviourism says we are complex biological machines, whose behaviour is explained in terms of inherited or environmental factors; Jesus invites us to use our God-given capacity to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth. Marxism says all human reality can be reduced to natural processes and events; the Bible affirms our God-endowed dignity and worth.

We are like God intellectually: having the power to reason, imagine and think about God; socially: capable of loving God, others and self; of celebrating and grieving; vocationally: as tenants of God's good earth we are commissioned to tend it with care; aesthetically: delighting in the natural beauty God has created; morally: our conscience helps us discern the will of God and freely choose goodness; and spiritually: we pray and worship and can 'know' God, and we experience premonitions of immortality (long before stone was used for houses it was used for tombs). So we are invited to exhibit the nature and qualities of our Creator. The only satisfactory way we can understand who we are is in terms of our being cared for by God, and responsible to serve and obey him in return.

But these same humans have not wanted to replicate the Divine nature. They would prefer to be served than serve; to rule than to submit; to be autonomous and selfish rather than live responsibly in community; to get along without God, rather than live in dependence upon him. Fallen human nature is such that distant wars, earthquakes or cyclones trouble us a little, but a lot less than our own toothache or the scratch on our new car. As Rousseau said, we are born free, but everywhere we are in chains. If there is one theme recurring throughout this book, it is this: you are like God, and like the Devil. Humans do despicable things to each other. They're sinners. (Did you know that cannibalism was practised in Scotland, Ireland and England as recently as four hundred years ago?).

The alternative to worshipping and serving God is idolatry: making gods out of our selves or some other created thing. That's why the second commandment prohibits our making images of God. William Golding's Lord of the Flies graphically describes the depths to which human depravity will sink when some English school boys, marooned on a tropical island resort to a primitive sacrificial cult in which pigs are offered to appease the mysterious Lord of the Flies.

God makes all things good, humans meddle with them and they become evil. But although the image of God in us is marred, it's still there! As Irenaeus put it in an unforgettable sentence: 'The glory of God is [humans] fully alive.'

Sigmund Freud once said that human self-esteem suffered three great blows from science. First Copernicus showed that the earth is not the centre of the universe. Then Darwin suggested that humans are not organically superior to animals. And psychoanalysis asserted that we are not 'masters in our own house'.

But how can we change and grow? Libertarians say we have complete freedom to decide this way or that. Hard determinists believe we have no free will and are therefore not ultimately responsible for our destinies. Soft determinists say we may be governed by heredity, social factors, our psychology, our sin, or even God's working in our lives, but we have some responsibility for our decisions. We can freely choose to eat of a certain tree, and die, or obediently desist, and live. Adam and Eve are 'everyperson'.

The Greeks in their wisdom said 'Know thyself!' The Hebrews would have preferred 'Know thy God!' God, more than humans, is 'the proper study of mankind'. And where is God? Look around. C. S. Lewis says somewhere if we realized who we truly were, we'd be tempted to fall down and worship one another.

We are made up of body, soul and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). What does this mean? Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato regarded the body as a useless encumbrance from which the spirit must be freed before it can achieve its destiny. But we are not simply a soul/spirit united to a body, any more than we are a body united to a soul. We are a complex unity: and Christianity regards the body and soul and spirit very highly. When God wanted to show us what he was really like, he inhabited a human body: 'Veiled in flesh the Godhead see/ Hail! the Incarnate Deity'. With our bodies we have an affinity with nature, and relate to the material universe; with our souls we have self-identity and relate to others; with our spirits we relate to God. We are like a two-storied house. The lower storey is the physical part of us - the body. The upper storey has a window looking out towards the earth, and a skylight through which we view the stars. But it's all one house!

So, use some biblical self-talk and say to yourself: 'I am important. God loves even me. I am an unrepeatable miracle of God's creation. I have significance, not because I am better or smarter than anyone else, but because I was made in his image. All through life I will be bombarded with negative feedback - from family, friends, enemies, advertisers, teachers, bosses, employees, or even my own brain. But I will agree with God about myself: he doesn't make junk. When I fail, I will learn from it and will not call myself a failure. When I succeed, I will give thanks to the One who endowed me with those gifts and abilities. When I am depressed, I will say "This, too will pass." And when elated, I shall praise him, my wonderful Lord and my God. I am important to God, and therefore to myself. I was died for. I belong to him. I am his special child. He loves me and forgives me, and I will serve him on earth and celebrate with him in heaven - forever. Wow!'

.....

[Meursault, the hero of Camus' The Outsider, came early in life to the conclusion that life was meaningless. As he neared the time of his execution he tried to console himself...]: 'But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living anyhow.' And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or three score and ten.

Albert Camus, The Outsider, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1965, p. 112.

Back at the end of World War 1, the French Army found itself with a very sticky situation on its hands. There were upwards of a hundred soldiers who were suffering from amnesia because of shell shock, and due to a very faulty record system, not even the army knew the identity of these individuals. In every other way these men were healthy, and if they could only be returned to their families and their native surroundings, this in itself might quicken the return of their memories. But how to discover their identity and get them back into their family groupings? Someone came up with the idea of having an Identification Rally in Paris. It would be publicized throughout the whole country, and families who had relatives missing in action would be encouraged to attend. The plan was adopted, and the moment finally came when literally thousands of people gathered in one of the great plazas of the city. A platform had been erected in the centre where all could see, and one by one these men would step up to a microphone and look out anxiously over the crowd and say, 'Please, please, is there any one here who can tell me who I am?' A reporter who covered the event said it contained as much high drama as the events of war themselves.

There is something almost mythic about this scene, for in one way or another this is exactly what each of us has been doing from the moment we emerged from our mother's womb. We are creatures in search of an identity, all of us. We are forever attempting to discover who we are and why we are here and what kinds of capacities make up our uniqueness. There is no question closer to the centre of our human mystery than the question: 'Who am I?' and we are forever looking for people who can help us at this most foundational level.

John Claypool, 'Who Am I?' unpublished sermon, Northminster Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi, September 9, 1979.

Dear Sir,

I am.

Yours faithfully,

G K Chesterton.

Shortest-ever letter to the Times of London.

Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice... [Humans] propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache: it is our nature.

C.S. Lewis, in a sermon preached at the beginning of World War I, The Weight of Glory, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1965, pp. 44f.

[Humans are] so the universe will have something to talk through, so God will have something to talk with, and so the rest of us will have something to talk about.

The biblical view of the history of humankind and of each individual man and woman is contained in the first three chapters of Genesis. We are created to serve God by loving him and each other in freedom and joy, but we invariably choose bondage and woe instead as prices not too high to pay for independence. To say that God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden is apparently a euphemism for saying that Adam and Eve like the rest of us made a break for it as soon as God happened to look the other way. If God really wanted to get rid of us, the chances are he wouldn't have kept hounding us every step of the way ever since.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, London: Collins, 1973, pp. 55,56.

This phrase, 'the image of God', is as important as anything in Scripture... I stand in the flow of history. I know my origin. My lineage is longer than that of the Queen of England. It does not start with the Battle of Hastings. It does not start with the beginnings of good families, wherever or whenever they lived. As I look at myself in the flow of space-time reality, I see my origin in... God's creating us in his own image.

Francis Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time, Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity, 1972, pp. 48, 53-54.

When God said, 'Let us make [human persons] in our image' he once and for all provided a basis for human dignity, worth and value. He sealed forever the fact that all persons who walked this earth would have the right to see themselves as creatures of worth, value and importance... No matter how deeply sin mars our image, one fact remains: we are in his image... The Bible describes sin as an intruder into human nature. It is a foreigner - uninvited by the Creator - and it will eventually be totally eliminated from our personalities. [Therefore] sin cannot serve as the basis for our identity... No matter how far we fall short, the image of God in us will triumph... We must base our principles of self-esteem on this most basic aspect of our nature. Only in the fact that we are God's creations do we have a solid basis for self-acceptance and self-love. Once we have this foundation solidly in place, we can take a look at the extent of our sinfulness and our shortcomings. We do this in order to see our need for growth and grace, however, and not as a measure of our worth or value.

Bruce Narramore, You're Someone Special Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1978, p.39.

[Meister Eckhart's spirituality is one] of blessing and of passing on a blessing to others by way of justice and compassion... Every creature is a word of God... Salvation for Eckhart is creativity plus justice, or creativity at justice-making... The purpose of living is not to flee the earth or run from its pleasures but to return the blessings one has received by blessing other creatures and other human generations as well... We are sons and daughters of God and therefore have divine blood within us... God is the Creator and we, the images of God, follow in God's footsteps.

Matthew Fox, Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality in New Translation, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1980, excerpts from pp. 4-46.

Aligned with that long tradition that affirms God as creator of the world, we affirm that in God's provision for the beings that issue from God's creativity, grace is built into the processes of birth, of maternal or parental care and into the orders our species has evolved for the sustenance and maintenance of life. We might call the kind of grace that comes as part of creation ordinary grace.

But in insisting upon the radical freedom of God, we must also take account of what might be called extraordinary grace - the unpredictable and unexpected manifestations of God's care and of God's claims upon our loves and our passions...

We human beings seem to have a generic vocation - a universal calling - to be related to the Ground of Being in a relationship of trust and loyalty. That vocation calls us into covenantal relationship with the transcendent and with the neighbour... Human beings are genetically potentiated - are gifted at birth - with readiness to develop in faith... We can become co-responsible with God for the quality and extensiveness of faith on earth.

James Fowler, Stages of Faith, The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning, Blackburn, Victoria: Dove Communications, 1981, pp. 302-303

Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily believes certain things. That Jesus was the son of God, say. Or that Mary was a virgin. Or that the Pope is infallible. Or that all other religions are wrong.

Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily does certain things. Such as going to church. Getting baptised. Giving up liquor and tobacco. Reading the Bible. Doing a good deed a day.

Some think of a Christian as just a Nice Guy.

Jesus said, `I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me' (John 14:6). He didn't say that any particular ethic, doctrine, or religion was the way, the truth, and the life. He said that he was. He didn't say that it was by believing or doing anything in particular that you could `come to the Father'. He said that it was only by him - by living, participating in, being caught up by, the way of life that he embodied, that was his way.

Thus it is possible to be on Christ's way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don't even believe in God.

A Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half- baked idea of whom to thank.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, London, Collins, 1973, p.14.

One idea that has influenced me greatly is that the Jesus I love in the abstract can become concrete for me in every person I meet. If I look at the person a second time, I can see through him or her to Jesus. And Jesus says to me, 'Hey, love me in this person!' Loving Jesus through people has affected my life dramatically. Each person becomes sacred when I sense that on the other side of that person is Jesus waiting to be loved.

I want to emphasize that the person is not Jesus, the person is not God; but I can get at God through the person, and, strangely enough, God can get at me through that person too. In reality, you cannot love God without loving people. And God loves you through people...

If someone treats me like dirt and I'm about to get angry, I look at that person again and - if I'm prayerful - I can sense the presence of God on the other side of that person. When I sense God coming at me through that person, no matter how rotten the person is, my attitude toward him or her is altered.

Anthony Campolo, 'Loving Jesus through People' in Neff, pp. 101 - 102.

.....

Too late have I loved you,

O beauty always old and ever new.

Behold you were within and I looked for you elsewhere

and in my weakness I ran after the beauty in the things you had made.

You were with me and I was not with you.

The things you created kept me from you.

You have called and have pierced my deafness.

You have shone out and have lifted my blindness.

You have sent out your sweetness and I have longed after you

and looked for you, I have tasted you and hungered after you.

And now my whole hope is in nothing else but in your great

mercy O Lord, my God.

Augustine, Praying with the Saints Dublin, Veritas Publications, 1989, p.19-20.

Lord, what incredible human creatures you have created. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Once we trudged from place to place, now we can fly faster than sound. Once we scratched the earth with crude wooden tools, now robots serve us. Once we chiseled inscriptions laboriously on parchment or stone; now we multiply words and ideas in milli-seconds. Once we looked at the moon and marveled; now we can walk on it. Someone somewhere first blew through a ram's horn; now we create mighty symphonies.

But remind us, Lord, that we have some fearful limitations. We humans possess real goodness but not sufficient goodness, real wisdom but not sufficient wisdom, real power but not sufficient power. So we need your goodness, wisdom and power. Help us, Lord, to use our intelligence to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely in human intelligence.

You have made us for yourself, and we do not rest until we rest in you. O God, deny us peace, so that you may some day give us glory. Conquer our hearts through your sovereign power and in your mercy and love might we become the men and women you intended us to be. And if events seem to conspire against our desires, and we haven't the strength to impose our terms on life, give us the grace to accept the terms life offers us, because of our conviction that all of life is under your divine control.

As we study the majesty and glory of Jesus Christ, we see our destiny: what we could become if we too are truly in tune with your good will for us. May we become less and less enslaved by the desires of the moment, and freed by your ennobling love and forgiving grace to love you with all our heart.

We pray for your glory. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

.....

A Benediction: Now to God who is able to strengthen you... to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen. Romans 16:25, 26;

The book of Genesis was mistranslated, say followers of the Raelian Church. Humans were not created in God's image, but in the image of space aliens. All the prophets, from Jesus to Mohammed, were space aliens, and these superior beings are ready to return -- just as soon as Earth builds them an embassy. "They are from a planet in our galaxy, but not in our solar system," says church member Marie-Helene Parent of Miami, Florida. The church has raised $7 million for the embassy, which they plan to build in Jerusalem by 2035. Or maybe somewhere else: it has to be a place "where there's beautiful weather," she says.

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Associated Press

Comment by editor: After traveling dozens of light years to see how we turned out, their primary concern will be the local weather forecast?

People have painted, sculpted and imagined what Jesus looked like for centuries.

We commonly observe different artists' and sculptors' conceptions of Jesus' image. Adding to the mystique that surrounds the face of Jesus in art, I recently viewed a documentary that explored the famous "Shroud of Turin" on a major television network. Several scholars engaged one another in significant and detailed discussions debating the authenticity and history of the shroud.

Why such a fuss? Well, some propose that the shroud was the burial cloth of Jesus. They argue that when Jesus arose from the dead, he released a tremendous amount of energy onto the cloth, leaving his image imprinted on it.

As a result of this belief, untold dollars and hours have been spent attempting to authenticate the shroud. Why do people spend time and money analyzing the Shroud of Turin? Why do artists have so many different conceptions of what Jesus looked like?

The simple answer is this: We want to know what Jesus actually looked like.

I have good news for you and me: We can end the speculation and interpretation and know exactly what Jesus looked like. When we look to the Scriptures, John the Baptist looked at Jesus and said, "Behold! the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

Jesus looks like a lamb.

Now, this might seem a bit strange. How can Jesus look like a lamb? Does this mean that Jesus actually looked like a sheep? Of course not. Does it mean that Jesus appeared meek and mild; does it mean that he was soft-spoken and gentle? No, it does not.

When John described Jesus appearing like the "Lamb of God," he declared that Jesus looked like a sacrifice. After all, lambs in Israel were used for sacrifice in the temple. Israelites offered lambs to God every year. John the Baptist saw Jesus and knew that he would be the ultimate sacrifice. He knew that Jesus was the perfect Lamb that God offers to us; this Lamb of God will restore the broken relationship between people and God.

When Jesus sacrificed his life on the cross, humanity had the opportunity to experience new life and forgiveness from sin. John the Baptist described Jesus as a lamb because lambs have always been associated with humanity's problem (sin) and God's solution (sacrifice). Only Jesus, God's Lamb, could take away "the sin of the world."

Next time you and your family visit an art gallery, view religious images on the Internet or see an artist's depiction of Jesus' face, tell them this, "It's only what the artist thinks Jesus looks like. The Bible tells us what he really looked like: Jesus looks like a lamb."

Once you tell them this truth, explain why Jesus looked like a lamb -- he gave his life for us so that we could experience a new and close relationship with God.

The Baptist Faith and Message statement on man highlights two aspects of the human condition that set this species of creation apart from all others: man's noble status and man's ignoble state.

In its celebration of the creative power of God, Genesis 1:1-2:4a also celebrates the distinctive nobility of man.

There is no doubt that in the mind of the author of this text the creation of Adam represents the climax of creation: 1 Adam is created last; 2. Adam is presented as the product of divine deliberation; 3. The description of the creation of Adam is more intensive and extensive than any aspect of creation; 4. The account uses a special verb to describe the creation of Adam, which always involves a special creative act of God; 5. Once Adam is on the scene the Lord can pronounce the created world "extremely good" (v. 31); 6. Adam is expressly created as "the image of God."

The last point is especially significant, for, according to the Scriptures, what separates man from other creatures is not fundamentally his superior intelligence or more complex evolutionary development, but his status as the image of God.

Theologians today interpret our "image-ness" in terms of human rationality, spirituality, intellectual freedom, relationality (to God and fellow human beings) or triunity (body, soul, spirit). But within the biblical literary context and the ancient Near Eastern cultural context, "imageness" had more to do with the role played by man than with an ontological quality about man.

As the image of God, man is divinely authorized to serve as his representative (not representation) and charged to function as his deputy (cf. Gen 1:26-28; Psalm 8). According to Genesis 1 and 2, man was endowed with the needed qualities to govern creation on God's behalf as he would were he personally and physically present.

In this regard the Israelites' view of man differed fundamentally from that of the world in which they lived. Whereas in Babylon the status of "image of divinity" was reserved for kings and priests, the Bible democratizes the notion -- the children of Adam as a race in general and individual members of the race in particular, are all invested with this status. This revolutionary idea has extremely significant anthropological and ethical implications.

First, in accordance with the biblical perspective that all humankind originates in a single pair of parents, all human beings inherit equal nobility in the sight of God. Therefore, any view of the human species that diminishes the dignity of any member on any grounds (gender, race, intelligence, physical form, circumstances of conception) is to be repudiated.

Second, in accordance with the biblical perspective that Adam as a race was created male and female, any view of the human species that blurs the fundamental distinction between male and female is to be repudiated.

Third, in accordance with the biblical perspective that each person is an image of God, parenthood is elevated from a merely procreative act to a co-creative act -- God involving a man and a woman in the creation of new images of himself.

As a corollary, willful abortion represents arrogant interference in a divine creative act, and it is to be repudiated.

Fourth, in accordance with the biblical view that all human beings serve as representatives of God, any act directed at another person, whether for good or evil, is an act directed at God (Proverbs 14:31; 17:5; Matthew 25:31-46; James 3:8-10). All pious professions aside, our disposition toward God is most graphically expressed in our treatment of fellow human beings, especially those deemed socially inferior.

But the Scriptures also present another, sadder side to the picture. If they are clear in portraying humankind as uniquely endowed with divine dignity, they are equally clear in emphasizing humankind's unique and utter depravity.

Because of sin, which may be understood fundamentally as rebellion against God, we all come under the curse of God. In accordance with the biblical perspective of the entire human race as united in descent from Adam, the guilt of Adam's sin falls on all, and estrangement from God in whose image we are made extends to all.

But thanks be to God, the biblical story does not end here. Through God's Son, Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God, the redeemed enjoy the removal of that guilt and are restored to fellowship and communion with their Maker.

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Full text of Article 3: Man

Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God's creation. In the beginning man was innocent of sin and was endowed by his Creator with freedom of choice. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.

Genesis 1:26-30; 2:5,7,18-22; 3; 9:6; Psalms 1; 8:3-6; 32:1-5; 51:5; Isaiah 6:5; Jeremiah 17:5; Matthew 16:26; Acts 17:26-31; Romans 1:19-32; 3:10-18,23; 5:6,12,19; 6:6; 7:14-25; 8:14-18,29; 1 Corinthians 1:21-31; 15:19,21-22; Ephesians 2:1-22; Colossians 1:21-22; 3:9-11.

_________________

Block is the John R. Sampey Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and associate dean of Scripture and interpretation in the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Freud tells us we are a bundle of conscious and unconscious desires. Darwin tells us we are an accident of blind nature. Contemporary society tells us we are a consumer with the sacred right of consuming what we will. And most insidiously of all, our self-centered flesh tells us we are God. Who do we believe? Who defines the word human?

As a Christian I believe that God does, for He created us. And I also believe that we find His definition in the Christian scriptures. Thus if we are to properly understand ourselves, our place in the universe, and our relation to God, we must look to Scripture to inform us.

There are five crucial moments in Scripture's definition of humanity. The first comes in Genesis when God said, “Let us make man in our image.” Every human is a bearer of the likeness of God. Each of us is impressed with His mark. This is how and why we love and relate and reason and choose. This is the source of our mysterious and wonderful personhood. The second moment comes quickly on the heels of the first: the Fall. In the garden God pronounced that we were good, but our choosing to rebel against Him resulted in our deformation. Yet though, marked by sin, we retain the image of God. This ambiguity is why humans are at times angelic and at times demonic. Our estate is a mixed heritage: we were created good, so we show glimmers of the divine; but our sinful flesh is also in effect, so we cast the shadows of the demonic. The third moment is the crucifixion. Here God unequivocally states that we are utterly sinful, and yet utterly loved. Our sin is so great that only the crucifixion of the Son of God could deal with it. Yet, God's love for us is so great, that He would not let us go. At once, it is the divine proclamation of our debasement and our worth. Fourth, the resurrection. Christ rose, and offers us the same opportunity: resurrection. Victorious over death, He offers us victory over the flesh and entrance into His Kingdom. This is the ultimate definition of human possibility. Fifth and finally, the promised re-creation of earth where the Kingdom of God will rule in full power and glory.

As Christians, we ought to be defined by these five moments. They tell of our past, empower our present, and orient us towards our glorious future.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18684]

Sermon on personal worth and identity. Psalm 139:7-18

TILL WE HAVE WINGS

==================

I. When can you have wings?

II. Traditional Christian view of humans.

A. God made us.

B. We are good (though warped).

C. We should accept ourselves as God made us.

D. We should only change what has been warped by sin.

III. Don't we already change ourselves?

IV. Incredible power is in our hands.

A. On-going advances in genetics.

B. Looming weirdness.

C. Should we limit ourselves to the average?

V. Consequences of our ability to manipulate ourselves.

A. Obsession with our bodies leads to illness.

B. Low self worth and feeling of inferiority.

C. Nothing seems constant.

VI. Christians should know who they are.

A. Put less emphasis on outer beauty and intelligence.

B. Uphold the basic worth of all humans.

C. Don't play God with human alterations.

D. You are what you think.

VII. We never need wings.

Oh the humanity!

Consider for a second. Did you take that opening phrase to be an exultation or a lamentation? Was its tone exuberant or sorrowful?

If you are a Christian, like me, I suspect you took the phrase as a lamentation. If so, it's not surprising. We think immediately of the Fall, of the marring of the image of God, and the ensuing wayward humanity. And of course, human history and our human experience probably accord with this negative sentiment. Thus it seems reasonable that such a negative tendency in viewing humanity would arise.

Such a tendency, though, forgets another Christian teaching. Christ is fully human; He became one of us. And it is not just that He became one of us, it is also what He accomplished as one of us. John Owen, that great Puritan theologian, said this well:

[God's purpose is that Christ] might be the pattern and example

of renovation of the image of God in us, and the glory that doth

ensue thereon. [Christ] is in the eye of God as the idea of what

He intends in us. [1]

So in Christ's humanity we have the pattern and intention of God for our humanity. We are not only saved from fiery pits in the hereafter, but we are saved from our sinful flesh in the here and now. Christ is the exemplar of the restored image of God in humanity. He is the second and better Adam. And just as through the first Adam we came to be marred, we are, through the second Adam, to be restored to fullness in our humanity. That is “the glory that doth ensue thereon.” The glory is a human properly imaging God here on this Earth; that is, a human being like God. That is glorious.

Of course, I do not mean “like God” in that we become omnipotent or some such else. But we become like Christ, the Son of God. On this earth He lived a glorious life that the Father said pleased Him well. That life, here on earth, in spirit and in truth, is God's intention for us. And we gain it through a consistent and intentional faith in Christ and His Way.

This Gospel truth ought to figure into how we think about our humanity. If it doesn't, the Gospel can become merely an escape raft for the afterlife. That is an impoverished Gospel. Indeed, when the glories of the abundant life, the Way, the New Man, our available, having only eyes for the afterlife is blindness.

Oh the humanity! Oh how beautiful Christ's humanity!

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1. As quoted by Alan Spence in Persons Divine and Human, ed. Christopher Schwobel and Colin Gunton (Edinburgh, Scotland: T & T Clark, 1991), p. 84.

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Copyright © 2003 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

My favorite quality in children, which sadly fades with age, is the transparency with which they discover the world. You can see it on their faces as connections are made from one dot of information to another. A child who had just learned that electricity is what makes light bulbs glow saw a firefly and proclaimed excitedly, “He's got electrisy too, Mom!” (sic.).

This connecting of one fact or experience to another is how we discover and know reality. And though like children we can draw connections incorrectly, even in adulthood we continue to look for patterns in our lives and in the world around us. We find ourselves secretly excited when another dot has been connected or the lights suddenly come on, when an unwelcome burden turns out to be the means through which a longstanding prayer is answered, when a distinguishable trail of meaning can be seen through the jungle of our experiences. There is within us a desire to see design and consistency that moves beyond functionality. Truth must correspond with reality. But we don't only find connections and corresponding details to help us understand the world. Yes, we find them because we long to see a coherent picture, but we also find these connections because they actually exist.

C.S. Lewis makes a further observation about the connections that weave uniquely through our lives. “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven” he writes, “but more often I find myself wondering whether in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side... and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of...?”(1)

I am currently reading a book of essays contributed by a collection of authors, each depicting the books that most influenced their life and faith. Among the authors and the influential books they describe, there are occasionally secret threads that are found intersecting. Nonetheless, whether they are describing a similar experience or naming the same unforgettable book, each author describes a life uniquely reached. In our own lives it is similar. Books, experiences, interests, and history are bound together by an incommunicable quality. Lewis called it the “secret signature” of each soul, the unappeasable longing that connects the moments of our lives together.

Fearfully and wonderfully we discover the patterns of our world, the secret threads in our lives. As we are made in the image of God, our connections bear his signature; our patterns are his design.

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1. C.S Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940), 133-134.

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Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Should human beings accept certain limitations in terms of cognitive ability and physical strength? These questions take on a whole new urgency in the face of recent developments in the fields of psychostimulants and other pharmaceutical innovations. Moreover, as if these developments do not represent enough of a challenge, the development of computer-enhanced human intelligence may be just around the corner.

Arnold Kling, author of LEARNING ECONOMICS, introduces the issue in a most unusual way: “Perhaps the last unenhanced human to make a significant contribution in the field of mathematics has already been born. In twenty years, the tenure track at top university mathematics departments may consist entirely of people who depend on drugs, direct neural-computer connections, genetic modification, or a combination of all three in order to achieve high-level performance.”

By now, most Americans are aware of the widespread use of anabolic steroids among professional athletes. This scandal threatens to undermine the integrity of baseball as a game. After all, are we really to compare today's steroid-enhanced homerun hitters with the achievements of Babe Ruth at the Polo Fields?

The use of performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals undermines the integrity of athletic competition. Beyond this, young people are quickly learning the lesson that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is necessary in order to make it in the big leagues, much less to break records. Athletes are growing accustomed to increased demands for urine tests, blood analysis, and other investigative techniques designed to determine just who is and is not using specific performance-enhancing drugs. Meanwhile, few have been watching as the use of psychostimulants is becoming more widespread on the academic side. When it comes to performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals, the nerds are catching up with the jocks.

Kling points to the mathematics department because the use of psychostimulants among some mathematicians has now become public knowledge. As far back as two decades ago, mathematician Paul Erdös was offered five hundred dollars to see if he could kick his use of Benzedrine for just one month. As Joshua Foer reported in SLATE magazine, “Erdös met the challenge, but his productivity plummeted so drastically that he decided to go back on the drug.”

Kling reports that an increasing number of college students are using Adderal, a drug commonly prescribed for students diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder. According to Kling, “There are students who have never been diagnosed as having attention deficit who nonetheless claim that the drug improves their concentration. When I asked my college-age daughters if they knew many students who take the drug, they each responded, 'Of course.'“

“Depressives have Prozac, worrywarts have Valium, gym rats have steroids, and overachievers have Adderal,” quips Foer. Some call Adderal a “cognitive steroid” because it appears to have the same effect on consciousness and alertness that anabolic steroids have on muscle performance. Foer describes Adderal as “a cocktail of amphetamines that increases alertness, concentration, and mental-processing speed and decreases fatigue.” Who doesn't need a little help in those categories? The diagnosis of attention-deficit syndrome has its own troubled history, but the use of drugs like Ritalin and Adderal has become widespread among the young. Foer cites one study indicating that as many as one in five college students takes either Adderal or Ritalin as “study buddies.”

Experiments with drugs and performance-enhancing chemicals has been a fascination of human beings for a very long time. Just think back to Robert Louis Stevenson's epic tale, THE STRANGE TALE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Writers such as James Agee, Graham Greene, and Philip K. Dick, along with poet W. H. Auden used Benzedrine, then available over-the-counter, as a means of speeding up their literary output. Jack Kerouac wrote ON THE ROAD in a three-week period after having ingested large amounts of Benzedrine. Existentialist John-Paul Sartre was another Benzedrine devotee.

Now, the use of such drugs -- available in updated and more powerful forms -- has spread to college students and high schoolers. Educators report that Ritalin and Adderal pills are available for sale on the black market, and kids have been known to give friends pills from their own prescriptions in order to enhance a buddy's night of cramming for a test.

In an interesting experiment, Joshua Foer decided to take Adderal for a week in order to see just how the drug worked. His report: “The results were miraculous.” His intelligence, memory, cognitive processing speed, and alertness increased so much that Foer felt “like I'd been bitten by a radioactive spider.”

Foer reports that the feeling of being on Adderal shifts from mild euphoria to a calming sensation that lasts for several hours. “When I tried writing on the drug, it was like I had a choir of angels sitting on my shoulders. I became almost mechanical in my ability to pump out sentences,” he remembers. Like any drug, Adderal has side effects, and the experience of coming off the drug can be a disappointment. Nevertheless, many young people are willing to take the risks in order to make the grade, make the team, or break a record.

But Adderal may be just the tip of an iceberg. Arnold Kling points to the emergence of neural implants which may be able to make direct connections between the human brain and technological devices. “Today, if I want to look up information, I have to get to a computer, connect it to a web site, and type in a search phrase,” Kling observes. “In the future, perhaps I will have an implant in my ear that can handle communication between my brain and the Internet, so I will not need the computer or its keyboard. Alternatively, my implant will communicate with a sort of mega-iPod, small in size but large in storage capacity, that can access and process all sorts of data.”

Beyond this, genetic modification will be another path for temptation. “Perhaps scientists can find a way to modify genes in enough of my brain cells to improve my memory or other cognitive skills,” Kling observes. “If not, then they are likely to develop the ability to enable parents to determine genetic characteristics of children. If nothing else, they will be able to give parents of babies fertilized in vitro the ability to select based on genetic characteristics.”

Scientists working on cures for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, and other brain diseases are pushing the limits, even as new drugs and therapies promise progress in treating those dreaded diseases. At the same time, however, those same drugs are likely to be used for other purposes.

There is something seriously wrong with a society that worships achievement and enhancement at the expense of human dignity. Just last week the NEW YORK TIMES reported that the use of sleeping pills among children and very young adults rose 85 percent from 2000 to 2004 -- with much of that rise attributed to alleviating the effects of taking psychostimulants as prescribed by doctors. When children have to take sleeping pills in order to counter the effects of psychostimulants, something has gone horribly wrong. When athletes, even at younger and younger ages, put their health at risk by taking anabolic steroids just in order to make the team and win on the athletic field, something perverse is at work. When the students over in the mathematics department are hopping themselves up on Adderal in order to make higher grades (or get hired as professors), human intelligence is redefined with unknown effects.

All this runs counter to a biblical understanding of humanity. According to the Bible, human beings are inherently finite. All humans bear the image of God, and this sets humanity apart from all other creatures. Nevertheless, the Bible warns that human over-reaching is, at least in one sense, the very essence of sin itself. This was true of Adam and Eve in the garden when they ate the forbidden fruit, and it was the driving energy behind the organizers of Babel, who wanted to make a name for themselves.

There are limits to human intelligence, and a Christian view of humanity cannot encourage the use of artificial means in order to transcend human limitations.

Undoubtedly, there is a fine line between efforts to achieve health, and ambition to transcend natural human limitations.

Now is the time for serious-minded Christians to give attention to these questions and to confront these present and future challenges with mature Christian reflection and genuine biblical engagement. We bear responsibility to think about these issues before the Brave New World of human enhancement arrives in its more radical forms. Otherwise, the needed debate will come too late.

For as long as I can remember I have been self-conscious about my smile. Teenage girls spare little mercy, particularly when it comes to perceiving their own flaws, and I was no exception. Thus, the small gap between my teeth (a gap most people could never see) came to affect the way I laughed -- with a hand often raised in front of my mouth. And it similarly affected my smile, which was slightly uneven -- as if somehow aware of the space it was trying to hide.

Combating similar insecurities was an ongoing process when I worked among youth. Sympathetic to the throes of adolescence, I spent a great deal of time attempting to unravel the meaning of IMAGO DEI. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). IMAGO DEI is the Latin expression of the biblical hope that we are made in the “image of God.” To a world cruelly obsessed with appearance, such an idea seems foreign at best, perhaps even unhelpful. To my youth group, the concept fell similarly short. Knowing they were made in the image of God did not take away the desperation to belong or the pain of being told they did not. The hope of IMAGO DEI meant very little to any of them, until it was an image they learned to see.

If we will plumb the depths of what it means to be made in the image of God, we discover the implications are far-reaching. It is reminiscent of Aslan's response in PRINCE CASPIAN: “'You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,' said Aslan. 'And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.'“ We are bearers of the image of God, made with the intention and care of the Father. To live as children made in his image is not a static hope, but an active calling to reflect our maker. Even so, it is a calling we fail to answer, a reflection that has become blurred. The image of God in humanity is an image tarnished by sin. We have been made in his image, but it is an image that needs his restoring touch.

When Jesus healed the ten lepers who approached him outside of Jerusalem, he restored wholeness and health to a group of ailing men. He removed the affects of a fallen world and made clearer the image of God in each one. Yet, only one was transformed by the touch of the savior; this man threw himself at Jesus's feet and praised God. Though ten were healed of leprosy, Jesus only noted the restoration of one: “Rise and go; your faith HAS MADE YOU WELL” (Luke 17:19).

God's transforming work among us moves beyond what ails us to the heart of our true illness. You see, diseases can be healed, scars removed, and flaws corrected. But these things do not change the heart that needs to be transformed. Oddly enough, a dentist fixed the gap in my teeth years ago, and yet my smile remains slightly uneven, molded by what was once there. I have come to see it as a part of me, a unique and quirky scar from a sensitive childhood -- even as it reminds me that God drew powerfully near to the child. Transformation involves a presence far more enduring than the dentist, more familiar than a friend.

Being made in the image of God is not about maintaining a flawless facade, a perfect record, or even a life without scars. All the power of God that raised him from the dead did not erase the scars left by Roman nails. These marks of suffering were not removed. The resurrected Christ, the perfect image of God, chose to keep the scars of the Cross. Yet it is his image we are being made to reflect, and we are called to come as we are.

What the one leprous man recognized in Christ was enough to bring him to his feet in worship. It is this image that continues to erect the heads of the poorest beggars and bow the shoulders of the greatest emperors; it was the image of Christ that made its way into the insecurities of some in my youth group. Though there was “nothing in his appearance that we should desire him,” he lived as one touched by another kingdom, obedient to the Father even unto death. In Christ, God supersedes every longing and pain, every sin and scar, with a FACE. It is this image within us, this image we were created to reflect. IMAGO DEI is the hopeful commission to become more like the one we follow. It is the cry within us to be who we ARE: children made in the image of the Most High.

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Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

I have a friend who examines life with a flare for the literal. I do not mean she moves about with little imagination, taking life only by fact or as it comes word by word. Quite the opposite, her imagination is always bringing the literal to life. So I guard my metaphors and always prepare my ears for an honest accounting. She is the first to laugh when someone mentions “killing time” over the weekend or playing something “by ear.” She is also the first to weep when the prophets describe how our iniquities separate us from God or when Jesus depicts himself as hungry, in prison, and sick.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who

are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his

angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was

thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and

you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe

me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after

me’”(Matthew 25:41-43).

Someone looking for assistance knocked on my friend’s door recently, and while I was immediately imagining all of the grand scenarios of what COULD have happened by opening the door, she was concerned for weeks about a stranger who Jesus described as family. “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (25:40).

My friend is right. Scripture is replete with reasons to live in perpetual awareness of the image of God around us. Our neighbors -- known and unknown -- are of the same birthright as we. As the New Testament puts it, we are all God’s offspring. Thus, “He who despises his neighbor sins, but blessed is he who is kind to the needy” (Proverbs 14:21). Or, in the words of Christ, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). The apostle Paul continues, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:14). The image of God in the stranger we pass on the sidewalk or the colleague within our ranks is unavoidable. And for the Christian community, we are called to consciousness even more so: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:26-27).

In his great memorial oration given at Oxford University Church in 1941, C.S. Lewis masterfully spoke of the weight of glory within each human soul. “There are no ORDINARY people,” said Lewis. “You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.”(1) Few of us have had someone physically knock on our door asking for food and water. But all of us have had someone knock on our door.

What would the world be like if we took Jesus at his word? “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you invited me in.” Lewis continues, “This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. WE MUST PLAY. But our merriment must be of that kind which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”(2)

The great metaphor of a world of souls confronts us daily in literal flesh. And the King is still replying: I TELL YOU THE TRUTH, WHATEVER YOU DID FOR ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE SIBLINGS OF MINE, YOU DID FOR ME.

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1. C.S. Lewis, THE WEIGHT OF GLORY (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1980), 39.

2. IBID., 40.

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Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

You’ve heard the old saw before: Science is one thing, religion another — that on one hand, science deals with hard facts, while religion deals with unverifiable beliefs and inflexible dogmas. In fact, these days we are hearing an awful lot from fanatical atheists like Richard Dawkins, author of THE GOD DELUSION, who say that Christianity is actually a threat to science: that religion and science are fundamentally at odds.

So I always find it amusing when areas of scientific inquiry confirm fundamental truths, so basic to the Christian faith. And that’s exactly what we see in the emerging scientific field of inquiry called social neuroscience. This is the study of the brain in the interpersonal world. In a new book called SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE, author Daniel Goleman explores the fascinating “neural ballet” that connects humans brain-to-brain. And guess what? Goleman concludes that we are hard-wired to connect. According to the author, “Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person.”

What’s more, the impulse to imitate is undeniably imprinted in our biology. As Goleman explains, “A different variety of brain cells, mirror neurons, sense both the move another person is about to make and their feelings, and instantaneously prepare us to imitate that movement and feel with them.”

It is easiest to notice this mimetic impulse with babies, but it applies well into our adulthood. For example, social neuroscientists have discovered that when we see others scratch an itch, our brains are actually firing in a similar neural pathway to theirs. Goleman also says that in one sense, we can catch another person’s emotions much like we catch a cold: “neural Wi-Fi,” if you will.

So what does this have to do with a biblical worldview? A lot. Scriptures tell us that the Godhead is essentially interpersonal: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — three in one, the Trinity. While each maintains essence, each is intimately intertwined with the other — just the way the brain is wired. Likewise, when God made Adam, He said that it was not good for man to be alone. At the end of each day of creation, God said, “It is good,” but when God created man, He in effect paused, saying something’s missing. What was missing was relationship. So God created Eve. Made in the image of an interpersonal God, humans are inherently sociable creatures, craving relationships, both with God and with one another.

And these mirror neurons I talked about earlier point to another fundamental aspect of creation. All humans are created in the IMAGO DEI, the image of God. But theologians have also long talked about the IMATATIO DEI or IMATATIO CRISTI. We are made to imitate God, to imitate Christ. In fact, Scriptures teach us that we achieve our most fundamental purpose — holiness — when we become more like Christ. We are designed to imitate or be little mimics of Christ throughout the earth. This is God’s plan. Ephesians 5:1 tells us, “Be imitators of Christ, therefore, as dearly loved children.”

Neuroscience is revealing not only are we made, like God, to be relational, we are also made to be creatures who imitate: the very thing God has commanded us to do. So what do we learn from science? It teaches us that we are biologically wired for the very thing God created us for — no coincidence.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

If you have been watching the Olympics, you cannot help but be awed by the strength, speed, and skill of Olympic athletes. Take Michael Phelps, the phenomenal American swimmer who took gold in event after event. Or Dara Torres, a 41-year-old American swimmer who bested much younger athletes, winning a silver medal.

These men and women have spent years training, strengthening, and perfecting their skills and their bodies. As much as we applaud their accomplishments, we marvel at their effort.

Now, imagine not long from now, watching an Olympic games featuring athletes who never had to train like Phelps and Torres have. Instead, their skills and physique were planned before their birth, enhanced through nanotechnology. The games would be called the “Bio-Olympics,” in which competitors have artificially enhanced features, like superhuman strength and speed.

Sound like science-fiction? It’s not. Not long ago the President’s Council on Bioethics wrote about such a possibility.

We talk often on “BreakPoint” about bioethics, especially when it comes to cloning, embryo-destructive research, genetic engineering, and so forth. But science is bringing even greater ethical dilemmas right to our front doors now.

As my friend Nigel Cameron points out in the latest issue of BreakPoint WorldView magazine, science is moving beyond improving or fixing humanity, to remaking humanity.

Thanks to genetic, robotic, information, and nano technologies — collectively known by the ironic acronym GRIN — mankind is poised for what some call “engineered evolution.” Nigel warns that the very technologies that can “help us restore function to the disabled and fight disease, can also be used to bring in the ‘Brave New World’ — in which what it means to be human, made in the image of God, is fundamentally lost.”

Not only will the results of this “evolution” be unprecedented, but so will the speed at which it happens. “Pain vaccines,” “memory pills,” and “gene doping,” which may turn even the scrawniest kid into a Hercules, are being tested as I speak.

But who will enjoy the fruits of such enhancements? As Nigel writes, developments in “blending human nature and machine nature through such means as the implanting of brain chips for memory, skills, or communication ... could compound both the intelligence and the wealth of a small segment of society.” This could lead “to a new feudalism, in which power of all kinds is concentrated in the hands of ‘enhanced’ persons.”

This raises unimaginable ethical problems, and Christians must be engaged in the debate. As Nigel writes, “At the heart of the agenda for the 21st century lies the need to build a policy framework in which ethical principles set the ground-rules for our use of these new powers.” We must, he says, “secure human nature from commodification.”

I could not agree more. Humans and human nature are not commodities to be manipulated, bought, and sold. In the rush to “make life better and easier” by “improving” the human body, we cannot allow human life to become less human.

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Copyright (c) 2008 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

If you were to venture into the deep recesses of my stairwell closet, you would find several boxes labeled “Jared’s Basketball Stuff.” In one of those boxes is a Kobe Bryant figurine still in its original packaging, one of many pieces of NBA memorabilia I amassed growing up. Kobe Bryant was no ordinary basketball player, and so his was no ordinary figurine. It was a prized collectible. The six-inch statue was my way of feeling close to an NBA superstar who was far away.

Like so many, the news of Kobe’s passing stunned me on Sunday. Surely it was some kind of awful prank or unfortunate misreport. As the minutes ticked by it was confirmed by several news outlets that Kobe Bean Bryant, age 41, passed away unexpectedly in a helicopter crash, along with his daughter and several others.

As Sunday afternoon wore on, I found myself profoundly bereaved at Kobe’s passing. This wasn’t a general sadness, but something deeper and more personal. How can I be so despondent over a person I’ve never met? And why is anyone ever upset over the unexpected passing of a celebrity they don’t personally know?

Judging from the collective reaction and responses since the news broke, it seems clear my sadness is shared by many. Kobe’s death is a cultural moment unlike anything we’ve seen in recent years.

Here are a few brief considerations as I process this most recent celebrity passing.

First, we grieve because celebrities influentially display God’s image in man.

Kobe wasn’t the only person to pass away yesterday, and I’m not just talking about in the helicopter accident. Some estimates show that roughly 150,000 people die per day in the world, and about two-thirds of these are age-related deaths, meaning they’re expected and therefore not as tragic. This means that around 50,000 people died tragically on Sunday.

But of Sunday’s 150,000 deaths, Kobe is the only one that left the greater population forlorn, although every one of the 150,000 people who passed away were just as precious. This is because Kobe influentially displayed God’s image in man.

Celebrities, through their public lives, become mascots of the imago dei. As their talents bless us, we see God’s incredible creative ability displayed in humanity. When a celebrity passes away, we’re forced to pause and reflect upon the beauty of life and the impact a person can make in the world.

Second, we grieve because we’re reminded that death doesn’t discriminate.

We think of celebrities as immortal. We believe they are impervious to normal things like the flu or debt or in this case, a tragic passing. When a celebrity passes away, we’re reminded of the potency of the Fall’s curse as it manifests itself in death. We feel that if it can happen to a famous person, then there’s nothing to stop it from happening to us. So, we hug our loved ones a little tighter the day a celebrity passes away.

In this sense, a celebrity who is seemingly outside the jurisdiction of tragedy suddenly, through tragedy, becomes a reminder of our own fallibility. We’re left to grieve their passing as we consider the imminence of our own.

Finally, we grieve because of unfulfilled hope -- and share the hope within us.

Celebrities are celebrities because they spend their lives sharing their gifts with the world. Through media, they are in our homes more than some of our own friends and family. Whether it’s a singer, an actor, or in this case, a basketball player, celebrities grace us with their lives. They’re like gifts, but their premature passing means the gift can no longer keep giving, and that leaves us feeling empty.

But it’s more than this. In Kobe’s case, he leaves behind a wife and three young daughters. We grieve for lost celebrities not merely because of unfilled hopes of an album that won’t be produced or a movie that won’t be filmed, but because of children that won’t be fathered or mothered or spouses that become widowed.

I did not know Kobe Bryant personally, but I grieve him as if I did. And I think that’s a good thing. Celebrity deaths have a unique way of reminding us of God’s image in man, of showing us the difference we can make with our lives, and that we all need the hope of Christ as we navigate our way through a fallen world.

As followers of Christ, we have a unique opportunity in this moment to share the hope within us. As Kobe’s death prompts reflection -- as our friends and family members ponder their own mortality and the frailty of life -- there may be a window of openness to the Gospel. Even as we grieve alongside them, let’s be ready to point toward the One who will one day wipe away every tear.

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Jared C. Wellman is pastor of Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.

The social theory of the Trinity has been popular in the twentieth century.

Herodotus (“A History of the Persian Wars”) amused himself in his Mediterranean travels with noting how much Persian gods looked like Persians. The tendency to make God in our image has had a long run. We still project both our best and our worst onto the object of worship. Modern Americans depict Jesus as an industrialist, a labor unionist, a revolutionary, a feminist, and a success preacher. About a decade ago, a reviewer of Hans Hugn’s best seller “On Being a Christ” noted the similarities between Kung’s Jesus and Kung himself. Jesus, in Ralph McInerny’s immortal phrase, emerges as “The Man Who Would Be Kung.”

The social theory of the Trinity views the Godhead through the relationships within a human family. It has its limitations but also offers insight into the Trinity. Reality at is core is not only personal, but tri-personal and communal.

We tend to look at the question of human nature in terms of good and bad. But when we come to the teachings of Jesus on man’s nature, there is a dimension added to the discussion that must be understood.

Any conclusion about who we are remains circular when we use words like good or bad, for simply using such terms points us to a moral law that is beyond mere human reckoning. What do I mean? If we say that human nature is either good or bad, then we are saying that we either measure up or fail to measure up to a certain standard of the way things ought to be. But what is this ought that we know inside of us? What is it that tells us, "This isn’t the way things should be; something is wrong"?

Friend, I suggest that this ought that each of us knows reflects that we are made in the image of God, that He has left His stamp upon us. God has given us a moral law written on our hearts. But when we look into the human heart, we see violations - lust, greed, hate, anger, and the jealousies that are so destructive. This is at the heart of the human predicament, and the Scripture’s description of human nature is that we are dead in our sins. That’s a graphic way to put it, I know, but as I said before, until we understand our desperate position before God, we will not understand His profound message of grace.

C.S. Lewis says it so well in Mere Christianity. He argues that behind the moral law is the Power of absolute goodness who is God. Writes Lewis:

We know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must

hate most of what we do. That is the terrible fix we are in ...

Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced

[this] ... Christianity tells people to repent and promises them

forgiveness … It is after you have realized that there is a

real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have

broken the law and put yourself wrong with that Power - it is

after all this ... that Christianity begins to talk.

And I might add, talk in depth. Indeed, Karl Barth once said that sin scorches us most after it has been under the scrutinizing light of God’s forgiveness. For when we recognize God’s profound work of grace, we long to know that transforming power in our lives.

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Copyright © 2003 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.