Thursday, March 14, 2013

PALS WITH THE BIG G: Day 26

Okay, so moving on from the previous topics, today I'm going to look at my ideas when it comes to man being made in God's image. Most people seem to think it's in a literal sense, especially since Jesus was a seemingly ordinary man, but many have said that humans could have a more optimal form. Here's my thoughts on the topic.



When we look at humanity through the scope of Christianity, we are told that we are special among God's creatures and that we are designed to be "in God's image." On the surface, we can take this to mean that God made us take a form similar to his, and this was proven to be true because Jesus was also human. But if we dig a little deeper I think that there is more to it than that.

As I've said before, and is made clear in the Bible, God is all of existence and there is nothing that has come to be without him. So, confining him to a single form is not exactly possible. Even when looking at the story of Moses, God famously took the form of a burning bush. Not very humanoid, right? So, what I think God meant when he says he created us in his image is that he made in a similar intellectual sense more than a physical sense.

 God made us to be aware and to want to know about ourselves. He gave us bodies that are strong enough to survive the world around us, but he also gave us the ability to create and to shape our environment to our will. We are also able of abstract thought and giving meaning to these thoughts, and though other animals may have some of these traits they don't quite have them to the levels that we humans do. We are creatures of unlimited potential, as evidenced by the society around us, with perspectives as infinite as the universe.

This is what makes humans a special lifeform in our world, and what I think is what meant by God when he says we are of his image. Of course as imperfect as we are, humans have made just as many failures and triumphs, and though we have discovered much, we still struggle to really know ourselves, but I think that it is that imperfection that leads us to do the incredible and the divine.

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