Lesson 2: Image Bearing

Proposition:

Before we can understand how we relate to God as Dangerous and Good, we must understand who is supposed to relate to him anyway. The small poem in Genesis 1:27 is what I want to focus on.

“So God created man in his own image

In the image of God, he created him

Male and female, he created them.”

The word man here is the Hebrew ha-adam from adam, meaning human or mankind. All mankind. Another way we could say it is that our modern brains understand better is like this…

“So God created human in His own image

In the image of God, He created humanity

Male and female, He created them.”

Humanity. Everyone you know. Everyone you knew. Everyone who is part of world history as we know it.

There is a unique situation surrounding the creation of adam that sets it apart from the entirety of the creation poem of Genesis 1. Here we are confronted with the concept of God’s own image. No other aspect of creation, we are told, is made in God’s Image. I’d assume surely light was made in God’s image because, as we can read in countless places in scripture, God is light. Or how about the sun? As we unpacked earlier,  the sun has so many characteristics that align with God’s; why isn’t that stated as being made in His image?

Let’s examine the concept of image. In Hebrew, the word used is tselem. It implies a shade or a phantom, a representative or an illusion to something else. If you grab a coin from your pocket change or wallet, you’ll probably find the face of some historical person of importance on the front of it. In the days of kings and empires, when the Bible was written ages ago, coins bore the image of the royal or government they represented. By adapting to their monetary system and using their coins, you were integrated into their economic system. Likewise, such rulers would install statues of themselves in the realms of their domain to serve a similar purpose. That statue was the tselem of the ruler, a symbol and reminder of the true, though distant, seat of authority over that area.

In the ancient world's religious and spiritual arena, temples of wood, stone, or precious metals would be erected for the worship of locally revered gods and deities. It was thought that these statues, images of their respective deities, were vessels of inhabitation. Therefore, tselems were vessels for the divine. What do we do with vessels? We fill them. We put drinkable fluid in our water bottles. We put water and fish in a fish tank. We put soap and water in a bathtub. Stew in a stewpot, cargo in a cargo ship, wine in a wine glass, coffee in a mug, and God designed humans to be the vessel for Himself.

That sounds bonkers when you hear it that way, but it's true. God didn’t intend for turtles or zebras or bean plants to represent and carry Him throughout the earth, just us. Have you ever wondered why God seemed so uptight about His people not getting involved in idol worship in the Old Testament, why He commanded them not to make for themselves images? Well, when you understand that humans, adam, (His original people) are the only true tselem on the earth, it becomes clear how any other tselem is a forgery, a fake. Carrying anything but God throughout the land is a mockery of His original intentions.

With this in mind, what intentions would be fulfilled in creating a race of Adam who doubles as the tselem of what we could call a Nuclear God?

Somehow, the material and spiritual nature of humans can imagine the spirit-nature of God in such a way that it channels His raw glory and potential into usable and accessible goodness! At the end of Genesis 1, upon the completion of Adam, doesn’t God look around at all that he made and say that it was very good?

Looking back at the rest of the passage in Genesis 1, we see that God’s blessing to humans is in the form of a multifaceted vocation. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…basically have lots and lots of sex, make as many babies as you want, and fill the earth with family. God is good.

Also, He commands them to subdue the earth. If you’ve ever tried to grow a garden or have ever walked through an abandoned lot, you know that weeds and all sorts of plants are trying to take over the earth. They shoot up through pavement for crying out loud!

Part three of the vocation is to have dominion over all the animals. Don’t think circus performer here with a whip and cages, rather, think horse whisperer or Jane Goodall and her work she did with apes. The idea is of a diplomatic government, not a cruel dictatorship.

This brings me to another facet of image bearers that I’d like to explore. Creativity. God is Holy because he is the only Creator. Humans are holy on the earth because we are the only tselem of God on the planet. So, if we tselem the Creator, doesn’t that mean that by nature we too have a propensity toward creativity? Like, all of us, not just those artsy types.

Evidence:

Genesis 1

Analogies:

My husband is an incredible human. He can also construct things out of wood or metal. He’s actually made a business out of it. He gets an idea in his head, visualizes what it could look like, how he would need to make it, what he will need for parts, and how to manipulate those parts to achieve that idea. After a considerable amount of drawing, cutting, gluing, fastening, sanding, or welding, his idea becomes tangible. No longer invisible to others but very much visible and tangible.

While it’s true, my husband did not create the wood or the metal, while he didn’t create the tools he used and while he didn’t create his own brain that thought the thoughts to use the tools to shape the wood, it can be argued that what my husband built (say, in the form of table) at one point wasn’t a thing until it was a thing. (And now that thing is central to my kitchen and we sit at it morning, noon, and night for meals.) Without being restricted by super spiritual toe stepping, you’d say he created it. He made a table out of what was once not a table. And the cool thing is (if that’s not cool enough), this table he made is unlike every table that has ever been made in the history of the world. Why? Because this table was made from the wood of a certain tree that grew at a certain time, from a certain forest that can’t be reproduced. The way the grain runs across it, the location of the knots and cracks is utterly unique to it. According to our proper understanding of holiness, you could call this table holy among tables.

So now, I’m going so far as to say that my husband is a creator, and he creates holy things? Can you see how God’s tselem is active in him? A humble craftsman fulfilling a small piece of his God given vocation as a human on the earth. It is absolutely a holy calling to be truly human. Who else does this kind of stuff? Plants? Rocks? Animals? Our dog is a really great dog and very smart, but there’s no way she’s imagining up things to create in her head. She’s thinking about how to steal butter off the counter, or how to hide from me when I catch her knibbling a sofa pillow. Even really, really smart animals like Jane Goodall’s apes are not designing functional inventions in their spare time. While they possess the intelligence to learn sign language and communicate with humans, apes aren’t pondering how to make the world a better place and then figuring out how to achieve it. Creativity to this extent seems to be limited to tselems of God.

And it’s incredible how much higher doses of creativity are nestled inside the innocent minds of children. Perhaps Creativity and Faith are correspondents in our spirits. Jesus commended the faith that children have and if you’ve ever spent 3 minutes with a small child you are sucked into a wonderful imagination of make-believe and creative play.

Conclusion:

Image bearers carry God and create. Sure. As humans, we will never be able to create something from nothing in the same sense that God creates something from nothing. On the macro, God is holy as the Creator of all things. In the micro, however, we humans are not only able to, but are incredibly adept at creating something from something.

They make families. They keep chaos at bay. Image bearers govern wisely.  Lastly, verse 29 tells us that we are supposed to eat freely of every tree and plant bearing seed on the Earth. Image bearers, tselem, are vessels. They require filling. God is fully aware that we require food to live. (Note that God was the one who planted the Garden they find themselves in.) God supplied the plants and the trees for them to eat from. Their food and sustenance is reliant upon God’s resources.

This idea of imaging God opens us up to the dual reality of the world in which we live. We are bodies that require physical food and nourishment. We are also tselem that require the filling of Creator God and Him alone. Humans are intended to embody the seen and unseen nature of existence.

Evocation:

1. Have you ever considered that you are a creative person by nature, simply because you are human?

2. Knowing that you have the capacity to live a life that is vocational, derived from the Genesis 1 blessing for all humans, does that change the way you see being part of, or making a family, and your connection to the land and creatures of the earth?

3. How do you tselem God every day? At home, at work, at school, running errands?