If any of you reading this have ever attended Grove City College, then you will have been inundated with the term “Imago Dei”. Were it possible that such an interesting topic could wear thin by continuous talk, then I would be positively sick of it. But here’s the thing – it is just too intriguing of a thing to shelve as old news. Sooner or later a believer in the Christian faith should encounter this idea (or is it a doctrine?): that we have been created in the image of God. That in some mysterious way, we reflect the visage of our Creator.
There are any number of good theories and explanations surrounding the idea. Could it be our creative instinct that marks us as God’s image bearers? After all, only a human being could compose a symphony, or transform a blank piece of canvas into a masterpiece. Could it be our compassion for others? Altruism flies squarely in the face of Darwinist thought – any organism interested solely in its survival (and thus the passing of its genetic material) would never deny itself in order to help somebody else. Or is it our instinctive notion of the unknown, the metaphysical, the spiritual realm? The existential question that whispers at every human heart, the deep-seeded belief that there is a greater power and authority?
All these things, I believe, speak to the image of the invisible God. To oversimplify it, humans are special. I think it was Lewis who said the best way of perceiving something supernatural within the natural world was to look at another human being. While the body is certainly mortal, the soul is immortal – and that is altogether a wonderful and terrifying thought. The soul carries with it an eternal destiny. This is the closest Christianity comes to a Humanistic idea – that men are indeed special, and are the great wonders of the natural world.
What baffles me is the link humanists strive to form between their own ideas and that of Charles Darwin, who I see as an anti-humanist. Darwin admitted that his theory allowed for no greater purpose, no ultimate design to the world – an atheistic, purely physical explanation of how everything appeared from nothing in an accidental, naturally-occurring fashion. Humans, then, are simply another animal. The best of the animals, to be sure – after all, we somehow managed to evolve into an ordered society while the rest of our ape brethren languished in the primitive jungle. But we see here that Darwinism culminates in an utter degradation of the human being.
Do you think you’re special? Well I’m sorry to say that you’re not. Nothing is special – in fact, let’s just eradicate that word, “special”, because it serves no purpose any more. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of “purpose” as well. Though mankind has fashioned his own society, broken scientific barriers, and edged the closest to understanding and creating beauty than any other organism in the brief history of time, it’s all a colossal glob of meaninglessness. With no God, there is no image of God, no purpose to the human existence, no special uniqueness or beauty to the human condition.
But with God, there is Hope. And let’s not forget that God chose to clothe Himself in the likeness of a man, the greatest compliment to our race that ever existed, and lived the lowly human life – the life of a so-called crafty ape – in order to bring about the ultimate message of Hope. Because you see, though Christianity may tend to glorify man’s nature, it simultaneously denounces us as lovers of the flesh, haters of good. No man is righteous. All have sinned. A seeming paradox – man is beautiful, unique, the Imago Dei – and he is the scourge of the earth. A slave to corruption and evil. Man is desperately in need of redemption, and thank God we have already been sent a Redeemer. I believe some day, when we may walk with God in His city as His newly fashioned children, we will fully understand what exactly “Imago Dei” means.
Until then, we are all of us simply guessing. But God knows it’s fun.
