Made in God's Image? Really?

November 7, 2010

Today, a transgendered person in a snappy dress suit, and with the voice of Charles Bronson, handed me my church bulletin. I tried to sneak a peek as he/she did the same for the elderly lady behind me, but I couldn't read that lady's face well enough to gauge her reaction.

We can say what we want to about God, but I think most people don't like it when God misbehaves. I think people secretly find God a bit disconcerting when His actions speak louder than our words.

Me? I rather like the idea of a misbehaving God. Unless, of course, He misbehaves in a way that challenges my image of Him. Assuming, though, that there is truth in the biblical adage that we were made in the image of Him, then we are talking about one motley God. Hardly simple, sometimes unrecognizable, immensely complex and ever evolving.

This whole "made in my image" thing can be baffling, especially when you think about how many people out there are really annoying or downright awful. Are they made in God's image, too?

For a while now, I've tried to boil God down to what I imagine is His essence. I've created a measuring stick, of sorts, that I carry around with me to determine what is at the heart of someone's words or actions. I tell myself "If it isn't love, it isn't God." But maybe I've lost some of God's flavor in all that boiling down. Maybe God is just as much darkness as He is light.

It's probably silly to assume that all the hardness, the complexities, the pains of this world are absent of God. Certainly, there are plenty of hard, complex, pained people making some very ugly statements in the name of God. I imagine many of them would have rejected the church bulletin this morning, would have sneered at the greeter and walked out instead.

That would have been a shame, because they would have missed hearing him/her say something pretty wonderful after the sermon. His/hers was the first hand to go up when Jim asked if anyone had any thoughts to share. This person said that he/she can face the changes in life now, in part because he/she's got a little God, a little church, in that life.

And who am I to deny this person that God?

I wonder what would happen if we started living like we really believed that we were made in the image of God. I suspect some of that darkness and hatred that confounds us would give way to something lighter, something truer. I suspect that, after we got used to how we looked, we'd rather start liking each other again.