The right image to bear

Made in the image of God I am an image of God. That is, when I am who I was created to be I am an image, read "idol" (the words are the same in the Bible), of God in this life I live. I am not an idol that should be worshiped, obviously, but I need to cooperate with God as he conforms me to an image of himself, or, more specifically, Christ.

 Now, there are characteristics about God that I can participate in and, thus, imitate him. Things like his mercy, love, faithfulness, and holiness. These are his communicable attributes and I can make these an ever-increasing part of my life and bear his image more completely to the world around me. Basically, when I am more merciful today than I was yesterday, I am a better idol of his.

 Now, there are characteristics about God that I cannot participate in imitation of him. These things are incommunicable attributes and are things like eternality, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. I got to thinking about these attributes in relation to who I am as a creature made in his image and I realized something. When I am a particularly poor idol of his I find that I am attempting to be like him by an attempted participation in his incommunicable attributes.

 This is how I see it working: If I lie to get out of a situation that I find myself in I am not addressing the situation at hand in God's strength. God tells me not to lie, but in lying I am saying that my strength is above and beyond his in a declaration of omnipotence. I am also declaring that my knowledge is more complete than his because he has told me that I need to approach a situation like this truthfully. Now, by lying, I am setting my knowledge over his and, in so doing, made myself the omniscient one.

 This has to get fleshed out a bit more, but I think that it holds up to at least an eighth of an inch of scrutiny. At least the scrutiny that I am giving it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

tightvnc keyboard mapping problem in Ubuntu 9.04

Image
I have been, off and on, having an issue with the keys on my keyboard mapping to the correct values when using the tightvnc client when paired with the vncserver vino in Ubuntu 9.04. I am not exactly sure what keyboard layout the client and server was expecting, but it seemed like every time I restarted the OS the keyboard mapping problem would come back and I would be at square one again. Well, I think I have found the workaround I was looking for . Hopefully this will help anyone else that is having this issue.
Read more

The manifestation of the "I" and the gift of self - Part 1

I am continuing my journey through Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body and I had never realized how body-focused the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Genesis truly are.  But then it all makes so much more sense when it was brought to my attention that the body we have been given in a manifestation of me, or to put it another way, the "I". And it goes beyond that still. Not only does it reveal me, but my body also reveals, in no small measure, the image of God. That is not to say that God is made of flesh like me as is depicted in so many Renaissance paintings. The old man in the sky is nothing like the God as revealed in the Bible. However, the love that God is, the holiness that he is, the justice he is, the righteousness that he is...all of it is shown to the world through my body. In a very real way, my body allows for others, and for me, to participate in the mystery (the hiddenness) of the image of God. That is by design; from the beginning.  If God is revealed in nature...
Read more

Let me learn what I need to learn

In the “I don’t know what God is trying to produce in me…” portion of the blog: I work across (not with) an incredibly loud person. We are in cubes and he refuses to use a handset when he is in a conference call…or headphones. Everything is done via speaker phone. Maybe his handset is broken? I don’t know and am too timid (read “interested in keeping the peace”) to ask him. Of course he shouts into his speaker phone as well when he talks. Now he even refuses to use a keyboard. He has a speech recognition program that allows him to speak to the computer rather than type. Good for him! Now we can all hear “Comma…open parenthesis…close parenthesis…tab…tab...tab…” Was it my sin or my parents sin that relegated me to this placement in the office. We all know the answer to that but man…it sure feels like I am getting punished for something.
Read more