Humanity was Created in the Image of God

 

‘Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,…” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’ Genesis 1:26 - 27

 

Generally, this creation in God's image is considered to be figurative. Humans aren't mirror images of God, but are like God in some fashion – we’re both rational, we can both love others, etc. Following Harding (e.g. his article on Transubstantiation), contrarily, I shall assume that the meaning is literal. Humans are literally created in the image of God.

 

The question that follows from this then, is, what is God’s image? What does God look like? I should emphasize that I am not interested in how God looks to others, which obviously might vary depending upon conditions and who the others are. I am interested in what God looks like for himself; after all, he is best placed to know how he looks.

 

This seems to make the task doubly hard, I have to both find God and find out what he looks like for himself. Fortunately, we’ve been provided with a solution to both these problems – the incarnation. God came down to earth as Jesus, and Jesus told us what he looked like, for himself: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” (Matthew 6:22). “The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.” (Luke 11:34). Admittedly, this does sound figurative rather than literal too. How can one have but a single eye? And what does it mean to have a body of light?

 

However, take a look in the mirror. How many eyes does your reflection have? For most people, the answer is two. But, how many eyes do you, not your reflection, have? Only you can answer, but I suspect the answer is one, in the sense that there is no division in your field of vision. [If you had to answer ‘one’ to the number of eyes possessed by your reflection, then it is quite permissible to answer, ‘none’ to the number of eyes you yourself have. After all, whatever you have is very different from that one eye of your reflection. If that’s one, you’ve got none. If visual experiments are inaccessible to you, other experiments are available at: The Headless Way].

 

Just as your eye is single, how does your body seem to you? It’s useful to make comparisons with other people’s bodies. Clearly other people’s bodies are in the world. When they move, they move through their environment– one body moving through a world of other bodies. But, when you move, you remain still, and the world moves through you. This can be seen most clearly when travelling at high speed, but once seen can be observed at all velocities. Whereas other bodies are places in the world, you are a place for the world. Your body, for you, is light (as in transparent), certainly not dark. You therefore have a single eye and a body of light, just like Jesus – in other words, you are created in the image of God. QED.

 

You might complain that all this is childish, rather than adult and sensible (“Of course I have two eyes,” "Of course I move through the world," and so on). But, "I tell you the truth, unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3) You need to look and see how things actually are, as a child does, rather than how you think they are. How do you look for yourself at 0cm, as opposed to how you look when the observer is 30cm away (as you appear in a mirror)?

 

You do indeed look like everyone else at 30cm away; and if someone takes a video of you moving, you do indeed move through the world just like every other body. But at 0cm, that all changes; you are a single eye with a transparent body. A video taken with the camera at 0cm shows the world moving, not you moving (cf. first person video games). The adult response is that this is just perspective; that's how the world has to look from a single point. But that again is using adult familiarity to miss the childlike wonder that there is a point of view, a here/now. The whole world is just uncountably many there/thens, bodies at particular points at particular times (points with spatial and temporal co-ordinates). And presumably, before life, that was all there was. But now there is also one unique here/now. Somehow, a unique reference point was created from out of a sea of qualitatively indistinguishable there/thens. And for that unique point to see any of the other points, it must be light, transparent, so that it can receive them. If it too were a solid body, or even a diaphanous one, something with its own nature, it could not perceive other natures. In other words, it's no good to be figuratively like God, you have to be created in the image of God to see the world.

 

 

Seeing how things actually are makes the strongest case for the literal claim, but it can take courage to say what you see. So it is worth considering the sayings of some of the greatest mystics and seers (who might be expected to know more about God, than the average person). Talk of inner light and single eyes are quite common, as may be seen in the following quotes. Take them literally rather than figuratively.

 

 

If you have the idea that you are something with form, that you are limited by this body, and that being within this body you have to see through these eyes, God and the world also will appear to you as form. If you realise you are without form, that you are unlimited, that you alone exist, that you are the eye, the infinite eye, what is there to be seen apart from the infinite eye? Apart from the eye there is nothing to be seen. Ramana Maharshi (Day by Day with Bhagavan. 18 April, 1946.)

 

It is the wish of Wakan-Tanka (The Great Spirit) that the light enters into the darkness, that we may see not only with our two eyes, but with the one eye which is of the heart, and with which we see and know all that is true and good. Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux

 

When My Beloved Appears

When my Beloved appears,

With what eye do I see Him?

 

With His eye, not with mine

For none sees Him except Himself.

Ibn Arabi (Translated by: Reynold A Nicholson)

 

From me everything is born; on me everything is supported; into me everything is again dissolved. I am this Brahman, One-without-a-second -- Of inconceivable power am I; without eyes I see; without ears I hear. Kaivalya Upanishad

 

To comprehend and to understand God above all similitudes, as He is in Himself, is to be God with God, without intermediary, and without any otherness that can become a hindrance or an intermediary.

Whosoever wishes to understand this must have died to himself, and must live in God, and must turn his gaze to the eternal light in the ground of his spirit, where the Hidden Truth reveals Itself without means. Ruysbroek

 

This affair is like the bright sun in the blue sky, shining clearly, changeless and motionless, without diminishing or increasing. It shines everywhere in the daily activities of everyone, appearing in everything. Though you try to grasp it, you cannot get it; though you try to abandon it, it always remains. It is vast and unobstructed, utterly empty. Ta-hui

 

He that beholds his own Face – his light is greater than the light of the creatures.

Though he die, his sight is everlasting, because his sight is the sight of the Creator. Rumi

 

If you would know God, and worship and serve God as you should do, you must come to the means He has ordained and given for that purpose. Some seek it in books, some in learned men, but what they look for is in themselves, yet they overlook it. The voice is too still, the Seed too small, and the Light shineth in darkness…. The woman that lost her silver found it at home after she had lighted her candle and swept her house. Do you so too, and you shall find what Pilate wanted to know, viz., Truth. The Light of Christ within, who is the Light of the world, and so a light to you that tells you the truth of your condition, leads all that take heed unto it out of darkness into God’s marvelous light; for light grows upon the obedient. William Penn