The Forgotten Image

The seats in the lobby by the neurosciences hospital are plenty, but only few people occupy them at this hour. It is 4:45 eastern time, and the winter clouds had blocked the warm glow of the sunset which usually blankets any interior at this point. The glass wall and ceiling is massive, about 80 foot high, and held together by steel beams and aluminum frames. Light fixtures hang emanating a warm yellow glow, replacing, as it seems, the missed sunset. On the other side, the walls are decorated with handmade art. It is good art—not great—but good, and provides the basic function of comforting the anxious with some semblance of human compassion where it is most needed. A steady humming of the air ducts permeate the hearing, accompanied by the sound of footsteps, low and nervous chatter, voice calls, and squeaking wheel chairs. Masks are still part of hospital policy—or at the very least an expected norm within its premises.

It would not be hard to understand if I claim that I’ll be having difficulties explaining to my young daughters what kind of world they are going to navigate. Today, while running on the treadmill, the news headline states that 76% of Americans agree that there is lack of civility in general. In the screen, people are shown having having public meltdowns. I am not even going to start how rude people are in the comments section, thanks to internet anonymity. It seems that regardless of what these last two years have brought, the tensions remain high, and the public temperature keeps going up.

I look up from my seat and I see people being wheel chaired elsewhere. To my right, a physician and his resident greeted a nervous couple with a smile and a handshake. I look to my left, and a young patient walks with her nurse somewhere. Hospital staffers enter their departments with to-go dinners on their hands, presumably to gulp it down before returning to a tiring shift. More patients, more staffers, and more family members walk-by in sparse intervals. The steady humming of air ducts and footsteps continue. I meditate on the fact that people are born in this hospital, and people die in this hospital. One staffer delivers a baby. Another calls a family member and informs them of a loss. Between this, thousands of interactions happen day in and day out, and it revolves around that of helping and being helped (or as the professionals refer to it, patient care). I thought of the hospital as a microcosm of what society should look like. A small, idealized picture of a normal society, if you may. Because I think the reality is, people generally welcome respect and compassion no matter who they are and where they are in life.

If there is a perspective or a point of view that I would like my daughters to see, it is that people are made in the image of God. Imago Dei  in Latin. That is a loaded term. If taken seriously, one must be able to answer questions such as: In what way is a person an image of God? Who is God? What is man? And what does it all imply, philosophically and practically? If I say you are made in the image of God, what does it mean, and how should I treat you? It is impossible for me to tackle all of this at once, and that is why I am planning to write a series of posts about this topic.

The erasing of the Imago Dei and related theological matters in the public discourse has led exactly to this point in our history. The decline of christianity, mass hysteria, rapid onset of gender dysphoria, racial intolerance, political chasm, and dare I say, stupidity, envelope our daily life. If there is no concept of the sacred, how can we ascribe worth to each other? Perhaps even the word itself—sacred—is an alien term in today’s vernacular, if not downright distorted.

If you are walking down a trail with your young daughters trailing behind you, it is your job as a parent to make sure they don’t trip over a root or fall down any hole. Metaphorically, I am hoping to achieve the same with my writings. I believe renewing the memory of the Imago Dei back to the collective mind is a healthy way to remember a little light in the darkness—and I think it all starts with how we think about each other.

12/2022

The Inevitable Image

Often, origin myths are downright silly—Man being formed from the vomit of some deity, or man coming out of bamboo trees, or man being formed out of the corpse of some god. Even more popular in this day and age is man evolving out of primal ooze, but only after millions of years. The question of origin comes early—as early as the child can recognize that things come from somewhere. “Where do people come from?” Children often ask out of innocence, unaware of the implications it has regarding justice, death penalty, abortion, and numerous matters that decide one’s fate in society. For the child asking, it is merely a question to satisfy curiosity. For the rest of us, the implications are a matter of life and death.

Our perpetual quest to understand our beginnings is reflected in the plethora of origin myths across cultures. In understanding where we come from, we can have a collective moral basis which in turn produces a functioning society. Consider as an example the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” -The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

At the very core of this notion is the acceptance that God made man—and He made them with certain inalienable rights. Accepting the very notion of a creator God yields certain boundaries about society, and liberates man from meaningless existence. Yet almost every one of these myths have no real answer for any real issue in our present society. They all fail to present unwavering consistency in explaining the past as it relates to the present and future. In short, almost all of these myths fail to fulfill our perpetual quest, except one.

The creation of man as described in the Book of Genesis is the pinnacle of God’s creative work. God created the heavens and the earth and everything that is in them in six literal days, yet there is only one kind of creature that receives the image of God: Mankind. Being made in the image of God endows us with an elevated ontological worth in creation, and gives man value from the point of conception to death and beyond. Evolved amoebas do not have intrinsic ontological value. Evolved amoebas do not possess any moral foundations to order relationships. Evolved amoebas do not have the right to possess and rule the earth.

“But how do you suppose the Bible is true all throughout?,” you may ask. I know one can pile a mountain of evidence about the veracity of scripture in front of a skeptic, and would still be denied. Therefore I will refrain from doing that, and present this simple argument instead: the Bible proclaims itself the Word of God, pure and trustworthy (Psalm 19 & 119), and one must believe it (Hebrews 11:6). I also do not deny there will be mockers and haters of God’s truth, no matter how self-evident they may be (Romans 1). That is because implications of the Bible’s truths are an evergreen affront to man’s mind. If the Bible is real, that means I cannot be my own god. To believe the Bible spells death to the self-loving man, which is basically the generic person you imagine today. Yet the beginning of liberation starts in believing something that is completely true. I rest my case for the Bible’s inerrancy and infallibility. But truth is inevitable, as more and more people find out:

“It isn’t that the Bible is true. It’s that the Bible is the precondition for the manifestation of truth, which makes it way more true than just true.” —Dr. Jordan Peterson

The value given to our lives start first and foremost with the idea of the Imago Dei. The Imago Dei is the inevitable image we must believe and understand, if we are to have any functioning and moral society at all.

09/2023