Genesis 1:26-27: The Image of God and the Secret Life – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 5

Last summer I was in Cambridge, England, for a conference. I had a free afternoon and I set out to find the Eagle Pub. The Eagle is just a short walk from the Old Cavendish Laboratory–the laboratory where some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in the 20th Century have taken place. Breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and medicine–resulting in more than two dozen Nobel Prizes.

On the morning of February 28, 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick made their way to the Eagle Pub from their lab at the Cavendish. They were well known at the Eagle–it was where they ate lunch six days a week. Finding their usual table, they called everyone to attention. Then Francis Crick announced to the astonishment of his hearers: “We have found the secret of life.”

It was the first public announcement of their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA–the genetic code for all living things. To put it simply, DNA is what all living organisms on earth have in common. It contains the molecular instructions for life. The implications of this discovery are still rippling out: from providing an understanding of how evolution actually works at the molecular level, to the mapping of the human genome, to producing a whole new range of possibilities for the treatment of disease.

Science has discovered just how deeply human beings are stitched into the fabric of the natural order of all living things. There is nothing in the biblical story that should cause us to resist this disclosure. If anything, the biblical stories of creation make abundantly clear that all living things find their origin in God. A surprising commonality amidst a wild diversity is entirely consonant with the heart of the biblical story.

Too often, talk of what it means that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God has focused on what separates humans from the rest of the natural order. As a result, the “image of God” can read as a liberation of human beings from an entanglement with nature cultivating detachment and even indifference in relation to the natural order. A more straightforward reading of these early chapters of Genesis places humankind into a constructive, generative relationship with all that exists.

The image of God is not so much about what makes human beings different from the remainder of creation. More accurately, it is about situating the human being in right relationship to the natural order. It is not a difference FROM the rest of creation that is at the heart of being made in the image and likeness of God. It is a difference FOR–a difference FOR the sake of God’s good creation–for its care and cultivation.

The novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson has been among those who regard human uniqueness as something to be acknowledged and embraced. As she puts it, “It is not our boast, it is our burden.”^[1]

Any sense that we possess capacities and skills that make us distinctive from the animal and plant kingdoms is not to be understood as a rationale for arrogance or exploitation, but as a sacred responsibility to be exercised in accordance with the character and goodness of God. If the human being is placed at the apex of God’s good creation, it is an apex of responsibility, not of power.

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the enduring relevance of the image of God to our contemporary situation is to look first at the meaning it had in its ancient context.

Scholars explain that in the Ancient Near East the term “image of god” was used exclusively in relation to kings and royalty. They and they alone were bearers of a divine image. In contrast, the Genesis narrative applies the “image of God” equally to all human beings. Its location in the beginning of the biblical narrative where we learn of God’s commitment to the world establishes the rationale for the intrinsic dignity of human beings–of every human being.^[2]

Even more clearly, any gender discrimination is excluded when explicitly the creation of humankind is complemented by the phrase “and created them male and female.”

To a people in exile, as the Hebrew people likely were at the time these words were first transcribed, these were liberating words that formed the cornerstone of their fundamental identity as a people. That they were image-bearers of God became the baseline of their hope and the story they would preserve and eventually bear to the world.

In the New Testament, this understanding of the human being is carried forward and elaborated. The redemption of humankind becomes understood as the restoration of the image of God in human life and existence.

In the first chapter of Colossians we read that Jesus Christ is nothing less than the human being reflecting perfectly the image of the invisible God and calling us to follow.  Recognizing our fellow human beings as created in the likeness and image of God is surely at the heart of our calling to follow in that way.

If we have learned anything from our history, it is that the recognition of the essential dignity of every human being cannot be taken for granted but rather has to be elaborated again and again. We have empirical evidence of just how crucial and relevant our understanding of a human being as created in the IMAGE of God has been and remains for our society.

Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy under Jefferson Davis, made a famous speech in 1861. It became known as “The Cornerstone Address” and was delivered just a few weeks before the start of the American Civil War.

Speaking of the Confederacy, Stephens declared, “Our new Government is founded upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man: that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.” And he continued, “Our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, [to be] based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.”

Three years before, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln, in his campaign for the Senate, gave a speech in Lewistown, Illinois. Lincoln had a different take on things. Recalling the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln elaborates for his day and ours what it meant that we are made in the image and likeness of God:

He spoke, “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….”

He went on, “This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to ALL His creatures, to the whole great family of man.”

He continued, “In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.”^[3]

Some 150 years after that speech, that beacon still guides. No human can claim for themselves that they are made in the image and likeness of God without claiming the same for all of humanity.

The Divine image is not ours to endow or withhold. God is the Creator, not us.

Our work, the work God has given us to do, is to cultivate communities and societies in which the fact of the Divine image-bearing nature of humanity becomes self-evident in our regard for one another and for God’s good creation.

In his latest encyclical, “On Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis reminds us of how these narratives in Genesis shape human existence. He points out that, “The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical reality. They suggest,” he says, “that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself.”^[4]

One does not have to read far beyond the first two chapters of Genesis to see that fulfilling this calling is no simple matter. The recent tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina, and our emerging environmental crisis reminds us that our work is far from done.

Insight into the intricate makeup of the human being that science provides does not discredit, diminish or make obsolete the ancient story that we are created in the image and likeness of God. That story predates the rise of science. To be sure, it is a story that is updated and enriched by science. It is another thing altogether to claim that science has outdated that story.

The philosopher Calvin Trillin, in his book About Alice relates a story about his wife, whose name was Alice. She was volunteering at a camp for terminally ill children. In the course of the camp, Alice encountered a young girl who was severely disabled.

Trillin recounts Alice’s description of the young girl from their correspondence–she referred to her simply as L: Alice writes, “She had two genetic diseases, one which kept her from growing and one which kept her from digesting any food. She had to be fed through a feeding tube at night.” Alice went on to write of how one afternoon, L was playing a game of duck duck goose with her fellow campers. Her turn came to be chased around the circle. She asked Alice to hold her mail. On top of that pile was a note from her mother.

“Then,” Alice wrote, “I did something truly awful which I am reluctant now to reveal. I decided to read the note.

I simply had to know what this child’s parents could have done to make her so spectacular, to make her the most optimistic, most enthusiastic, most hopeful human being I had ever encountered.  I snuck a quick look at the note, and my eyes fell on this sentence:

‘If God had given us all the children in the world to choose from, we would only have chosen you.'”

Alice immediately passed the note on to a young counselor who was standing nearby and whispered, “Quick, read this. It’s the secret of life.”^[5]

Indeed. That we are “made in the image and likeness of God” is about as close as we get to the secret of life.

Amen.

Note: The Rev. David Wood’s sermon is part 5 of 8 in a series on Faith & Science from Day1. For more information about the series and a transcription of a conversation between Rev. Wood and Peter Wallace of Day1, see this link.