THE IMAGE OF GOD-GOODMORNING

by Steven Clark Goad

Most of us have imagined what God might look like. God even speaks to us in human terms so we can at least catch a glimpse of his persona. He tells us he walked with Adam. He tells us he spoke with the patriarchs. He tells us his finger etched in stone tablets the ten basic rules for abundant living.

We are told Moses saw the backside of God. We are told God’s eyes are ever on the righteous. He tells us his hand is with us.

Does God really have feet and fingers and hands and eyes and legs and a back? Since I can’t imagine God as literally the proverbial bearded, beneficent Almighty depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, about all I can do is accept that he has chosen to describe himself in ways we can identify.

When I set myself to thinking of God visually, I just look in the mirror.
Somehow I am the image of God. All of us were made in his likeness in some way. Perhaps this has to do with our spiritual nature. After all, God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). So, are we like God because we are spirit beings, or are we like God in other ways as well? We love our children as he loves his. We have moments of unmitigated compassion as he must have continually. There are days when we imitate his love quite well.
Baby God

Jesus was once a baby. Oh, yes, he was there at the beginning when deity spoke about humans being created in “their” image (John 1). The deity of Jesus is not questioned by most in mainstream Christendom. To demonstrate his great love for humankind the Father allowed Jesus to be born from a mother’s womb just like the rest of us. He came to identify with us and live as we live and feel all of the temptations and trials we experience. Perhaps David was alluding to this when he spoke of God’s knowledge of him while he was still in his mother’s womb. If God knows us as persons while inside our mothers’ bodies, surely the sanctity of life is profoundly important to him.

An Inconvenient Truth

She walked into her family doctor’s waiting room with a baby on her hip.

She was 18 years old. When finally in the examining room she asked her doctor, the man who had delivered her and her first child, to help her with a problem. The problem was that she was still unmarried and needed to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. She asked him to terminate the life of her child. He took out a piece of paper and asked, “How old is your son?” She answered. “What’s his name?” She answered.

Puzzled, she asked why he was so concerned about her son—why he didn’t ask about how far along she was in her pregnancy.

He responded, “Well, since these unwanted pregnancies are an inconvenience to you, I thought I would just take the life of your present son and allow you to have a little more freedom before the second child arrives.”

She looked aghast. “What kind of monster are you? I came for help and this is the way you treat me!”

Her doctor smiled and assured her that he had no intention of harming her son or her unborn baby.

“I’m not a monster, dear,” he began. I have as much respect for the life inside of your womb as I have for the son outside your womb. You are the one who has decided to take a human life. Since life seems so incidental, so inconvenient, what difference should it really make which of your children should be sacrificed?”

Every Soul Is Priceless

Yes, the illustration above is a fabrication of my imagination. But it could have happened. When a civilized society begins to think so little of human life, at what point does it cease being civilized? Since Roe vs Wade there have been over 40 million abortions in this home of the free and the brave. We shudder in horror at the holocaust of Nazi Germany yet we have our own infanticidal holocaust that we call Choice, a politically correct euphemism for murder. When an “enlightened” society decides that the most helpless of all humans can be dispatched with saline or suction it won’t be long before we will be getting rid of our elderly who are no longer deemed productive or useful. Where does this kind of madness end when we become inconvenienced and uncomfortable with human flesh taking up space that can be better occupied?

Father Knows Best

Life is precious. When a life is taken in abortion the ones involved are thumbing their noses at the giver of life. If some don’t wish to be inconvenienced by an unwanted pregnancy, then they should obey God and either refrain from sexual intimacy out of wedlock or use some form of birth control. Abortion is not birth control. As one who helped establish an Agape Adoption program where girls in trouble could give birth and see their babies placed in Christian homes, I discovered this as I was writing the word down on paper with a pencil. Abortion. A horrible word. Adoption. A magnificent word! All one has to do is turn the “b” around in the word abortion and finish making a “p” of the “r” and, voila, the word adoption appears.

Allow me to make a transparent confession. I am a one-issue voter. When it comes to electing an official to represent me in government, I am so narrow-minded that I will refuse to vote for a candidate if he doesn’t pass my one-issue litmus test. If a man or woman running for office cares so little for human life that they are pro-abortion (Choice, they say, but a rose by any other name is still a rose), I will not cast my lot with them.

Does that make me prejudiced? If so, make it so. But I will not countenance the slaughter of the most defenseless of humans created in the very likeness of God.

Take A Stand

There is a time to weep and a time to laugh. There is a time to plant and a time to harvest. There is a time to be born and a time to die. Pre-birth is not the time to die. God is the giver of life and the only one who has the right to determine its length. What I find utterly untenable is that the very ones who are adamant about the right to kill children in utero are typically the same ones who scream the loudest against capital punishment.

It seems such illogic finds it acceptable to kill an innocent child before he can breathe his first breath outside his mother’s womb yet demands the right of a mass murderer to be given free room and board for as long as he lives.

Dr. James A Horne wrote: “It is the duty of a doctor to prolong life…but not to prolong the act of dying.” Why does a doctor spend hours trying to save a premature baby? All his medical training comes to bear in his effort to keep the little soul alive. How can he do that in one room of the hospital and then walk into another room and slice a baby into little pieces inside the womb? How can a man who takes an oath to “first do no harm” do the worst kind of harm imaginable? I am appalled at such sophisticated civilization and advancement.

Neighbor/Life Loving

Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Why? Because every one is a walking and breathing likeness of the very Creator who made them. When we love and seek the highest good for others, we are obeying God and the greatest commandment of all: to love God above all others. The only way we can truly love God is to love each other. We are awesome creatures. We are the very images of God himself. The hope of eternity lies in our hearts.

After one of my mediocre sermons, a little boy who had been coming to our church on the Joy Bus came to me and asked, “Do you own this church?” I admit I was taken off guard. I had to think of how to respond. I forget exactly what I said, perhaps something on the order of God being the owner and me being one of the many caretakers. Whether he understood my answer or not, he came back immediately with his second question. “But aren’t you Jesus?” Now that hit me square in the solar plexus and took my breath away. Pow!

No, I’m not Jesus. But maybe to that little boy I was the closest thing he might see of the Savior for a while. At least to one scruffy kid I was a reasonable facsimile. Maybe it was because I was being transformed into his image by cherishing moments and living in his will.