Winter reflections Paul Whitfield Chaplain Like a mirror bears our resemblance, humanity represents God. Even when humanity stumbles and our rule over creation and relationships with each other seem cursed, we’re told we still bear God’s image. This renders each human being as priceless - God esteems each one of us highly and expects us to treat others as we would our maker Himself. In the ancient world, people believed that some individuals bore God’s image. The Egyptian Pharoah Ramses II declared himself “the image of God”. In Jesus’ day, coins proclaimed the Emperor Tiberius’ father Augustus was divine. In contrast, the Bible claims that each individual is made in God’s image and each one of us is therefore of equal and measureless value.
Your child ignores you in public or a peer makes a joke at your expense – we all experience times when we feel disrespected. At these moments, we may well ask “If you won’t respect me, why should I respect you?” The Bible’s answer to this question takes us right back to the beginning. In the very first chapter, we hear God say,
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).
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THE PENRHOSIAN
As this idea of equality in God’s image spread through the Roman world, it brought with it positive social change. Christians collected unwanted infants who had been discarded by their parents and raised them as their own; during epidemics, believers risked their lives to care for the sick; wealthy converts showed they were serious about their faith by setting their slaves free. Jesus’ followers emancipated slaves by purchasing them at the marketplace and even raided slave ships to liberate the prisoners. Sadly, Christians failed to eradicate slavery and the Bible was even used to justify the enslavement of African people in America. But still then, forced to read the Bible in secret, captive people heard messages of hope confirming what they suspected – that slavery was wrong and that God would judge their oppressors. As former slave Frederick Douglas wrote,
