The Book of Genesis tells us that we are made in the image and likeness of God. The problem is trying to figure out what that means. It certainly implies that there are some divine characteristics within us that comprise this likeness to God. Catholic theologians tell us that the key characteristics are our personhood and our ability to perform human actions. By human actions the theologians mean that we have the capacity to make life changing and life shaping decisions. We can choose to follow one path or another. We are able to make such critical decisions because we enjoy a rational mind (at least in theory) and sufficient freedom to choose among our options.
Still, how does one know that these are divine characteristics? You can’t sit around and observe God to learn what characteristics are divine. After all, we are creatures and incapable of grasping the divine. What we can know are those characteristics that are human, even if they are also characteristics of the divine as well, which brings us back to human actions—the ability to choose our path in life with all the attendant benefits and responsibilities. We perceive these characteristics as our most important and admirable qualities, so we assume that they are something that we share with the divine. After all, God makes choices as well. God chose to create us. God chose to redeem us by dying on a cross. God chose to love us and to stand by that commitment.
The difficulty is that we come to this insight not through direct knowledge of the divine but through inference based on what we see in ourselves as best and then attribute it to God. So, in a sense, we create God in our image, or at least our understanding of God. This can be a problem because sometimes our understanding of God can be so distorted that the image of God with which we operate can’t even be recognized by other Christians and has very little to do with the witness provided by the Gospels. The essential message of the Gospel reading last Sunday was that God is our compassionate and loving Father. Thus, the Christian whose image of God is as a stern and exacting disciplinarian, is out of touch with the New Testament understanding of God. For this person, his concept of God is made in his image and likeness, perhaps under the influence of an exacting father.
These different understandings of God can have widely divergent consequences for the people whose lives they influence. A religious studies professor recently suggested that part of the difference among Christians, some of whom tend to focus on the righteous judgment of God while others focus on divine compassion as their dominant image of God; a loving father or a stern judge. Then they use a stern image of God to exempt them from loving their neighbor and to justify their lack of compassion toward their neighbor.
A recent article in America magazine warned the reader to carefully examine their image of God if they think that God hates the same people they hate. The bottom line is that God hates no one. So, if they think that God hates anyone, especially those whom they hate, then their understanding of God is seriously deficient. Not only that, but they had better take a close look at themselves to better understand their deficiency as a disciple of Jesus, as they are not reflecting the image of a compassionate God very well.