Personalidad Humana

There's got to be a story here.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” (Genesis 1:26, NIV)

This is part II of “mankind in the image of God.” Earlier, I pondered the imagery in terms of the physical—the human body, cuerpo humano. Today, I’d like to consider the implications personality-wise. Is the writer saying that God’s personality and our personalities are alike? Is a similar range of emotion and thought present in God as in us?

Genesis 1:26 contains a “so that,” a reason for the creator to have made us this way; how else would we have the ability, skill and intelligence to accept sovereignty over the earth? Most of us, most of the time would likely question God’s judgment in thinking that we are up to the job, but such a conclusion can only be reached, I think, if we make the mistake of reading the allegory as a history. There’s no disputing, though, that in the realm of all living things on earth, it’s mankind that holds the big stick 

. . . and uses it ruthlessly; “livestock” exists in total servitude to mankind. (Interestingly, “livestock,” or the domestication of animals is generally considered to have become practice around 10,000 BC, or ca. 9,400 years before scribes composed the Genesis creation allegories.)

Whether or not the personality of mankind mimics that of the God--as Old-Testament writers visualized him--would have to be tested. The canon contains a great deal of speech and action attributed to God and certainly love is there—but so is its opposite: cruel vengefulness (eg. the flood, Sodom and Gemorrah, the subjugation and genocide of Ai by Joshua). Question is: does the OT portray us as reflective of Godly thought and behaviour, or is it the other way ‘round?

What is clear throughout the OT is the observation that the mind, the will and the behaviour of mankind falls short of the standard expected by God. In other words, we are reported to have been created in God’s image—but have then regressed, kind of like evolution in reverse. This, in fact, is the key narrative of the entire canon; our self-destructive propensities continue to this day to be the primary impediment to our survival. Redemption therefrom our only salvation.

(I think that in their own way, the deer in the forest, the geese flying overhead, the dairy cattle, beef cattle, horses, dogs and cats perceive us as Gods in much the same way as we think of God as a God. (Except for cats, maybe, who are more disdainful than subservient.) Fear of mankind is key for them, the fear of God for us. Perhaps there lies in this some support for the “in the image of God” shibboleth. Except by now there are—for them—no atheists.)

In our thoughtful moments, I believe, we all know there are good ways to be good humans, and I further believe that we know intuitively what they are. I don’t believe for a minute that we’re born with the stigma of sin upon us; more appropriate would be the image of a child being born, being created “in the image of God” with the same options as her/his allegorical ancestors: Adam and Eve.

And most importantly, have we as Judeo-Christian religionists viewed ourselves far too much as “possibly in the image of God, but broken, guilty,” when we should have been rejoicing much more in the potential suggested by “in the image of God?” How much and how often will we reiterate what is vile and loathsome about us humans and begin to repeat and repeat the goodness and the potentially-even-greater goodness in us?

Thoughtful parents know that children develop toward a standard of worthiness when . . . and only when . . . they’ve grown up with the conviction that they’re personally valued, worthy. Created in the image of loving parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, community, church possibly? The image of God, possibly?