Being Created in God's Image Is a Very Big Deal

By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Media Services on Aug 20, 2009

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Q: I don't understand the biblical statement that "God created man in God's image." This makes no sense to me at all. It cannot mean physically, because God seems to be a spirit, not a defined physical being. I don't think it could possibly mean spiritually, because while mankind is capable of wonderful acts of kindness and self-sacrifice, we are also capable of horrific acts of violence and cruelty. What does this biblical phrase really mean? - P., via godsquadquestion@aol.com

A: I wrote a children's book entitled, "Does God Have A Big Toe?" The title grew out of the questions of many children about the very text you question from Genesis (1:27): "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them."

I didn't write the book because I think God has a big toe, but because I think the best part of God is in each and every one of us. Because we're made in the image of God and not as exact replicas of God, we also have qualities that come not from our divine but from our animal nature. Our aggressiveness, our violence, our drive to satisfy our own desires no matter the consequences -- all these traits blunt, distort and sometimes overwhelm the parts of us that are indeed holy as God is holy.

This dual nature -- part angel, part animal -- is the source of our spiritual struggle. It explains why we can indeed be made in God's image and at the same time do things that are quite un-Godlike.

In what ways are we like God because we're made in the image of God? The first element of our intended holiness is found in the previous verse of Genesis (1:26), in which God gives mankind "dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

Like God, we have power over the other life on earth. This power is given not so we can pollute, exterminate and cause suffering among God's creations, but so we can use our wisdom to be good stewards of all that God has created. We can't know whether we were given our large brains to be good stewards, or whether we were made stewards because of our brains. Either way, our intelligence is a tool to protect the natural world.

Respect for the sanctity of innocent life is the second way we are made in the image of God. The central moral difference between animals and people is our ability to see the wrongness of murder. Animals kill by instinct. We kill by intention, and that intention is subject to moral judgment. Remember, the commandment is not, "Thou shalt not kill" but rather, "Thou shalt not murder." Murder is unjust, immoral killing.

Killing in self-defense is not murder. However, what it means to be made in God's image is that we can overcome any base instinct to kill other people because it is wrong -- and it is wrong because other people are also made in the image of God and share in the holiness of God.

The third element of what it means to be made in the image of God is the knowledge that our souls live on after death. If we didn't have souls, then we would be only material beings, like animals, and when we died, our matter would simply return to the earth.

Of course, our physical bodies do disappear when we die. However, we believe as an article of faith (a religious belief, not a scientific truth) that there's another element to human existence -- a spiritual part, the soul -- and that it partakes in the holiness of God. That divine holiness is timeless, so that when we die, the soul returns to God and (as in Hindu belief) to be reincarnated into a new life, or (as in Christian belief) to live with God for eternity. This belief says that death is not the end of us and that we will not be separated forever from those we love. Hell is only an option for those souls broken through unredeemed and unrepentant sin.

Being made in the image of God is actually two blessings. One is being made in this image, and the other is knowing this to be true. Being made with the image of God within you causes you to see the image of God in every other person you meet.

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