We wonder if anyone knows what is meant by the expression, “the image of
God.” It is said in the Bible that God “created man in his own image.”
If man makes anything in his image we know how this thing looks, but when
God creates something in _his_ image we are at a loss to comprehend what
is meant unless God has the likeness of man. In ancient times there is no
doubt but what the assertion that God “created man in his own image” was
accepted literally, that the people looked upon God as a big man. Later
they came to look upon man as a little god.
But we are dealing with the brain of the twentieth century, with the
common sense of a scientific age, when it is no longer believed that God
“created” man at all. To-day the “image of God” is a puzzle. If God
“created man in his own image,” in whose image did he create the elephant,
the lion, the bear, the ox, the goat, the snake, the beetle, the bee, the
fly, the gnat? These could not all have been created in the divine image,
unless the divine image is a multitudinous likeness.
Is it not about time that a few literary murders were committed, that some
one went through our literature and killed off a lot of nonsensical
expressions that, if they ever meant anything, are meaningless today? If
there was more honesty in the pulpit a great many Bible expressions would
go out of fashion. One of the first that needs to die or be killed is this
foolish expression, “the image of God.” It may be religious, but it lacks
sense. It means nothing in this age. God is a term that eludes definition.
It is a survival of an age of ignorance.
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A man may be a fool and not know it, but he cannot be a fool without
others knowing it.
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There is a pious regard for certain men and women who have in past ages
been, as it were, the world’s salvation. We would honor these men wherever
piety offers her praise, but we would not, like piety, forbid man the
right to excel them. We all know how much easier it is to be saved by
another than to save ourselves, but it cannot be denied that there is a
certain respect, a feeling of admiration, a thrill of reverence for the
man who says: I am a free moral being and scorn to allow another to suffer
for my sins.