“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
These famous lines from Genesis 1:27 have always caused a commotion. Is it supposed to mean we look like God? Is it supposed to mean that we inherited certain characteristics of God? Is it proof that we’re different from animals (as the Creationists would have us believe) or does it just mean that we have the gift of self-awareness?
Famously, the Bible is open to every form of interpretation.
More interesting to me is that we act as if the opposite were true. We tend to talk about God as if it were created from an image of humans. We think of God as “all knowing,” so we picture God as an observant, wise and judging father figure. We think of God as present in nature, so we picture God as Gaia—the Mother Earth. We think of aspects of God, such as the Law of Cause and Effect, and we picture God keeping track of all our “sins” (causes) and preparing to punish us (effects).
But these anthropomorphisms are not helpful.
They limit our idea of God. When we think of God as a man or woman, we’re stuck with a human set of capabilities, motivations and limitations. We imagine that human values are at work when “God causes” a hurricane. When something bad happens, we’re apt to think God is punishing us as an angry parent might punish a wayward child. When something good happens, we imagine we’re being rewarded for our behaviors.
But God isn’t human—and that’s God’s strength. When we say that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent we can mean it completely. We don’t have to limit God’s abilities and power to being “like a human.” God has the limitless power and resources of the entire universe. Through our connection to God and as a part of God, we can use this power and these resources.
Keep God big—not imagined as some kind of super-human. As both the consciousness and the substance of everything, It’s so much more than that!