From Symposium (3)

Piotr Malysz spoke on "Humanity in the Image of God." This was a good lecture. It was deep. I wanted sometimes to hit the "pause" button and think through what he was saying before he went on. But nevertheless, what he said was good stuff!

He started by pointing out that the 20th century proved more evil and more self-centered than any other era before. He pointed out that consumerism has taught us to find our uniqueness and our "self" in things. But we also have learned to treat relationships as disposably as we treat our things.

Pr Malysz said that we do not possess the image of God. The image of God is not a quality. It is not something we "understand." Rather, it is about BEING ... and about a relationship with Him and being connected to Him.




The fall into sin was, in part, when Adam and Eve strove to get the image of God ("you will be like God, knowing good and evil") as a quality, as something they could gain knowledge about. And in doing so, they traded the true image of God that they already had, and instead went after a false "image of God."

Sin isolates. Sin separates us from God. It separates us from the creation. It separates us from each other. When we sin, we violate someone's trust. Then we realize that others might do the same to us, violating our trust in them. To protect ourselves from being hurt or being betrayed, we withdraw from others and continue to further separate ourselves. (Hey, I realize now that this fits in well with our VBS theme of the week on reconciliation.)

We desire to be "like God" (as did Adam and Eve). But we imagine God to be powerful in a self-serving way. To be like Him [well, not really like Him, but like what we imagine Him to be], we try to control others. We desire to control people. We want to destroy things and wreck things. This is how we imagine God's "power" can be seen. But that's NOT what God's power is about.

God's power is seen in His loving sacrifice. Life is sacred because our dignity comes from God. The sanctity of life has nothing to do with OUR dignity or even the abilities that God gives us. OUR dignity is futile and fragile. But God sees us with the dignity that is His, the dignity imputed to us and given to us. We look like Him when we are mindful of that same dignity in others even though they be undignified and unworthy according to human standards, and when we sacrifice ourselves (that is, put ourselves out, or inconvenience ourselves) for their dignity (or life, or nurture, or needs).


Well, I'm afraid these rather disjointed comments don't come together too well from my jotted notes and scribbles. My notes were intended mostly to help jog my brain about what I heard. If there is anything wrong in what I wrote, it wasn't Pastor Malysz who was in error, but merely my misunderstanding of what he said.