(Ir)religiosity

The inaugural theme over at Open Table Theology is over the Imago dei.  Yesterday, thanks to Matt Scott, I kicked off the conversation this month with my post “The Relational Image of God:  Embracing the Other.” I am re-posting it here and I would invite you to visit Open Table Theology and join in our dialogical experiment.

“God created humankind in God’s image,” so the old aphorism goes, “and we returned the favor.”  No doubt it is true.  Appeals to God and God’s nature have been made to justify some of the most horrific atrocities and some of the most beautiful miracles.  “God” becomes the ultimate judo move, the Ace in the hole, the secret weapon that can be used to appeal to the better and worse angels of our finite human nature.  When you stop and think about it our view of God and God’s nature  and our ideas who or what God is have implications for everything.  Literally.  Everything.  Not to mention the Imago dei.  What does it mean to be created in the image of God?

We could phrase it in different way and ask the same question St. Augustine posed so long ago in his Confessions:  what is it that we love when we love our God?  Who is it that we love when we love our God?

Whatever our answer I think most of us will agree that whatever this image entails, it is common among all human beings.  That is to say, we are all created in God’s image. All.  The terrorist and the freedom fighter, the American and the Arab, the Muslim and the Christian, the homosexual and the heterosexual, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, progressive and evangelical — all share this common thread.  We all have something within us, call it a divine spark or our common humanity, we all share this essence, this characteristic, this divine stamp upon our being.  It is inescapable.

Torturing the Divine Image?

This raises some interesting questions.  A little over a month ago a Pew Poll revealed that most churchgoers — 54% to be exact — believe that torture can sometimes be justified.  Torture.  Torture?  Towards another human being created in the image of God?  What does that say about our view of God and God’s children?  A few days prior to reading the Pew Poll I stumbled across one of those “new” bibles that are all the rage these days.  This one was called The American Patriot’s Bible and it claimed to convey the ways in which “the story of the United States is wonderfully woven into the teachings of the Bible.”  What of other nations?  Are not citizens of every nation created in the image of God?  What kind of God privileges the United States over the rest of the world?  I wonder, what does this say about Americans’ view of the image of God when we publish jingoistic bibles and the majority of us support torturing others for the ‘good of our country?’  Is the Imago dei only valid if one is American?  Is particular only to us?

God is beginning to look more and more like Jack Bauer and Christians more and more like nationalistic Americans than we might care to admit.

I’m sure even the most hawkish Christians (what an odd grouping of words!) would deny that the Imago dei is particular only to a certain group of people.  I am willing to give them a benefit of a doubt on that one.  But the rejection particularity and exceptionalism only when explicitly asked isn’t enough.  In fact, I would claim that the Pew Poll and publications like The American Patriot’s Bible only prove that we cannot speak of what we believe.  As the old cliché goes, “actions speak louder than words” and when it comes to American Christians I think it shows that while we can claim something verbally on the one hand our actions can deny it on the other.  So what?  Our actions dictate our belief.  In other words, what we do and how we behave in the world is more indicative of our theology than any formal creed or statement of faith.  Theology is supposed to transform us, changing our mode of be-ing in the world.  When we say that torture is morally justifiable we are revealing our theology no matter how hard we deny it otherwise.

So I think it goes without saying that we have a problem.  And understanding what the Imago dei is and what it means has all the sudden become critically important (as if it never was!).

The Divine Image is Inherently Relational

Something as robust and rich as claiming that one is creating in the image of God is, I think, inherently multi-faceted and deeply complex.  That is to say, there are many different angles of approach.  My mentioning of nationalism and parochialism has already revealed my slant: the Imago dei is relational.  I think it is important reclaim this dimension.  Especially given the stark discrepancy between  what we verbally claim to be true and submit our cognitive assent to on the one hand, and what is revealed in our actions and relations with one another (how we might treat “hostiles” or “terrorists” for example) on the other.

To be created in the image of God is to be a deeply relational being.  But it’s more than that.  I can be a relational person with malice.  And I could still be coercive and manipulative.  So the key question is what kind of relational being am I when I am created in the image of God?  Here I think the overall trajectory of scripture is particularly instructive.  How is God in relationship with human beings?  How is Jesus?  Our answers to those question shape what kind of relational beings we are as image bearers.  I think one image that really helps in this area — and one that is unfortunately neglected in terms of Imago dei talk — is the interpersonal and interdependent relationship between persons of the Trinity.  I’m thinking specifically here of the notion of perichoresis, the mutual fellowship and dynamic interaction of Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.  Or, as Tripp Fuller beautifully put it when I posed the question on Twitter , the creation of space or “room for otherness, expectation, and fulillment in God that grounds genuine creaturely participation, as an other in the Other.” Each member of the Trinity embraces the alterity of the other as a part of the wholly Other.  When we model that we open ourselves up to an otherwise impossible reality, a reality that radically ruptures our ordinary existence with the otherness and dynamism — and then we begin to palpably reflect the image of God as we are transformed by that encounter.

We Reflect the Divine Image When We Embrace The Other

Here the Imago dei involves embracing the other in all his/her difference as a genuine part of the wholly Other (God) and just as valuable as oneself, indeed as an inextricable part of oneself.  We see this over and over again in Jesus interactions and relationships with others in the Gospels.  Indeed, Jesus is the fullest and most robust example of what it means to properly embody and incarnate the Imago dei in the world.  Perhaps that is not a bad way to put it:  we outwardly reflect the divine image we bear inwardly when we imitate and align ourselves with the Way of Jesus, who was reflecting the very nature of God.  This relational facet of the divine image, then, is only brought to bear when we actively reflect it in the world in our relationships with the other.  We are endless and inherently bound up with each other.  To echo Jacques Derrida, every one of us is every bit other and every bit a part of the other. In our relations and encounters with every other other we reflect (or fail to reflect) the image of God, the wholly Other, and the one from whom we derive our individuality and difference.

In that happening, in that event of transformative synergy, we see what it means to truly be human and to truly realize our potential as bearers of the divine image and partakers in the divine life.