Foundations
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26 NASB
Our image – We just can’t get past tsalmenu (“our image’), can we? We come back here again and again to mine even more insights from this text. Recently I have been thinking about the deeper implications of this particular word, tselem. As you know, in order to understand the meaning of a term, we must look into the way the term is used in the culture where it occurs. In this case, it is rather pointless (and ignorant) to use modern categories to describe the image of God in men. Ancient Hebrews were not thinking about ego and id, actualization, the via negativa, the noetic effects of the Fall or any of the other dozens of post-modern psychological terms used to describe Man. We have inherited this route from the Greeks, as Nisbett suggests:
“The Greeks, more than any other ancient peoples, . . . had a remarkable sense of personal agency—the sense that they were in charge of their own lives and free to act as they chose. One definition of happiness for the Greeks was that it consisted of being able to exercise their powers in pursuit of excellence in a life free from constraints.”[1]
Nisbett points out that Asians, particularly ancient Eastern cultures, had a different way of understanding what it means to be human. You can substitute “Hebrews” for “Confucians” in the following quote:
“For the early Confucians, there can be no me in isolation, to be considered abstractly: I am the totality of roles I live in relation to specific others . . . Taken collectively, they weave, for each of us, a unique pattern of personal identity, such that if some of my roles change, the others will of necessity change also, literally making me a different person.”[2]
Now apply this latter idea to the Genesis text. If we are in God’s image, we, of necessity, must have a relationship with Him—and with others. There is no image without this since the Creator establishes our identity based on His image. To think otherwise is to think like the Greeks. I am a person, a man or woman, only insofar as I participate in this likeness with God and it is this that makes me human. The theological and psychological categories of the West only mask what is essential to the Hebrew worldview. There is no human being without God in the mix. And there is no God in the mix without an integral connection to others. Man does not exist as an island, but rather as an isthmus, connecting God to the world. If you are in God’s image, you are connected. Period! If you aren’t connected, then, ipso facto, you are not in His image.
Topical Index: man, human being, image, tselem, Richard Nisbett, Genesis 1:26
[1] Richard Nisbett, The Geography of Thought, p. 4.
[2] Ibif., p. 5.
HELP ME PLEASE! This is for all of you who write CHECKS for monthly donations. I will be gone from the USA on December 28, 2017 for several months. I want to send all the donation letters with the correct amounts, but to do this I need to get all the checks in hand and in the bank by December 27. So, if you would please be sure than any checks you intend to send between now and the end of the year get to me no later than December 26, I would greatly appreciate it.
Skip
Skip, if love weaves me back into the web, then it makes sense that I am simultaneously reconnected in all dimensions then.
I read this and then went back to reread the Love Chapter with new eyes. I saw that everything is “nothing” without “connection”, and that love is outlined as behavior toward OTHERS. I don’t get it until I give it.
I then went and reread the Lord’s Prayer, and saw that forgiveness (which I am convinced IS the act of reconnection) happens simultaneously, too. Heaven releases my debt (fracture with heaven) when I release the debt (fracture) of OTHERS. Parable of the two debtors.
Righteousness is connection. The world can act righteous (and has to, to get along), but it is still not connecting. Only love can actually connect us, but that requires, as you say, “God in the mix”. This is where the righteousness (connection) that Yeshua provides comes in. He is our reconnecting link with heaven, but also with all else in creation. We cannot reconnect without His linking, because He is the only One Who is completely linked. I sure cannot do it, but I need that connection to give me the power to love. I cannot love (connect) without Him, but I also do not have His love in me unless and until I reestablish new choices of connection (um, that would be that essential forgiveness that erases my trust ruptures with heaven, myself, others and reality around me).
Bitterness (the act of holding fracture, or, distrust) kills not only my deal with that other, but it also kills my deal with heaven. I get love when I have cleared the way to give it. Love does not stop with me. I don’t have it unless and until it is ‘just passing through’.
None of us get saved back into solitariness; hence, the danger of ‘personal’ saviours. The way I am learning to read it, solidarity (the Body) is the only salvation station we have been offered.
P.S. I have read intriguing hints that Confucianism was the attempt of the East to retain its own religion in the face of the early Christianity that threatened to engulf it. It, like Islam, (and, arguably, Buddhism, too, as well as, earlier, Zoroastrianism, which was a response to Judaism?) was, basically, a plagiarism job. The organic solidarity that Christianity offered was an easy sell in a fractured world, but, as usual, people wanted the results without paying the price. Hence, false religions. Because truth is really hard to controvert, it seems it is easier to hijack and pervert it.
I beg to differ, Laurita…I think we have nothing to give, unless we are given first…. It never starts with us….”We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “We forgive because we have been forgiven by God through Christ” (Eph. 4:32). We give because He is a generous Father who blesses his children to the point that our cup is overflowing, and when it does, – it spills and blesses people around us. It’s hard to share and pour out from an empty cup. I also don’t necessarily see forgiveness as an act of reconnection. On the contrary, – it’s the act of releasing those who wronged you from repayment. You don’t demand their eye in place of your lost eye. You let them go free, just like God released us from our debts (sins) through Christ… and after all is said and done, you can decide weather you want to reconnect with them or not. XX
We are told forgiveness is a gift. Not only that, we were forgiven before we ever sinned, at least that is how I read Skip’s analysis of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world in Crossword Puzzles. Therefore, we agree.
However, according to the Lord’s Prayer and other verses, actually getting forgiven ON OUR END is conditional. When we release, we get released, too, that’s what the text and teaching says. God released us – forgave us – long before we appropriated that forgiveness, but it does not become efficacious for me unless and until I appropriate it. However, the teaching of the two debtors makes it quite clear that I am not going to be able to appropriate that forgiveness unless and until I forgive, too. There’s His end; but then, there’s my end, too. I don’t think, reading the text, that we will see a single person before the Judgment Throne, with bitterness or fear (basis for distrust and fracture) retained in their heart toward anyone in any degree at all, that gets forgiven. That has to be because the kingdom of heaven is only able to express (reign) in me when I am expressing it freely toward all around me.
I know it is how most of us got taught this, but I now believe it is not enough to “release those who wronged you from repayment”. That is halfway forgiveness, which is not complete forgiveness because that is not how we have been forgiven. True forgiveness, on heaven’s end, is re-entry back into fellowship. Forever. Therefore, that is how forgiveness must look on our end, too. I must not just extend the olive branch: I must also re-extend the right hand of fellowship.
Yes, I have been abused, too. How do you do this safely with abusers? Fellowship is not determined by the abuser; we don’t offer reconnection on their terms. We learn to offer it on heaven’s terms. They can still refuse, but heaven’s terms gives me power and makes me the head, and not the tail, of the encounter. This is new for me!
I have been confused about forgiveness most of my life. I realize that I was never taught what it really is. I am still working on it!
me too:)
Olga, we need each other on this subject.
Forgiveness, the basis of salvation, is a relative late-comer to creation, and has to be the single most mysterious invention of heaven. We are going to need eternity to understand forgiveness and salvation, both, but I have less hope of ever understanding them as time goes on because the more I learn (by experience, because they are things that can be understood cognitively, I don’t think) the more mysterious they get and the more questions I have!
Yes, it is definitely mysterious. Few paragraphs before Peter’s question about how many times you should forgive your brother and a story about two slaves who owed money, Yeshua said that if your brother sins against you – 1. talk to him in private, 2. bring two witnesses and try again 3. ask community to influence him, but if he is still “swinging for your eye”, so to speak, let him be to you as pagan (Matt 18:15). So is it 70×7 or three strikes and you’re done?
You don’t quit forgiving the pagans, but it is a different process because they are not subject to community, so community rules don’t apply. I have been learning to forgive a lot of pagans, as not a lot of people around me are actually subject to common community with me. I sure wish Skip would help us delineate this because it can be disastrous if you extend community-ruled forgiveness to ‘pagans’. They tend to run all over you! This includes people who are nominal community members, too, and that is where the confusion, for me, has been the worst.
..and let’s not forget the wolves in the community in sheep’s clothing…..lol
Olga was the three times not because unwilling to change on a reprimand?
And for below … Why do you want to deal with me the wolf in sheep’s clothes? Am I not to be cautious while being as sly as a snake but as honest as a dove?
I don’t want to deal with wolves, Seeker. I just think they are more useful in their natural habitat. Keeps the ecosystem healthy!
Did “isthmus” cause anyone else to pull out a world map and see how the earth reveals His truth? The isthmus of Panama came to mind, and I thought of the Bering Strait, and then we pulled out a map and looked for all the possible isthmuses, realizing as well how lax we are in our geography. And it didn’t escape us how man has carved through Panama and the Suez to create convenience… And there was the spiritual reality in the big picture, staring us in the face if we will but open our eyes and soul to His possibilities, His plan, HIS reality. Good morning!