Image.
God’s image.
Just imagine.
In humanity is God’s image. In a man, in a woman, is the likeness of God. Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
Imagine what that means! What does that say about humankind?
This is particularly important if one takes the view that god is relational, thus he made humanity relational. To treat his image with disrespect could therefore be the single greatest of human deprecating actions. relationality.
It is funny that you should ask this because there has been a suggestion that I was given the other day that part of the Image of God is language, particularly speech. I fully disagree for many reasons, but I have yet to really lay down what the image of God is. Have we lost it from the fall? is it there but just tainted? can something that is the image of GOD be tainted? certainly the passage reflects an attitude that we need to have towards others if we believe that everyone is ‘imago dei’. would we treat God with the disrespect we sometimes tend to throw at people? Even the ‘worst’ type of person is still ‘imago dei’. maybe a new paradigm, that is not so new, on the ethical treatment of humanity, including those who are considered less human, ie. criminals, infants.