“Let us create humankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have authority over all the earth.”

We have understood God’s image to mean our moral conscience, creativity, rationality, soul. The divine spark that we, of all creation, possess. However, this verse is about all of humanity in relation to God and each other.

“God’s image” presents all humans as kingly representatives of God on Earth, given “authority over all the earth.”

Genesis was written into an ancient culture filled with the images of kings. Statues. Since kings could not be everywhere among their subjects, their images and statues, erected everywhere, reminded people of theirdominion.

The early readers of Genesis understood this context.

Richard Middleton, in “The Liberating Image” explains that the “image of God” describes “the royal office or calling” of humans as “God’s representatives and those in authority over the created world.”

Therefore, we respect every holder of this royal office: every human, of every race, through all of time. As we encounter people from every tribe, nation and language, we recognise God’s created diversity — but we remember that we are created equal, with equal honour. In some cultures, respect is embedded in the very greeting given to strangers — folded hands, and a bow. Moreover, in the Bible we see a practice of respect and hospitality to strangers.

However, often humans neglect the fundamental equality, honour and respect due to God’s image in “Others”.

Why is this? The story of the Fall in Genesis tells of the sullying of all that God declared “good.” The Earth, from space, is an achingly beguiling, ethereal, blue-green sphere. But, with all its beauty, it now has poison in its veins: pollution in its rivers, and hatred in human hearts.

Deep and lasting fractures spread from the Garden of Eden: Humans fall away from God, fall away from one another. Outside the garden, the earth bears thorns. Adam blames Eve, and their son kills his brother. The human story darkens. Suspicion and hostility weave their threads through the Bible, and all our histories, tainting communities, relationships, friendships. Racism, ethnic conflicts, and sectarianism create a terrible chasm of evil, endlessly dividing humanity into “them” and “us” — an “edenic” fracture.

In Orientalism, Edward Said helps us to understand Racism. He examines how the West defined the East or Orient (Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Middle East). The West perceived itself as the “Self” – the “familiar,Western, superior, ‘us’ — as opposed to “the Other” the “strange, Oriental, inferior, ‘them.’”

This deeply un-Biblical worldview of superior and inferior races is now our interior landscape — even for Christians. We have treated, and still treat, the “Other” shamefully throughout our long, painful history. We have forgotten our equality. We have forgotten the respect due to God’s representatives.

George Orwell’s political allegory, Animal Farm, captures the creation of an inferior them and superior us. Led by the pigs, the animals govern themselves. All animals are equal. But soon the pigs change the rule: “Some animals are more equal than others.”

Racism resides with us. It colours and taints us. We have not identified it as sin. However, it is a heresy tainting the Church, and we need to restore the church and ourselves. (We will examine this in a second PS)*

In Leviticus 19, God tells the Hebrew people, who have just fled cruelty and injustice:

“The alien who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

This commandment was intensified by Christ – to a shocking degree. In a world where 120 million people are seeking refuge these are commands we cannot disobey. In the “Other”, we encounter God’s Image.

Walt Whitman’s poem “A Song of Myself,” captures something we should never forget:

“In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass.”