...In Our Image...

The Bible's book of Genesis tells us that after creating the heavens and the earth, and all the myriad plants and creatures that populate the earth, God said, "...let Us make Man in Our image...". For a time, Man enjoyed a close, intimate personal relationship with God--until original sin changed that relationship forever. I find it fascinating that men, in an effort to recapture that lost level of intimacy with the Creator, have recreated god in Man's image. Ancient cultures created gods that may have had the heads and bodies of animals, but that acted like men. These gods exhibited all the character traits of men, from the most noble to the most flawed. Typically, each of these gods held one or two human traits in excess, and exercised those traits as men would in the absence of external controls or restrictions. Men experience love, so there was a god of love who invoked the exercise of love without restraint. Men fought wars, so there was a god of war who compelled men to fight war without mercy. Often, these man-made gods were as petty and unpredictable as the humans who had created them. You could pray to them, but you could never be any more sure that they would answer your prayer than you could be sure that another person would respond favorably to a request. In fact, the gods were often even less likely to respond favorably than another person would be, as they were above the petty concerns of men, and only intervened on the human plane when it benefited them in their selfish, godly pursuits.

Though we no longer worship the primitive gods of the ancients today, we still have our 21st century versions of gods created in man's image. These new gods no longer have the heads and bodies of men and animals, but they still can be typified as attempts to elevate human traits and characteristics to the point where they can exercise influence and control over the physical universe (the central characteristic of a god). These modern gods are called technology and human intellect. Through technology, we construct and use machines and devices to extend the ability of our frail human bodies to control and manipulate the physical world around us. Through our human intellect we brashly proclaim that we are the pinnacle of all that exists, that we have no need of a Creator, that our minds are capable of discovering and understanding the deepest secrets of the cosmos and that, through that knowledge and understanding we are destined to exercise control over all the universe. It is as if we are saying to God that we don't need Him anymore. Yet instead of totally abandoning God, mankind has only divorced itself from the one true God and simply replaced Him with new gods of our own creation. This shows that we have a deeply ingrained need for God that we unconsciously seek to fill even while we consciously deny the need for and existence of God. This points to the truth that God exists and that instinctively, at a spiritual level, we know that we need Him.