Imago Dei, or Horrid Caricature?

"My heart shall cry out for Moab..." Isaiah 15:5a

"Love your enemies..." Matthew 5:44

It is the dogma of the Church that a Christian is to be made one with God, and that this process on earth will produce (as Chambers put it) not good human characteristics, but God-likeness. Everything the Father is, we are through Christ; and through Christ, what God works in, we can work out in practical experience (see Philippians 2:12, 13 & 4:13).

Here is one (of many) aspects of our Father that is hard for many Christians to swallow: "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his ways and live." (Ezekiel 33:11) God's justice is not built on damnation, but repentance. In Christ (Who made repentance an open doorway for all), God dealt with sin; His justice is satisfied. "Why will ye die?" (Ezekiel 33:11b) Good question. The path of repentance leads us to God, which means that all other paths (regardless of how noble or logical) lead to death.

"We wrestle not against flesh and blood..." (Ephesians 6:12a) We've heard this a million times, but we always lose the power of something we hear a million times: people are not our enemy. If they do wickedly to the end, they shall have their reward; however, if we are the children of our Father, let us pray they never reach that reward, and let us weep for those who do.

It is a shame the image that many Christian have and still do produce to the world. Prudes and prigs, reacting (instead of responding) to the cultural revolutions of the past, go turtle-like defensive and make pleasure and desire out to be sin, making all Christians to look like sticks-in-the-mud. The snobs and holier-than-thous, consumed with their own cleanness, make Christians all look arrogant, like they are the ones needing to be knocked off their pedestals by "real" people grounded in "reality."

Here we have another addition to the horrid caricature: zealous members, so drunken on the defense of dogma (and not necessarily on the dogma itself), lash out in harsh words and actions against all who do not adhere to the dogma (or, more often, their version of all dogma). Subsequently, all Christians look like unreasonable crazies, who have lots of passion but no heart to keep it in check or mind to guide it.

The image we are to conform to is the imago dei, not this horrid caricature produced from bad evangelism and slip-shod theology. I will say it again: people are NOT our enemy. It is not your family, friends, boss, co-workers, strangers, customers, or even your foes that are your enemies in the truest sense. Our real enemy knows that the greatest thing he can do against us is remain hidden, so that we focus on others, on what is seen, instead of having and keeping our eyes open to the true source of evil. If we are being trasformed by the imago dei, then let us cry out for the wicked, but wrestle with the Wicked (i.e., the spirit and workings of Satan).

What image transforms us? Too many counterfeits pass for the original.