Our Own Image

In the beginning, God made man in His own image, and man has been trying to return the favour ever since.

The kind of god we want to worship is the kind who is pretty just like us – thinks like us, hates like us, feels like us – a projection of ourselves. But there is nothing more spiritually dangerous than a ‘safe Jesus’ that mirrors broken us. What we need is not another one of ourselves, but a God with power and might and knowledge completely beyond the bounds of human understanding and existence.

If you say that you can’t worship a God that you can’t totally understand, perhaps you’re only really interested in worshipping yourself. This started way back in Genesis 3, where the serpent suggested, and Adam and Eve accepted, that there was satisfaction, wisdom and beauty to be found outside of God. And since then, all of man has been deciding that some other thing or person will satisfy, enlighten and enthral more than God would.

But when we find the courage to take our eyes off ourselves, to stop digging around in the rubbish dump of our culture for any scrap that advertises such false satisfaction, and to turn our eyes upon Jesus, we will be transformed (2 Corin 3:18), made whole, and we will get all the satisfaction.