In his book, Designed for Dignity”, Pratt refers to a newspaper article entitled, “The Irony of Being Human.” The columnist reported two events that occurred on the same day.
In the first story, a young woman was sitting in her hotel room. She left her husband and her two children to live with another man. But that evening her new man deserted her. She lost everything – her husband, her children and now her lover. In her despair, she put a pistol into her mouth and pulled the trigger. A note on her nightstand, said, “Don’t cry for me; I‘m not even human anymore.”
In that same hotel, a few floors below, followers of the New Age Movement gathered together in a conference room. After several sessions, a well-known celebrity led the crowd to say in unison, “I am God! . . . I am God! . . . I am God!”
“The irony of being human”, the article concluded, “is that people in the same time and place can have such contradictory views of themselves. One says, “I am nothing.” The other says, “I am God.” Which one is true?
Neither is true. So what does it mean to be human?
God created man and woman in His image; that is, in His likeness. This is what makes people human. Man is not God, but neither is he an animal. So what does it mean that God made man in His likeness? He created man to live in a right relationship with Him, to truly know Him and to love Him with all his heart.
But man today no longer knows himself. Why not? The image of God is broken in man. The image is broken because he broke the relationship with God through sin. Men and women are still human but they no longer know God or themselves. Unlike animals, they still have a sense of ‘right and wrong’; they still have a sense of God. They are still able to speak and reason. But we are born spiritually dead and morally corrupt. The brokenness of God’s image is seen in pain, in misery, in death.
The broken image is like looking into a shattered mirror.
Can the image of God be restored in us again? Is it possible? Yes, by believing in Christ He restores us to a right relationship with God again. He has the power to forgive and to make us whole again so that we can truly know God, live with Him forever and love Him with our hearts! That’s our hope!
