The Image of God

Artwork by Elhanan ben Avraham

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

The pronouncement from the Torah above has given humanity the intrinsic value to life, without which it is doomed to a perpetual wandering in search of itself. It is the essence of the  foundational American revolutionary Declaration which states “All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If that be so, then how does it follow that a recent generation has declared that which is forbidden in that same  Torah is now permitted legitimately under the guise of an eternal ‘pursuit of happiness’?

Only in this generation has the subjective realm of feeling overruled the world of objectivity. It has affected the realms of art and music, hardly differentiating between dance and convulsions, music and noise, art and chaos. It is now allowed and encouraged that if a boy feels that he was somehow born in the wrong body and gender, that he may obtain every means to achieve the changing of his sex according to his desire. And, though a bit more complicated, the same is true if a girl feels she is actually a boy, erasing all distinctions to where natural harmonies of opposites become bland discordant cacophonies. The same kind of subjectivity has even spawned new modern religious movements wherein a Gentile Christian is misled to believe him/herself to actually be a descendent of one of the lost tribes of Israel, with no historical lineage whatsoever. There are mental hospitals housing many individuals with such confused identities. We are now defining ourselves in our own image.

Artwork by Elhanan ben Avraham

It is the same dilemma with those who claim, in a world of free will, that they have no choice in sexual attraction to their own gender, which in this generation has not only been promoted to be an ‘unalienable right’ permitted under the guise of the pursuit of happiness, but have now evolved that forward to legalize same-sex marriages as equivalent to that of the long-held traditional family springing from the union a man and a woman. And yet the sin of Sodom, forbidden in both Old and New Testaments, is today promoted and glorified around the planet with Pride and the Rainbow. But it is not the rainbow referred to in the story of Noah, and those who would uphold the traditional standard of human sexuality and family are deemed anachronistic ‘haters’ by those most vociferously promoting the LGBTQ agenda in every forum and medium before the eyes of the public, including our youngest children in public schools, leading them to confusion, and society to chaos.

Is that sin of homosexual behavior and practice simply normal and natural, or is it the perversion of clear intent of design, and the defiling and deconstruction of the very image of God? Or is it the perverse narcissistic desire to perform the impossibility of sexuality upon oneself by finding the same in another of the same gender?

Here is a statement on the phenomenon by Dr. Dan Juster: “The world view that is now followed by the radical left so called “woke” roots itself in an idea of human authenticity that is the direct opposite of the biblical world view. It promotes the idea of the autonomous free human individual who looks deep into his or her own consciousness and discovers in experience their “authentic self.” They define themselves. As such they can define themselves as male or female or several other genders: transgender, fluid gender, non-binary gender, homosexual, heterosexual and more. The society and all its members are called to support self-definition. This includes medical treatments to change genders, hormone suppressants, taking hormones and surgery (even for minors).”

Juster’s comment above gives a context, which is “The worldview that is now followed by the radical left so called “woke” roots itself in an idea of human authenticity that is the direct opposite of the biblical world view.” That view is that man is made in the image of God, giving him intrinsic valueOur true identity is not in looking inward to ourselves, but to our Creator outside ourselves. Looking to ourselves is a bottomless cavern which ultimately can be exploited and made into a materialistic communist image of humanity that can be extinguished by the multi-millions for the good of the philosophy and the state, as we have actually seen in recent history. Or it may be shaped into a white supremacist Nazism that can eradicate millions like bugs for the good of the philosophy. Or it may erase all distinctives between the sexes and unleash chaos in the locker rooms and toilets and dressing rooms and the forever-held notion of family as the building block of healthy and sane society, unravelling the cohesiveness of fabric of society, and the grave danger and crime of deconstructing the very image of God.

“The earth staggers like a drunk. It trembles like a tent in a storm.
The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers,
the heavens languish with the earth. The earth is polluted by its people;
they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes
and broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse consumes the earth.” – Isaiah 24

“Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us.” – Hosea 6