So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:27-31)
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Here’s a statement from Scripture that perhaps we don’t reflect upon often enough: as God finished the work of creation, He declared everything to be good. The earth and the heavens, the land and the sea, the plants and the animals - and even us! All declared good by the power and authority of the divine word! Surely that should tell us something about our nature. And so I wonder why it is that Christians - and the church - have a tendency to focus far too much on the negative side of things. So over the course of the centuries, the church has made great play out of the doctrine of “original sin” but the church often seems to gloss over the fact that Scripture speaks also of what I’m calling “original goodness.” There’s been an imbalance, in other words. Sometimes to compensate, some churches go too far in the other direction, and simply ignore anything even remotely challenging about either our faith or our Scriptures, and some seem to give the impression that God’s only work is to wrap us all in a gigantic, cosmic bear hug and snuggle fest! I don’t want to fall on that side of things either. But we do need balance. We can’t deny that human life is inter-woven with sin (with the obvious fact that we as humans continue to do things that God would surely not approve of) - and I’m going to be offering some balance with some reflections on this concept of “original sin” next week - but if we take the creation story of Genesis seriously, then we can’t deny that we were created in a state of “original goodness." In a sense, then, goodness is at our centre, it’s in our origins and it’s at our base. Goodness (perhaps more than sin) is the chief characteristic of humanity. Given those origins, maybe it’s fair to say that - as often as any of us may screw things up - each one us nevertheless has a reservoir of goodness within us that we can tap and use as a source of refreshment and even new life for the world around us. Maybe, in fact, that’s what it means to be created “in the image of God.” It’s not that we resemble God in appearance. It’s rather that, at our best, we’re able to act just a little bit like God in the love we can show, the compassion we can extend and the forgiveness we can offer.
In Galatians 5, Paul says that followers of Jesus are to “live by the Spirit,” and he goes on to say that “the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.” But he goes on in the same passage to suggest that it isn’t inevitable that we’ll simply continue to do what we don’t want to do. There’s a process of growth involved in a spiritual life, so that eventually God’s Spirit brings forth from us the qualities that God wants us to display in abundance. Paul goes on to say, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” These are things that are brought forth from within us. They’re not foreign to us; they’re not imposed upon us. God’s Spirit brings these things forth from deep within us, from our very nature as those made “in the image of God,” just as the warmth and sunshine eventually bring forth fruit from a tree. These qualities are within us, waiting to come out, ready to burst forth, as long as we allow God’s Spirit to guide our lives. Now, we don’t always let the Holy Spirit be in control do we? We stifle the Spirit, we close our eyes and ears to the Spirit’s presence, we choose our way even when conscience is telling us to choose a different way. Or am I unique in my rebelliousness? I really doubt that I am. I think we all do it. But because of the presence of God’s Spirit within us, and because of the fact that humanity was originally created in such a way that God could declare us “good,” then we continue to have that goodness within us, and it can burst forth from us. You can’t get rid of that which is buried deep within you.
Evolutionary theory says that neanderthals and homo sapiens are two completely different species. For a long time it was assumed that neanderthals went extinct, and we homo sapiens simply took over in their place. But with the advent of genetic testing, apparently many scientists are now of the opinion that neanderthals didn’t really go extinct. Apparently there was at least some inter-breeding between neanderthals and homo sapiens somewhere along the way (about 30 or 40 thousand years ago) and the current theory is that any modern human with European or Asian ancestry has a small amount of neanderthal genes. That’s fascinating stuff. I don’t know why so many people try to set faith and science up as being in opposition to each other. I find that the more science discovers, the more in awe I am of what God created. But the point is that what’s within you doesn’t go away and it can be brought out. Some scientists believe that because there are neanderthal genes in us, it might be possible to clone a neanderthal baby one day. It’s ethically questionable, but it might be possible. What’s not ethically questionable is that if we have this reservoir of goodness within us (and I believe we all do) that goodness should be brought forth - not by scientists but by God’s Spirit. And if we could do that, what a difference would it make to our life, to our faith and to our world?
If we could tap that inner goodness, and bring it forth in ever greater abundance, then it seems to me that in our own lives we would be freed to always be able to strive to do our best, without ever giving up in discouragement or being overwhelmed by failure. If we could tap that inner goodness, and bring it forth in ever greater abundance, then it seems to me that in our faith, we could begin to truly love God rather than fearing God, and we could better reflect a God of love to the world rather than the God of judgment Who so often seems to be reflected from us. If we could tap that inner goodness, and bring it forth in ever greater abundance, then it seems to me that in the world around us, we could change the lives of those we encounter for the better by our actions, and only by changing the lives of those around us for the better are we going to be able to make a positive difference in the world.
All these things we can do. In fact, we can do far more than that. We can do far more than we can possibly imagine thanks to God - the God Who created us in goodness, and Who gave us His image. We may not always choose the good, and God’s image coming from us isn’t a perfect image - but we can choose to let God’s Spirit have free reign in our lives to bring forth the goodness that’s simply a part of who we are - because that’s how God made us!
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