Freedom | CREATION to ESCHATON

I was recently invited to write a blog post on humanity as imago Dei (“image of God”) for the Imago Dei Fund.

My post is now published online, with the title: “The Ethical Challenge of the Image of God in the 21st Century – Human Rights and Beyond.”

After sketching the meaning of the imago Dei and some of its ethical implications, the post concludes by exploring the compassion of God for the foreigner/refugee, which those made in God’s image are called to imitate.

Interestingly, my colleague in New Testament, Esau McCaulley, has recently written a blog post on a similar theme, entitled “The Slave, the Foreigner, and the Compassion of Israel.”

The Imago Dei Fund

Their website of the Imago Dei Fund describes them as “a grant-making organization working with our grantee partners to co-create a more just and more free world in which all human beings can thrive and flourish together.”

One of the issues the Imago Dei Fund addresses is human rights (as part of their commitment to “justice and mercy“). This was the topic I was invited to write about, based on the biblical teaching of humans as imago Dei.

Besides human rights, the Imago Dei Fund addresses matters of ecological justice (“care of creation“) and holistic shalom for persons (“care of souls“).

I invite you to check out the blog page of the Imago Dei Fund, where my post is located (along with other posts on related topics). It has the unusual name of The Inukshuk Blog.

If you want to know what an Inukshuk is, here is an explanation, with a picture.

Here is a guest blog by Kevin Middleton, a junior at Roberts Wesleyan College, who is majoring in English.

God is the best writer ever. Every person is an award-winning story—although God’s masterpiece is Christ.

What’s truly amazing is that we don’t just read his stories. We live them. We make them. We are them.

Think of it: right now you are a protagonist, the main character, the star. You’ve gotta have little struggles and little joys, comedy, romance, all the boring description. And you’ve gotta have the big triumphs and the colossal defeats too. The hero has to weep and suffer and overcome.

Because if we didn’t, what would be the point? How else could we understand the mind of the writer? We’re just characters; its our job to live our story, not to create it from scratch. We were created to live.

Every story starts differently, but ultimately its you who choose what to do with your life. Its never too late to try something new. So stop trying to be someone else, to be somewhere else, to be something that you aren’t. Be yourself—not passively, but proudly.

Even if you feel alone, even if you can’t see or hear God—you wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t. Make no mistake, God’s there, whether you believe it or not.

God is writing you. Yet he’s also reading you. You are exactly where you should be, but at the same time you are making your own choices, determining the next step in your story. I know it’s a paradox. It doesn’t make sense, because we aren’t capable of seeing life like God does.

Yet, every now and then, God will choose to make a cameo, at the right moment, for those of us who are paying attention, so that when the time comes, we know that we’re not alone.

Today, I realize that I wouldn’t have my life any other way.

Written by Kevin Middleton.