Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. . .And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1:26-27, 31
An important ingredient in having faith is believing that God is the Creator of all things. As Orthodox Christians, we believe that God was deliberate in creating what was made on each “day” of the Creation. While there are some things that evolve in creation, and even things that become extinct (so some validity to the survival of the fittest idea), we believe that God was intentional at each stage of creation. Of course, a “day” does not literally mean twenty-four hours, but could mean millions of years. God’s time and our time do not move on the same plane.
The first thing God created was light, and later on in the Gospels, Christ would reveal light as the one characteristic we share with Him. (“I am the light of the world.” John 8:12. “You (meaning us) are the light of the world.” Matthew 5:14) Then God moved to creating heaven and everything other on heaven. Next God created the earth, with land, sea, and vegetation. God then created the sun and moon, the stars and with that the planets, the galaxies, etc. God then created fish, birds and land animals. On each “day,” after each stage, God looked upon what He had created and saw that it was good.
On the sixth day, God said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26-27) The word which we translate in English “image” is the Greek word “eikona” which is also translated as “icon.” When God created men and women, He created us as icons of Himself. Putting the word icon into Genesis 1:27, it would read, So God created man as an icon of Himself, as an icon of God He created him; male and female He created them as icons of God.
In Genesis 1:31, after the creation of mankind as icons of God, we read And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good. This is the only time in the Creation narrative that the superlative very is used. Of all the things God created, only the human being is created as an icon of God, in the image of God. Only the human being is endowed with a soul. Only the human being has the capacity to understand sin and repentance. And of course, only the human being has dominion over the creation. This is what makes us special.
Every human being has the capacity to love and to be loved. Love is a choice, and some people choose not to express love. Circumstances such as a bad family, or abuse might mean someone is deprived of the opportunity to know love. Those opportunities that should be automatic were not there and so a person might have to learn to accept love later in life, as well as learn to trust, once they find an environment in which they feel safe.
An exercise we did at summer camp was to divide campers into groups of four, and give each group a random, seemingly useless object (i.e. a paper clip, a hair tie, etc.) and ask each team to invent a grand, epic backstory for why this object is actually a priceless, one-of-a-kind artifact of immense value. Each group then pitched it to the whole camp like a TV informercial or commercial. Of course, each group was creative in “selling” the camp on their item. Yes, a paper clip has value—it holds pieces of paper together. But you can buy 100 paper clips for a dollar. So their monetary value is negligible.
The lesson from this exercise is that “if we can look at a piece of trash or object of negligible value and invent a reason for it to be incredibly valuable, how much more value do you think the Creator of the universe put into you, on purpose?” Yes, God was intentional in every step of creation. He created things in a certain order. He created the trees on which we grow fruit, and the metals that are found under the ground. But the crowning jewel to all of this is the human being. WE are the piece of creation that has the greatest value, we are the greatest treasure. We should act this way, valuing one another with the immense value with which God values us. We should treasure our relationships with one another. We should love one another, and allow ourselves to be loved by one another. A tree cannot love, and a piece of metal cannot love. These are things God created for us to have utility value. Animals can love and be loved, but not to the degree human beings can experience love. And nothing else in creation was made by God to be an icon of God. Nothing in creation has the ability to express love for God and for one another they way the human being does. This is why we are called to love in a way that is unique to humanity, when compared to the rest of creation.
Lord, thank You for the gift of being part of Your creation. Thank You for making me as an icon of You. Help me to understand what that means, and what privileges and responsibilities that entails. Help me to honor Your image in me, and in others I meet. Help me to see You in all other people, and to represent You to all others I meet today. Amen.
We are created as icons of God, intended to live as icons of God, intended to see others as icons of God.
