Imagio Dei

God made man in His image.  Unfortunately, man returned the favor. 

This week's topic is, "imagio dei, missio dei" or, "image of God, mission of God", and our speaker is awesome.  He's not as interactive as the last few have been, but he is coming at this in a whole new perspective--though most of our teachers have done the same.

Today he started with language, communication, and story.  Everyone has a story, and everyone's story influences the way they interpret/look at life.  Our speaker(his name is Nat) told us about a college professor who was also the head of chapel at the college.  Every time a new student arrived at the school, he would send them a letter saying he would like to meet with them personally at least once.  Most of them came in rolling their eyes not wanting to be there, and pretty much every single one of them would say something like, "look, I don't know what your plan is or whatever but I'm pretty secure in the fact that I don't believe in God".  He would respond with a simple question, "What God do you believe in?".  For those who don't believe, the answer was almost unanimous: "A creator God who lives in the sky"(Nat's description was a little more elaborate but I don't remember it word for word).  The college professor/chapel would then respond with, "Well that's interesting because I don't believe in that God either."

Most students walked out because they thought he was crazy.

Everyone's story has defined God for them.  We have not allowed God to define Himself, we have simply gone by the traditional English church assumption--which to be quite frank is wrong.  He is not telling us He knows how to define God, because the best definition any theologian or philosopher has come up with for God is that He cannot be defined. 

To me that statement is simple logic.  How can mankind define something that exists outside of their understanding of space, time, and dimensions?  This is why I get annoyed when people start pointing the finger at God and say, "You're doin it wrong!".  How on earth--literally--would you know?  You have only existed for less than one hundred years out of the eons that earth has been around, never mind God.  I know it's cheesy to say, "His ways are not our ways." but it's also exactly true--especially in North American culture.  God's ways are not always to be financially safe and have a family that you can leave a will to...for some people they are..but not everyone.

Nat then showed us this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU
I highly recommend you watch it--several times.  This was the end of Nat's teaching for the day.  On that note, we'll be trying to understand the image of God for the week.

Catch you all tomorrow.