All Things Being Equal
Friday, January 25th, 2008All things being equal, there’s not a lot of difference between any of us. We’ve got much more in common than we have that’s different. Or at least it seems that way to me. I am amazed at the utter uniqueness of us all, but take away our faces and everything else seems to be eerily similar.
Here in Kansas City, we’re on the verge of showcasing the public exhibit of human bodies that have already been shown in other major cities of the world. Actual human bodies donated to science from persons in the Republic of China have been preserved through a polymer process that gives the viewer a chance to see an actual body up close and personal. These are bodies that have had the skin removed and each organ has been treated and preserved so the entire body has been exposed in order to be used for educational purposes such as this exhibit.
So what can we learn from this? It’s apparent that stripped away from our outermost organ of skin we look largely alike. We can be tall or short. We can be a red head or a blond or have finely curled black hair. We can have freckles or wrinkles. We can have the varied hues of darkened skin of Hispanic or Indian or African-descent or we can have the paler skin of Anglo-European descent. The world’s varieties of skin color and texture are amazing!
We can have delicate features or we can be blocky and blunt. Others can consider us as pretty or plain. And yet in the end, all those things are merely the outer accoutrements that distinguish us from one another.
Sit in a place where large numbers of random persons are passing by and it’s stunning to realize that with over six billion persons on the face of the earth, there are a mind-blowing number of varieties of appearance just in the face alone. In our faces, we may be the snowflakes of God’s created children, but underneath it all we’re all cut from the same pattern.
Strip us all down and what you discover is with all that random variety, we are still very much alike. The notions of inclusion or exclusion we insist upon enforcing in our world intrigue me. All of us, the Bible tells us, are created in the image of God (Imago Dei as it’s known in the Latin). Strip us all down to our skivvies and take away our distinguishing masculine or feminine features and we’re identifiable only by this: We have, all of us, been created in the model of God’s own being.
Do I know what this means? Nope, not in a million years do I think I could portray this likeness in words. I only know what I read and understand from the first story of the Bible that tells us we have been created in God’s own image. While I do not know fully what this means, I understand that the truth of Imago Dei means something essential about how God loves us all and it therefore coaches us into a new way of relating to one another.
This past Wednesday night at our discussion of same-gender orientation, I recalled for the group what one of our fellow members and a pastoral colleague of mine, would say. No matter how we view homosexuality, whether you view it as a sin or not as a sin, we are compelled by the law of love to love others as Christ loves.
The biblical truth of Imago Dei gives us our cues on this. Does a mother look into the newly birthed face of her child and experience the strange and wonderful tug of looking into the sweet new face of the one who bears her image? Likewise, does the father see himself in something beautiful in the child he holds in his arms? I think God looks into the face of each of us on the day of our birth and exclaim, “My goodness! That’s one beautiful baby!” simply because we bear something beautiful about God’s own image.
So how is it we reject anyone simply because of the color of their skin or the wave of their hair or the structure of their frame or for any other reason we choose to distinguish one from another? In the same sense, how do we declare opposite-gender orientation as “right” and same-gender orientation as “wrong” when choice has been mysteriously, capriciously determined as in the other factors of our being?
On occasion, I hear the anguish of loving parents who discover their child has announced they are gay or lesbian. I hear them cry as they learn their child claims that his or her same-gender orientation has been with them for as long as they remember. What do we then do with that child from our youth group who finally comes to the point of independence and self-affirmation to make this known to us? Does the family of God have enough love to make room for them with no discrimination or fear? It’s obvious their announcement is not news to God and yet over the din of our struggle can we continue to hear God declare, “It is good,” at the announcement of that which is real to them?
What I know is I must love others as God loves them. I am birthed into the world as one of God’s children and for that reason alone, I am compelled to share that love with all my kin in the world who also bear God’s image.

