Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation

067 Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters (with Dr. Carmen Joy Imes)

July 25, 2023 Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw Season 4 Episode 67
Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation
067 Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters (with Dr. Carmen Joy Imes)
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

What does it mean to be human? This timeless question proves critical as we seek to understand our purpose, identity, and significance. Amidst the many voices clamoring to shape our understanding of humanity, the Bible reveals important truths related to our human identity and vocation that are critical to the flourishing of all of creation.

In this episode, we unpack the profound depths of human existence and our identities in God's image. Dr. Carmen Joy Imes is our guest. She is an associate professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.  She is the author of Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters and Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters.

Through out the episode, we talk about how salvation is more than just a ticket to heaven; it encompasses our physical bodies, the world around us, and our role in God's restored creation. The beauty of God's presence and purpose consistently echo through the Bible, unveiling our destiny to participate and prosper in all of creation. 

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Geoff Holsclaw:

What does it mean to be human? This timeless question proves critical as we seek to understand our purpose, identity and significance. I've made the many voices clamoring to shape our understanding of humanity. The Bible reveals important truths related to our human identity and vocation and what it means to flourish as humans. There's always this, the Embodied Faith podcast. I usually put them in little by little, but Sid and Dr Iams are already on the video feed if you're watching. But this is the Embodied Faith podcast, where we are seeking a neuroscience-informed spiritual formation and we're produced by Grassroots Christianity which seeks to grow faith for everyday people.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Hopefully, things aren't as glitchy on the recording as some of these things are coming out live. But Dr Carmen Joy Iams is with us today. She is the Associate Professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in Southern California. She is the author of Bearing God's Name why Sinai Matters, and then most recently, which we're going to talk about today, a book called being God's Image why Creation Still Matters. Carmen has a YouTube channel also where she releases weekly Torah Tuesday videos. I love the alliteration because I was raised a Baptist. She's passionate about equipping the church to engage the Old Testament as well as to see its relevance for the Christian life. Thank you so much for being on today. We're so glad to have you.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Thanks for the invitation. This will be fun.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Oh, super fun One. And Sid didn't know this until I read it out, but her middle name is Joy also, so you both share a middle name, which is pretty exciting For those who listen to the podcast. Much Joy is, we feel is like an essential human experience and maybe you could fill this out even more for us, but I feel like it's kind of an underlooked aspect of especially the Old Testament relationship that people have with God.

Cyd Holsclaw:

I know I was raised fundamentalist.

Geoff Holsclaw:

So it's like well, god is angry, god is mostly disappointed. And then the more I read the Old Testament and the Psalms, I'm like actually people seem to really enjoy being in God's presence, people seem to celebrate it. But that's a whole different topic.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Anyways, they even celebrate the law which is the subject of my first book.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Oh well, let's, let's get into that. I tell people when I teach through in my systematic theology classes, when I teach the Old Testament, I try to tell people that too is like you know. People actually really enjoyed the law and they enjoyed the temple.

Geoff Holsclaw:

It wasn't just this. You know dreadful place, the temple, and like hearing about the law. So but could you tell us on your way to this most recent book, which is being God's image? But you wrote another book, previous book, which is bearing God's name. Could you kind of give us the two minute summary of what that is about?

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Sure, that was an outgrowth of my PhD dissertation at Wheaton College, where I was examining the command not to take the Lord's name in vain, and I became convinced that we've been misunderstanding it, that it's not policing what we say about God or how we use His name verbally, but that it's actually pointing to this wider truth that the people of God have been stamped by His name. We wear the name of God or carry it. He puts it on us to say that we belong to Him, and so the command is saying not to carry His name in vain or not to bear it in vain. That is not to misrepresent Him. So it's a much wider understanding of the command, much broader interpretation and more missional. And I try to make the case in the book from all sorts of angles historical, literary, metaphor theory. My dissertation examined it in depth from all these angles and then I took what I learned and repackaged it for the church, because I really believe that as Christians, if we want to understand who we are or why we're here in the world, what our vocation is, then we need to go back to Sinai and see what's happening as God draws people into covenant with Himself. So that's the first book. It came out at the end of 2019.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

And the month that it came out I was sitting there thinking about the message and how it was already getting traction with Christians who wanted to like the Old Testament.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

They kind of all had the sense I know I'm supposed to like this book and I'm supposed to read it and it's supposed to guide my ethics, but I sure don't know how to connect with it. Bearing God's name was helping people see the Bible as one unified story. It was helping them see how the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same God and how there's joy in the Old Testament and evidence of the grace of God. And I thought what are some other areas that Christians struggle to understand? What Scripture is saying? Where have we bought into lies about ourselves that are about the world we live in? And in fact, somebody on a podcast asked me that question what's an idea that needs to die? And the first thing that came to mind is this concept of salvation, as we ask Jesus into our heart so that we can go to heaven when we die.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

That's what it means to be saved, and I just feel like it's such a an anemic and truncated way of thinking about salvation, that our bodies are part of the story and creation is part of the story, and that our destiny is not to float on the cloud somewhere, but actually to be part of God's restored creation as embodied humans, and so that got me thinking about how it starts in the Garden of Eden and it goes all the way through scripture, and so as I traced the thread in the first book of the covenant relationship with God, I realized there was another thread that needed to be traced and that was creation and humanity's role in creation. So that's where the second book came from. It's kind of a prequel to bearing God's name, and it was a joy to send it out into the world now and help people discover their human identity.

Geoff Holsclaw:

That's great.

Cyd Holsclaw:

Yeah, I love hearing that. That resonates deeply for us because the book that we wrote, which was released in 2020, right in the middle of COVID like I'm seriously yeah, fun times.

Cyd Holsclaw:

But we traced the threads of how God is always present with his people that the whole story of the Bible is God's presence and then the purpose that he gives us of joining and flourish all of creation, right Like our own individual souls, and I love that you're reminding us too, in that it's not about escaping creation, but it's about God coming down and restoring creation, and that this being the new heavens and the new earth. So yeah, yeah, so it's exciting.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

I love hearing. If it was, if God wanted to rescue us from these bodies and from this creation, then he did not need to send Jesus as a human in a body, and Jesus did not need to rise physically from the dead and physically ascend to heaven.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

I think if we look closely at Jesus' human embodiment, it informs how we should be thinking about our own bodies and our own place in the world. This is not. These are not just a shell. These are not a shell to be discarded, these bodies, but they're part of what God called very good in Genesis and therefore they're coming with us into the new creation. They're gonna be part of God's eternal purposes.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Well, let's talk about that before we jumped on and hit record. You said that while writing this book, actually those themes of embodiment became much more front and center. Yeah, we've called this podcast Embodied Faith because we feel like we need to reclaim that, not just as individual bodies but also social bodies that live in a world that God loves, and that's why I was so excited to see your book release. Could you just talk a little bit about kind of how you kind of came into that theme of embodiment while you were exploring this idea of being God's image that we get in Genesis?

Dr. Carmen Imes:

128? Yeah, there were a couple of threads I was trying to pull on. One was this idea that our future, that our destiny, if you will, is the new creation and that we would be embodied in the new creation and that we too will be raised to life. So that was one thread that I was pulling on that made me think about embodiment. But the other was this concept of the image of God and humans being God's image.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

I began to realize, as I studied it more closely, that the image of God is not attached to a particular capacity human capacity but that it's actually tied to our embodiment.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

That embodiment really is the grounds for being God's image, and through the history of the church there's been so much conversation about what does it mean to be the image of God and what does it mean to be human, and what often happens is that people take Imago de, or image of God, and they make it the container into which they try to fit everything that it means to be human.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

So anything that makes humans different from animals goes in this basket, and I don't think it's meant to bear all of that. To be the image of God is something more specific than everything that makes us different from animals, and if you tie the image of God to certain human capacities that make us different from animals, then often the conversation revolves are either our self-consciousness, or rationality, or a moral discernment, and those are all things that are perceived as less embodied, and so our physical bodies then don't play as central of a role in how we process that and think about that. And what I think is most concerning about tying the Imago de to one of these capacities is that humans fall along a whole spectrum of abilities or capacities, and so if you say the Imago de is human rationality, then how do you assess a two-month-old baby who is not very rational?

Dr. Carmen Imes:

And how do you assess an older individual who's experiencing dementia? Are they not the image of God anymore? Are they losing the image of God? What does that say about their dignity or status? So I came into it, concerned about some of the ethical problems that come from tying the Amago Day to a human capacity. But then, as I looked at the biblical text, I became convinced that capacity is not at all what it's talking about. It's talking about embodiment.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

So the Hebrew word that we translate as image is the word celem, and a celem is, in the Hebrew Bible, something very concrete.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Every ancient Near Eastern temple had a celem in the most holy place, that is, they had an idol or statue of the God that was to be worshiped in that place. Nobody confused the idol with the God himself or herself. They knew that that idol was not the sum total of God, but they understood the statue as a physical representation of the deity that somehow authorized to receive and deflect worship to the deity. And so when God says I've decided to make humankind as my image, he's saying in effect, there aren't going to be any idols in my temple because humans are my authorized representatives that point worshiped in my direction and that remind the world that I am king and I'm in charge. So the only qualification we need to be the image of God is a human body, and once you have one, you are the image of God and you can't lose it, because it's not tied to something that you're able to do Just by showing up. You're already doing what images are supposed to do.

Cyd Holsclaw:

Yeah, and that really changes our understanding of what that means. Because, often I'm either being God's image or I'm not being God's image, and so the fact that you're like it's actually just about the embodied sense. Yes, and then I know we got. I got really excited when I learned about this too of just the idea that when God created, when we see in the narrative, the creation narrative is that God is doing the same kinds of things that would happen in an ancient temple to another God including breathing on the idol to animate it and then placing it in the temple, where you know, and now God dwells in that place, and so the way that he placed Adam and Eve in the garden, breathed breath of life into them.

Cyd Holsclaw:

And so what difference does that make then? Right, if we'd say, okay, our bodies just by having bodies, the way that they are designed, makes us image bearers. So then, what difference does that make to our life of faith together, if it's about our bodies and not just about our character?

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yeah, so clearly our character matters. I don't want to say character doesn't matter, but what we learn when we grasp this concept of being God's image as a physical embodiment is that every single person that I encounter is the image of God full stop. There is nothing they need to do to qualify, and so every person I encounter is worthy of dignity and worthy of ethical treatment. So after the flood, when Noah comes out of the Ark with his family, god says to him that human life needs to be treated as as sacred. He says whoever sheds human blood by humans, shall their blood be shed, for in the image of God has God made humankind. So he's affirming, after the fall and after the flood, that every human being is the image of God, and that's why you can't kill each other.

Geoff Holsclaw:

That's why if?

Dr. Carmen Imes:

someone murders someone, they have to be held accountable, because human life is not disposable or dispensable. And so I think, at the very first, thing that I take away from this is that everyone around me needs to be treated with dignity. And then, on the converse, as I think about myself, there's a kind of a new grounding for self-esteem that's not based on something I perform, something I do. So one thing that I like to say is that our work matters. God's given us work to do.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

That's part of the consequence of being the image of God is we have the responsibility to rule over creation, but the rulership isn't the content of the image of God, it's the consequence of it. So, before I've done anything, I'm the image of God, which means my self-esteem is grounded in what God says is true of me, not in something that I earn or achieve. So my work matters, but it doesn't make me matter. I already matter because I'm the image of God, and so it changes the way we think about ourselves and our work. My work matters, it's important, but it doesn't define who I am, so that the moment I'm not able to do this work anymore, I haven't lost any dignity. I haven't lost my identity, because my identity is grounded in something outside of myself, something given to me by God that I think is really freeing.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Yeah, yeah, we kind of talk about it. The way Sid and I talk about it is well, you're as the image of God. You are in God's family in a sense, yes, and God has called us to have a portion of the family business. And so we get to do that and we're called to do that, but and we may fail at that or we may succeed at contributing productively with the family economy, but that doesn't mean we're kicked out of the family or our family ship Our membership in the family is not based on that but we are invited into that work.

Geoff Holsclaw:

So just you know to nerd out a little bit is you called? You said that we are or that humanity has created as the image of God Most English translations. When people go back and look at that, we'll see that God made us in the image of God. So could you just talk about that a little bit differently, why you're leaning more toward the as instead of the in.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yes, this is the nerdy part of the book. I start the book with a grammatical conversation that I hope will not turn anybody off, but I feel like it's important to make the case for why I'm using different language. People often talk about bearing God's image or being made in God's image, and both of those are not quite capturing what I see going on in scripture. If the image of God is something we bear, then we could stop bearing it, we could set it down and stop carrying it. So I'm trying to discipline myself to say being God's image rather than bearing, and that's the reason for the name of the book. But in terms of the preposition, the language in Hebrew, I already mentioned that the word for image is selam. There's a little letter attached to the front of it, the letter bait in Hebrew. So it's butselam or butsalmu, in our image or as our image.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

That bait can be translated in, and in many other passages it is. But as you know, prepositions are flexible. The word in can denote lots of different things in English and the letter B or the word bait in Hebrew can designate lots of different kinds of relationships. So my understanding is that the word that the preposition bait in Hebrew only means in Like. It corresponds to in in English when it's used in spatial or temporal ways, that is, when it has to do with place or time, and that's not true of the image of God. God doesn't make us his image like. That's not saying where we are or how long we are, it's saying something else.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

So a more appropriate translation of that Hebrew preposition would be a bait of identity, which corresponds to there's an example of this in Exodus, chapter six, first three, where God says to Moses, to Abraham, isaac and Jacob I revealed myself, but El Shaddai. So there's that bait again, as El Shaddai he's. He didn't reveal himself in El Shaddai as if El Shaddai was a deity and he, like co-opted it. He revealed himself as El Shaddai, that is, they knew him as God Almighty. That's how they came to know him and he was now ready to reveal a deeper significance of who he was. So that's called a bait of identity, or a bait ascentee if you want to speak Latin, and I think that's what we have here.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

So God doesn't make humans in his image, because it's not a spatial or temporal thing. He's making us as his image, that is, we are the image of God. We could just take out the preposition altogether and get the same meaning. God creates us his image. That is the image is what we are, and so if I begin the book by that clarifying conversation, because I think it has important implications for the permanence of the image and for the fact that it's our identity, not a capacity or not something we can lose- Well, and the thing that comes to my mind as you say that too, is that it changes the way that we see Jesus as an embodied.

Cyd Holsclaw:

You know, jesus is the image of God, yes, and as a human he is God's image. And then he's living out God's image in a different way than any human before him has been capable of doing.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yes.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

And a lot of people look at that language about Jesus as the image of God and they say, oh, look, see, jesus is the image of God and we're in the image of God, which is a little bit less, and I think that's a well-meaning trying to like read the text closely, but I don't think it works. Theologically or grammatically. I believe what you just said, sid, is exactly. What I like to say is that Jesus is the image of God because he's human. Yeah, and every human is the image of God, and so we can take away this notion that well, jesus is really the image of God because he's God. The rest of us are just trying to be the image of God. No, it's true that Jesus is a model for us to follow and that he's cracked the code on this. He's doing something that we need to emulate, but it's not because he's the image and we're not. It's because he's living in alignment with his identity as the image, and he's not, so we have the same identity.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

We just need to lean into it and begin to live according to the truth instead of according to lies.

Cyd Holsclaw:

Yeah, well, and just what you were saying about. Like you know, in the creation, the original creation, we are God's image. There's nothing we can do to lose that, and just being God's image gives us dignity. And then when we see in Jesus's baptism that those words of identity spoken by the Father, jesus isn't just the image of God, he's also the son of God in whom God is well pleased, which then extends to all of us when we are in Christ. And so this being God's image also moves into being God's family right, being adopted, being family as well.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yes, yeah, and we see that family language all the way back in Genesis, in Genesis 5, where Seth is the image of Adam, which is giving us an analogy. For what does it mean to be the Amago Day? It means we're somehow part of God's family. We have this family relationship or connection that's intrinsic to our human identity. It's something animals don't have, and that's what's being restored in Christ. The fracture or estrangement in our family relationship with God is being restored as we turn towards God to define who we are, instead of trying to self-define or self-actualize.

Geoff Holsclaw:

So what is this? Later in the book you talk about, like the beloved community, what does this? Mean for the church. What can people who are listening like take away and be like oh, this helps me understand why we do all these church things, or what it means to be the church, or the mission of the church.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

I actually have another book cooking in my head a third book Becoming God's Family, why the Church Still Matters. I like that already, so I touch on it a little bit.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Being, bearing and becoming. I like all the things. I love it. Oh, trilogy.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

It has to be. My daughter says it has to be purple because we got an orange one and a green one and so purple would be in it. Anyway, I so I. But I do touch on it in this book because I do think that if we recognize our shared humanity, then it has implications for how we live our life.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

When God makes his image in Genesis one, it's not just one person, it's male and female. There's, there's built into it a sense of collaboration and partnership in sharing this identity as part of God's family and the consequence of ruling over creation together, side by side. And so that's part of what I think Jesus is trying to lead us to recover and to lean into in the church. Paul's letter to the Ephesians makes clear that the implications of the gospel is the breaking down of a dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, that we recognize we're part of the same human family and now the family of faith, and that we're being built together to become like Christ and a dwelling of the spirit. And so there's all sorts of things to say about moving away from individualism and towards collaboration and community.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

I think in the West we have such a persistent model of success or maturity as self-sufficiency. When I reach self-sufficiency, I don't have to depend on anyone else to provide for my needs. Then I am a mature adult and I just don't see that picture in scripture of God. This is not God's vision for humanity. His vision is interdependency and collaboration. And if we have self-sufficiency as the model, then someone who's not able to do it by themselves because of whatever physical, mental, emotional limitations they have, then it is in a constant struggle to be taken seriously as a full-fledged human being.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

But if we can dethrone that image of the self-sufficient if you'll permit me middle-aged white male as the, as the sort of ideal female.

Geoff Holsclaw:

She was looking at me on the screen there.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

folks, for all of you who don't know us, but if we realize that actually God's created male and female as his image and there's the diversity of cultures and ethnicities that are invited into this human family, then perhaps we'll, perhaps we can get past some of the racism and sexism and ableism that have plagued our culture. That's my hope that Christians can rediscover, like oh, if the goal isn't for me to do it all by myself, then maybe it's okay. Like one of the things I want people to realize is this is a group project.

Cyd Holsclaw:

We're in this together. Well and that brings it full circle back around to what you were talking about of bearing God's name. So we weren't meant to bear God's name by ourselves but that we were bearing God's name in community, as a community, the way we treat one another, the way we live with each other.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yes.

Cyd Holsclaw:

But that's how we bear the name of God and show the world who God is.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Yes, so this kind of, while you were talking about like being in the family of God, I was thinking about Luke 15, where we find the very famous parable the prodigal son or maybe the better, the prodigal father.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

The older brother, the old brother.

Geoff Holsclaw:

The parable, the two sons. And the thing is, is the son, the younger son, you know, he got his inheritance and he wasted it and he left. But the older son was, in a sense, had unsunned himself in a different way. And I think that story is really important because it says well these sons, in their being remained sons of the father. Their problem was that they didn't believe it and they didn't know how to live out of it. They didn't know how to live out of that true identity of being in that family. The younger son left, physically, broke the relationships, but the older son had, you know, in some weird way, distance himself and had become a servant to his father also.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

It had become. The older son becomes transactional. He treats it as like I'm getting what I deserve from you instead of I'm in relationship with you, Right, so yeah?

Geoff Holsclaw:

And like in the gospel moment for all of us in that is well, Jesus in one sense is like the third son, who knew how to be the true son. He always lived as the son and now he can teach us how to be children, sons and daughters.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Yes Of the father. And to bring it full circle to how we started, you know that parable ends with the reminder that all of heaven rejoices when one returns like this, that God delights on us and has joy. And then, I think you know, is the storyline so many times people read the Bible and they lose that joyful like through line that God is trying to recover a family that is delighting to be with one another.

Cyd Holsclaw:

Yes.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw:

There's all sorts of terrible and difficult twists and turns all throughout, but being God's image or being in God's family is what God's trying to call and lure and bring us back into, and it's, it sounds like good news to me.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yeah, the goal is actually for all of us to celebrate together, and that parable seems to me to be an indictment of the Jewish people of Jesus' own day for begrudging the grace of God being offered to anyone else. The humans who had walked away and are now coming back, and they're completely missing the point If they are in it, for you know, they have the modern mindset of an individualist. I'm doing the right thing so that I go to the right place instead of I'm part of this family and we belong together. If the if, family and togetherness is the goal, then we can really celebrate when others join the family.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Oh, amen, so good, sid, do you have any last questions or thoughts?

Cyd Holsclaw:

No, that feels like a great place to end. I think you know I love that you wrote the book and I want to. You know I think it's a great. I have talked to many people individually in coaching and spiritual direction who have been radically transformed by this understanding that I don't earn my place as an image bearer, but that I already am the image of God and I already am a child of God. And so you know that the life of discipleship becomes about living as who I already am, rather than trying to become someone I'm not.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yes, and I don't have to sit around and wait for some human to recognize my dignity or to give a stamp of approval or a gold star or a ticket into some position where I have authority or whatever. Like God has already said, I'm of inestimable value and he's given me a job to do. I don't need to wait for a human to say, yes, carmen, please do this. I can just get busy doing the work that God's plan for me to do. Yeah.

Cyd Holsclaw:

Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw:

It's that interesting tension of spiritual formation that we have to hold together, and I think Augustin said something like this, but it's basically like we have to learn to become what we already are, like we already are something. It's just us, for some reason, who aren't living. So can we become what?

Cyd Holsclaw:

we are yes.

Geoff Holsclaw:

It's the call of discipleship and the call of spiritual formation. Well, thanks so much for taking some time and being on with us. Where can people find you? The book is Bearing God's Image. Why Creation Still Matters being being. You know cause we're all told to bear God's image. So now I can't get right to start.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Everybody has to do it at least once.

Geoff Holsclaw:

The first book is Bearing God's Name, but this one that we're talking about is being God's Image, why Creation Still Matters. Where else can people find you and some of the things you're doing?

Dr. Carmen Imes:

So I'm on YouTube, as you mentioned. Not only do I release tour Tuesday videos, but I put in any interviews like this I add to my playlist so people can find scads of interviews and lectures and different content that I've done around the world, and some of it translated into Spanish and Hindi and other languages. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter and I have a blog karmengioieimsblogspotcom yeah, but lots of ways to find me and follow me and I hope what I my hope with all of this content is that people can freshly encounter the God of the scriptures and discover the relevance of the Old Testament for the Christian life.

Geoff Holsclaw:

Thank you so much for all of you who are listening or watching. Please share this online, as well as subscribe on YouTube or Spotify or iTunes. Thank you so much. And when you get around to writing the being or becoming God's family we definitely have you on again, because we love that topic.

Dr. Carmen Imes:

Yes sounds good. If you like videos, don't forget to like. Subscribe you.

Exploring Human Existence and God's Image
Embodying God's Image and Restoring Creation
The Significance of Being God's Image
Being in God's Family