"In the image of God He created them..."

The mysterious yet personal God of the Bible communicated with humanity by creating us in His own image. He gave us a reflection of himself in our very own nature. He "stamped" or "encoded" on the first man and woman an immortal soul. In fact, he breathed life into the first man to create his soul. God gave the man Adam and the woman Eve brilliant minds and bodies with a complex range of emotions. He made them beings similar to himself that can relate to abstract, eternal, spiritual, and moral concepts. These invisible but discernable qualities, reflect the personal and exquisite nature of God.

This is a far cry from being complex machinery. We believe that humanity is essentially different in the universe from an amoeba, a hammer, a dolphin, etc. We believe that all people are reflectors of God. This is one of the main reasons for respect, compassion, love, and patience with all people, irregardless of sex, race, nationality, or worldview.

But we realize, that as men, we have been designed in such a way that we are most deeply satisfied when we reflect specific attributes of God. We look to Jesus for the power to do that and the example to teach us how. And we work together with women to see the beauties of the uncreated Creator reflecting His nature in us. We reflect Him together, as males and females, relating to eachother in self-sacrificing and appopriate ways.

When our first parents preferred their own design for joy and justice, they in essence dropped an atomic bomb on their perfectly just and infinitely pleasurable God that created them to enjoy and know Himself. Instead of this act overthrowing God, it destroyed us. The "radiation" has deformed us in the core of our being, generation after generation. Some illustrate it like this: the image of God in us has been like a shattered mirror, still reflecting light, but so fragmented and broken that the image reflected is distorted and largely indiscernible.

However, the purpose of God since the beginning, was to justly bring this curse on us in order to graciously restore us from it. What did this cost Him? God created the world and allowed it to be broken, so that he could enter it himself as a perfect man- Jesus. He would become part of the grime and shattered beauty of the world and he would be brutally killed through it. He would be shattered. He would be spat on. Though he was innocent, he would recieve the punishment in his body and soul for the enemy race that had rejected him. By his own confession he "drank the cup" of God's wrath so that we would not have to, if we believe Him and treasure Him.

We have all rejected him. In the sober words of Bob Dylan, "I was stone cold dead as I stepped out of the womb." There is no one who is not born deeply deformed- in fact, spiritually dead at the core of their being. The Bible says that Jesus became the"curse" for us. He was cursed and condemned in body and soul when He died. This was so that we could receive blessing, restoration, meaning, and vindication for our existence.

We believe that God approved the sacrifice of himself by raising God the Son -Jesus- from the grave and making him the proto-type of what one day everyone who believes in Him will experience themselves. That is to say, that Jesus' resurrected body is the first earthly example of how one day the entire universe, including the bodies and souls of everyone trusting in him, will be renewed. This is a "reverse of the curse".

This reversal has started in our lives. When we believed in this story as historical, gripping, and coherent- we found that we were enveloped into it. We didn't create it, but it has re-created us through the Spirit of God. We hope to see the perfect image of Jesus who was "the image of the invisible God" that "explained God" and "manifested him" newly reflected in us as we seek the transformation of our families, our culture, and the world through relationship with Him.