Where Are You Pointing?

In Covenant and Community I make a case for understanding God's image not as any part of the blueprint by which God designed us. God's image is not in us. Nowhere. Rather God's image is the purpose for which we were made, the role that we play in the universe and beyond, and the plan toward which God is bringing us in Christ.

But others see it differently. The different locations for God's image in the poem below are all proposals from eminent theologians. Most of them I respect highly in general but disagree with on this question.

Written slightly in imitation of William Cowper and presented with no serious disrespect intended.


Where Are You Pointing?
or I Can’t See It Yet

God built his image into man
The theologians say
Thus his inscrutibeautiful self
In skin and bone display.

But where in us this image lies
They never can decide;
Is it in your gorgeous eyes?
Or hidden deep inside?

Is it our brains, which think like his
And make us good/bad seeing?
He surely would be proud that we
His conscience are displaying.

Or that we on our hind legs stand
And gaze into the sky
Longing for the land from which
Our spirits Hellward fly.

Or that we do in part excel
The kingdom animalia
And plan our murders in advance
A fiendish foreordalia?

Perhaps we show his image in
Our most angelic parts,
Omnipotentest sovereignty
Unveiled in shriveled hearts.

Or was it only once in us?
We left its shards in Eden?
And now for blood to glue them back
The Spirit’s intercedin’?

God dropped his image into man
His drop into our ocean?
Or wiped it on and rubbed it in:
Our holy suntan lotion?

God built his image into man,
But where, we are not sure!
It seems to me the teachers have
The cart the horse before.