Fallen but in God's Image

I used to think of Christianity as something that gave me absolute certainty but over the last few years I have come to realise that the centre of Christianity is actually mystery. Recently another one occurred to me and that is the mystery of how we are both in God’s image and fallen at the same time.

How we deal with this mystery does have an effect on the way we live.

If we look on ourselves and the world as fallen we can become obsessed with evil and what is wrong in the world. We then see all of God’s story in terms of sin and how evil the world is. This is a very joyless and depressing view of the world.

Conversely if we over emphasise man as in God’s image we start to look inside ourselves for all the answers. Not only is this arrogant but it also leads to us making a lot of mistakes.

Oddly we can, from my experience, do both of these at the same time! We can be depressingly focussed on sin and yet also arrogantly sure of our abilities.

Part of the mission for the church today in post-Christendom society is to keep this mystery in balance. Man is not all evil but at the same time he is not totally good. We are creative because we are made in the image of the creative God but we do not have all the answers.

Faith

'There are no facts, only interpretations, and this is an interpretation.' Freidrich Nietzsche

I read this on the tram on the way to work (no - I wasn't reading Nietzsche but this was quoted in a book) and immediately thought about how it lined up with what I think Christianity is all about.

At the centre of Christianity is mystery and not certainty. We have the mystery of the virgin birth, the mystery of the resurrection and, centrally, the mystery of the Trinity; plus, I'm sure, a few more mysteries. If we had certainties we would have no need for faith for we would be compelled to believe but that would deny Love, as Love is never based on compulsion.

We may say we are sure of things, our salvation, the resurrection, etc, but what really mean is that our interpretation is that these are facts and that we are prepared to put our faith in them. In doing so we open ourselves up to the biggest mystery of all, that God loves each and every one of us.