On the sixth day of God’s creation, God created human beings in his own image and likeness, and he declared his creation “very good.”
We are beloved of God because we were created in God’s image.
One day I entered a local café for my morning coffee, and I faced the barista, a young woman, probably a college student working to pay for her schooling. She had tattoos all over her arms and who knows where else. She had gaudy piercings in her nose and lips along with earrings that jingled as she moved. Her face was heavily smeared with makeup. In addition, she was extremely thin, giving me the impression that she was on drugs or an anorexic.
After several encounters with her, she remembered my preferred order of coffee and smiled at me. Soon we exchanged names, and she became a real person to me, not just some superficial, anonymous college student. She, like me and like you, is made in the image and likeness of God. Whenever I see her now, I remind myself that she is beloved of God and my prejudices subside.
Several years ago, I was invited to give as series of workshops in Colombia based on my writings over the years about spirituality. While teaching Spanish at EMU, we had native Spanish speakers through MCC’s International Visitor Exchange Program work with our students. One of them, from Colombia, was particularly interested in the book The Spacious Heart which I had written with my sister. She thought that the Mennonite Church in Colombia needed to hear my thoughts.
I was intrigued by the idea, especially because it included going to Colombia, but was skeptical that my message, written for a North American audience, would have any relevance for Latin America. Diana, my Colombian conversation assistant, assured me that it would.
That being the case, I had her and her husband Felipe pick five themes from our book for the workshops. My wife and I excitedly planned our trip to Colombia being hosted by Felipe and Diana.
The first workshop dealt with the question, “are you drawn by God or driven by culture.” I distinguished between the core of our being, and our socialization. I soon discovered that Colombians are just as driven by culture as we are, and are just as distracted by their busyness from being drawn to God. “The core of your being,” I said, “is your being made in the image and likeness of God.” I described our cultural socialization as being like an onion with each layer further obscuring the core of our being. We discussed our family socialization, our religious background, the country we born into, and so forth.
After identifying each layer, I would ask, what does this obscure? What is the core of our being? I answered this myself the first time, but after having primed them, when I preceded with other layers, they enthusiastically answered: “We are made in the image and likeness of God!” When the last layer was identified, with joy and some with tears, they were nearly screaming: “We are made in the image and likeness of God!” My workshops in the USA were never met with quite so much enthusiasm. I guess the concept of our God likeness is universal. We are beloved of God because we were made in God’s image and likeness.
In another of my workshops I talked about fear and how “perfect love drives out fear.” During the discussion time, a man at the back of the room rose to give his response to fear. He was known to be an ex-guerilla in an area that despite a peace treaty was still surrounded by a guerilla presence. “Because of my former involvement with the guerillas, I am afraid for my life,” he boldly stated. Then he drew out his gun, right in the middle of a Mennonite Church. “I have learned tonight that I no longer need to live in fear,” he said. “I am laying down my weapon and turning over my life to Christ.” He recognized that he was made in the image and likeness of God, in whom he could trust. My skepticism about the relevance of my themes in Colombia was allayed.
A former guerilla, a man who had hatred in his soul is beloved of God.
If there is any interest in these workshops here, I’d be delighted to present them.
The last time I spoke here, I told the story of Mexican man named Pedro who, just like I erroneously did with the barista, I judged to be a drunk who had an agenda. He was attending a worship service during Holy Week with my cross-cultural students from EMU at a small Mexican Mennonite congregation in the northern part of Mexico City. He told everyone how much he loved US Americans, our music and other aspects of our culture. His eyes were bloodshot, and his speech was slurred.
However, after being with him for a week, we learned of his life story, how he was a drug addict who came to Christ and was completely turned around. Because of his habit, he had to drop out of his promising university career, and had to live off the little he could earn by selling candies and gum on the street. After he turned his life over to Jesus, he had to attend church services as often as he could in order to stay away from his former so-called friends. Our final service was Resurrection Sunday. As many congregations do, we stated to each other: “Christ is risen,” to which we replied, “He is risen indeed.” When I looked into Pedro’s eyes, I recognized his God image-ness. I told him he was beloved of God. With tears in both of our eyes, we gave each other a strong embrace.
Pedro, despite his addictions, is made in God’s image, and is beloved of God.
As part of my training in Seminary, I volunteered as a chaplain in the local hospital. I was to be alert for Spanish-speaking patients, since I am fluent in the language. I entered the room where María was being treated for appendicitis. She was from Honduras, and we had a very pleasant conversation about her country, since it was where I did my alternative service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war.
In the middle of our conversation, she received a telephone call. It was from her social worker, and as I listened, I realized that she was using a different name. After she hung up, she burst into tears. “My whole life is a lie,” she sobbed. Shamefully, she confessed that she was in the USA with false documents. There is a whole black-market industry in this country providing these services for huge fees. María was indebted not only these shysters, but also to the human smugglers that had helped her cross into our country. Her dream of sending money back to her two daughters in Honduras had turned into a nightmare. And now she had hospital expenses to worry about.
In the midst of her sobbing, I placed my hand on her shoulder and prayed for her. After the prayer, I looked in her eyes and told her that she was beloved of God, and nothing can separate her from that love. Her smile at my pronouncement was radiant.
Jorge was in the hospital for more than a week when I met him. He was isolated for fear of tuberculosis. He didn’t really want to talk to me, another white man with a tie, a clipboard and an assumed agenda. He was from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. When he learned that I had spent some three years in his country, and that I only was there to stand by him in his pain, he opened up. Slowly but surely, his torturous story unfolded.
Lacking employment opportunities and desperate to provide a better life for his family, he left his wife and three children more than eighteen months earlier to seek a better life in the United States. He started with little money and no legal documents, with no fixed destination.
Without money, his main means of transportation was hitch-hiking and freight trains. Along the way he did odd jobs to sustain himself. The stories of how many people took advantage of his situation were hard to believe: robbery, extortion, and abandonment. To their credit, some few compassionate people reached out to him with temporary food and shelter. He reached my city on a freight train suffering from a high fever and checked into the Emergency Room of our hospital with no friends, family, money or papers.
Like with María, I placed my hand on his shoulder and prayed for him. After the prayer, I looked into his feverish eyes and pronounced: “You are made in the image and likeness of God and you are beloved of God.” The smile he gave through his tears said everything.
The next week on my rounds he was gone. Where did he go? I wonder with extreme concern.
Henri Nouwen is a much-loved writer on spirituality. In fact, after the Bible, his works are the second-most read by clerics and religious leaders. Although he is Catholic, he is loved by pastors of all denominations. Nouwen’s signature affirmation is: “You are beloved of God.” Nouwen himself struggled mightily with his own worthiness before God. It is through exposing his personal vulnerability that people are drawn to his ideas.
Nouwen also said that “Life is but a short parenthesis between the eternal love of God. God loved us before we were born and after we die.” We so often forget that eternal love during our parenthetical lives on earth. Being taught that we are “beloved of God” whenever or wherever we are, is the ultimate task of spirituality.
Nouwen gets to the premise that “we are beloved by God” through two means. I have already alluded to this. The first is that we are made in God’s image and likeness, and God is love. God put his love-stamp on our souls to be ever available no matter what our culture wants to paste over it.
The second means is through God’s dealing with his own Son. God called Jesus “beloved” both after his baptism and transfiguration. Galatians 3:26 declares, "For you are all [children] of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” Through our relationship with Jesus, we are God’s children and thus receive this blessedness.
Socialization is the enemy of our understanding of our being “beloved of God.” I have become convinced that our US American culture teaches us to be self-loathing instead of being beloved. We get messages from everywhere that we are not good-looking enough, not talented enough, not intelligent enough, not wealthy enough, not spiritual enough. We always compare ourselves with those who excel in the areas where we feel lacking; we never look at those who have less in any given category. The result is thinking that we can never measure up. The advertising industry is astute in capitalizing on this self-hate by providing us with products that will, according to their pitch, make us all the things that we are not. Instead, we become disheartened and even depressed, turning to obsessions instead of the core of our being.
How can we be trained to recognize our core instead of these false messages? How can we learn and believe that we are “beloved of God” through all eternity?
As part of the core curriculum at EMU, I taught a course with a colleague called: “dealing with suffering and loss.” At the end of each year, during our final exam, we had students face each other in inside/outside circles, look directly in each other’s eyes, and say to each other: “You are beloved of God.” The outer circle moved to the next student and continued moving until all students were covered. Then we opened it up to anyone. It has a powerful effect. It is almost magical. There is laughter, there are hugs and there are tears. After we started the exercise, the students really got into the it. On class evaluations, many said that they will carry this phrase with them throughout their lives.
The magic of the phrase “You are beloved of God,” comes about because it is given freely as a gift. The eyes are a window into the soul and looking into each other’s eyes while stating this simple phrase goes directly to the soul, the core of our being where our God likeness lies. It connects on a very deep level. It helps us to realize that in God’s eyes we don’t have to measure up to any artificial cultural standard. He loves us as we are.
When I gave spiritual direction, I would ask my directees to go home and look into the mirror at their eyes and say: “you are beloved of God.” For some reason, it is extremely difficult for most people to do the mirror exercise. We are so used to seeing our ego and our outward appearance when we look in the mirror, that we forget that we also have a soul that needs to be groomed. I challenge each of you to do the same sometime. It needs to be done multiple times.
You are beloved of God because you were made in God’s image and likeness, and God is love. You have been embraced by God’s eternal love before you were born and after you die. Despite my natural, but unfortunate prejudgments, the barista, the Mennonite congregation in Colombia, the guerilla, María, Jorge and Pedro are all born in God’s image and likeness and are beloved of God. Despite socialization that covers up the core of our being. We are made in God’s image and likeness, and we are beloved of God.
