"Let Us Make Man in Our Image": It's All About Relationships

   Every person that has been, is now, and will be in the future is made in God's image, albeit a very imperfect or corrupt (to degrade with unsound principles or moral values) image we have become because of sin ( I will write more about sin, it seems like a good place to serve as a reminder that the Bible says that, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". Many Christians seemingly forget this truth. We all should have the mentality of, "But for the grace of God, go I").
   Because all have been created by God we all share certain attributes of God Himself. For instance all human have been given the ability to choose to: laugh or cry, create or destroy, give or take, heal or injure, as well as the intellect to create art, music, buildings, to tell stories (fiction and non-fiction), we can look out to the far reaches of space, and inside of ourselves.
   One of the more endearing qualities we have been given is that, like God we are highly relational. The poet/pastor Donne wrote in the poem For Whom the Bell Tolls, "No man is an island unto himself, entire and complete". We are highly relational creatures because God is highly relational. We have a God given need to develop relationships with people that we call our families, and choose to develop relationships with other people we call friends, co-workers, community members (this is one of the best times to live because we can have friends from all over the world and write to them via email or Facebook, and even see and talk to them because of Skype).
    Twenty newborn infants were housed in a special facility. They had caregivers who would go in to feed them, bathe them and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else. The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than was necessary, and they never spoke to them. All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously, however. The environment was kept sterile; the babies were never ill.
    The experiment was halted after four months. At least half of the babies had died at that point, at least two more died even after being rescued and brought into a more normal environment. There was no physiological cause for the babies' deaths; they were all physically very healthy. Before each baby died, there was a period where they would stop verbalizing and trying to engage their caregivers, and just stop moving, never cry or change expression. Death would follow shortly. The babies who had "given up" before being rescued died in the same manner, even though they had been removed from the experimental conditions.
   The experiments were recorded by the monk Salimbene di Adam in his Chronicles, who wrote that Frederick [II] bade "foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments."
   We are all are in relational trouble with God. Without Jesus' sacrifice the relationship between God and us would be in a similar deadly position. And even if you know Him as savior if the relationship doesn't go much further your life will not be the "abundant life" Jesus wants for you.
   In the end it's all about relationships.