God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.” —Genesis 1:26
My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God.—1 John 3:2
.. We have heard the phrase so often that we don’t get the existential shock of what “created in the image and likeness of God” is saying about us. If this is true—and I believe it is—our family of origin is divine. We were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and surely not “total depravity” or “sinners in the hands of an angry god.” All the good theology in the world cannot make up for a basically negative anthropology.