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Like many people, I have found the news from India about the death of the rape victim almost unbearable. The details of the case are horrific. Four years ago I went to Delhi with some friends for the wedding of one of our University friends. An acquaintance who had visited the city many times gave me a warning which when I heard it seemed incredible, but turned out to be excellent advice. He told me two things: cover up, and don’t travel alone on public transport. He added that I should avoid being by myself in crowded places.
As I always dress modestly, I told him that surely I would be OK. He pointed out that I was wearing a dress which was an inch or so above the knee; that, he said, would be regarded as provocative. I felt quite indignant, but I took his advice, and was glad I did. There was one occasion when a friend and I were on a bus and a man sitting further down looked at us the whole time; we both felt unhappy with his attention; goodness knows what we should have felt if anything more threatening had happened. As she is a Muslim and was wearing a hijab, I can only assume that he was looking at me – and I wad wearing a headscarf.
Thanks to heeding the good advice, the trip went off with nothing more than the occasional hostile stare, but it left me with no desire to go to the place again – despite the fact that, at least in old Delhi, there are some marvellous things to see, and despite my love for Indian food.
It all came back when I heard about the ghastly events in India recently. I don’t know how anyone can treat another human being in the way that poor woman and her companion were treated. It was a reminder of our capacity, as a species, for being inhuman. That we use that word reminds us that we like to think of ourselves as being better than the bestial level to which we can sink.
That is one of the things which points us to God – this knowing that just because something is ‘natural’ does not make it right. It is true that you still sometimes meet men who say stupid things about women ‘asking for it’ because of the clothes they wear. Of course we aren’t, and any man who thinks like that needs to get help. Part of being civilised is that we learn to curb some of our ‘natural’ appetites.
It is a mark of our falling away as a society that some people really think that saying that such and such a behaviour is fine because it is ‘natural’ is an argument which washes. Christianity has always called us to be the best we can – that is to be the image of God in which we are made. That does not mean that God has the urges which come to us because of the Fall, but it does mean that we have the urge to be altruistic, loving, faithful and self-sacrificing.
I might perhaps take exception to use of your word “natural” for behavior that is not in keeping with the “nature’ that God created for His human creatures. Yes, we have disordered desires now that we have fallen into original sin and no it is not a natural component of human nature which was described by God as “very good”; good enough for Christ Himself to assume our nature. It is a preponderance of our desire to be “as gods” and decide against our God given conscience to set ourselves against all that is God centered and thus centered on love: love of Him, ourselves our fellow men and, in fact, His wondrous and beautiful creations. All were good and our battle is not fighting what is “natural” but fighting against the “unnatural” lure to escape our very nature and assume a god-like state that informs us that we are the center of our lives. It goes beyond anthropomorphism and more closely resembles a philosophy that is more solipsistic than even man centered: it is purely a life lived for our selfish desires and condoned by the thought that we are central to all decisions. It may seem a small matter of semantics, but I think the distinction is vitally important when we evaluate the inhumanity of man and the disregard for the rights and the dignity that God bestowed upon us.
No, I think she is using the term correctly, the desire to have power over others is natural, it shows in all cultures, ambition is a modified, and ameliorated form of it. The subjection and objectification of women, in particular, is a particularly contemptible version of it, of course, on a par with bullying.
I don’t believe we, in our natural state have a urge to be godlike, in any recognizable form to a Christian, Zeus perhaps, but not our God.
And that is the signal difference in western civilization, we have for a time anyway risen above our baser instincts, and why the repaganization of the west is such a tragedy.
Sorry Neo, I responded in a different thread instead of attaching to your comment. You’ll see my response below.
Happens to us all, SF.
But I’m wearing my glasses and I now have a MacBook that doesn’t do all the antics of the PC that I was using. No excuse – human error.
You’ve been playing with that for a few days, like it?
Love it. I strongly suggest (if financially possible) to abandon Microsoft and all the problems. I’ve been threatening to do this for 20 years and finally took the plunge. There is a learning curve and I’m not very good on it yet.
I decidedly hear you on Microsoft, the only place it’s still running here is on a laptop, Toughbook, actually, and only there because we haven’t got some stuff, like the touchscreen working, other than that we run almost pure Linux, still have a glitch now and again, and I do miss Works, Libreoffice doesn’t quite cut it, but dependability is far better.
That’s very interesting, dear friend. I think I am really commenting on how we use that word wrongly – but you describe it so much better
Thank you Jess and I felt that you were doing that but failed to make it explicit so I thought I might seek some clarification.
Thank you, dear friend – you expressed it much better.
Just clarifying what I thought you meant.
Thank you
xx
Which features of human nature do you believe are bestowed by God, and which are the products of evolution by natural selection?
You have put yourself in a false dilemma by only allowing two limited interpretations of man being created in the image of God.
We know we are created in God’s image because the Bible tells us so in Genesis 1:27 where we read, “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Now, this event happened before the fall of man, but we know that we are still in some sense created in the image of God because 1 Corinthians 11:7 reaffirms this fact. Also Genesis 9:6 imposes the death penalty because of the fact that man is made in the image of God. This would argue that the idea of being created in God’s image still applies to us today.
The words “image” and “likeness” used in Genesis 1:26-27 express the idea of the whole man being created in this way. In some sense, both a man’s material and immaterial aspects are included in this assessment. Now, we know that strictly speaking man’s physical body is not patterned after the physical appearance of God. We are taught in John 4 that God is Spirit and does not reside in a physical body. However, this does not preclude the physical body being some part of the image of God. We exist currently as body and soul together. It is meaningless to talk of us a just a soul or just a body when we are alive on earth. Both are intricately intertwined to make you the person you are.
The body reflects God’s image by first of all being one in substance. God as a trinity is one being, acting with as much unity as our soul acts with our body. Our bodies are living, and Paul emphasizes that we serve a living God, not one of gold or silver or stone (Act17:29). In fact he says that those idols cannot be God because it would take a living being to create us as living beings. This is a highly rational argument, and difficult to find objectionable.
Paul’s ability to appeal to reason demonstrates another way that man is made in the image of God. God by His nature is a rational being. He operates by the laws of logic. He is not constrained by them because they are some kind of “higher force”, but they are the natural outflow of His will; they are His nature. He is as much a rational being as He is a loving being. Because only man has the true capacity for rational thinking, he is in this way also made in God’s image. Also, man is intelligent; aware of his surroundings and capable of changing them. He does not act on instinct, but should be able to control his natural drives for higher purposes.
God has given man free will, which likewise reflects God’s image. Every man has the ability to choose for himself his actions. He is morally aware. Man understands that certain things are good and certain things are evil. Before the fall, Adam and Eve had no experiential knowledge of good and evil, but they most certainly understood that they should obey God’s commands. If this were not so, God warning them about punishment if they disobeyed Him would have no meaning to them, and the fall could be viewed as entrapment on God’s part. Adam most certainly did understand that disobeying the will of God was wrong, and there could be dire consequences to his actions. Although we now must struggle against our evil nature to obey God, we still have moral understanding and comprehension of good and evil.
Lastly, one of the ways the image of God manifests itself in man is that only man can be aware of God and is capable of fellowshipping with Him. This part of man was exercised freely in the Garden before the fall. All men still are able to comprehend God’s existence, but none are able to fellowship with Him unless they have been born again in Christ. Obviously, the universality of religion shows that awareness of God and some need for a relationship with Him is common to man.
Your question has the implication that those people who have mental or physical deficiencies are somehow not created in the image of God. I find that this is not true. Because some of the aspects we associate with God’s image may not be operating properly, it doesn’t mean the person is devoid of God’s image. Rather, it shows that the image is somehow skewed or distorted. I liken this to an analogy of a car being made in a certain likeness (such as the body style of a corvette). When it is wrecked, the damage does not nullify the idea of being formed in that likeness, but shows the image as defective and in need of repair. Every person who is aware, no matter how slight his mental faculties, lives by some ethic, some moral code, and some decision-making processes. This re-emphasizes importance of our Redeemer’s work in the lives of men, for only He can create a heart in man that is not distorted and seeks His will.
We may be misunderstanding one another. The fact that we have a desire to exert power over others is antithetical to the nature that God has instilled in us and our attraction to evil, enslavement, control and dominance goes against everything that Christ taught us about our human nature when He walked among us as True man. His power, in fact, is shown in no better light that the apparent victory of the Jewish leaders and Rome was His apparent submission to let them dominate Him in this world and do what they would do while forgiving their disordered logic and passions. Love conquered their perverted instincts and His message has resounded for 2000 years without modification. Christ has reminded man of the perfection of human nature which has a component of understanding that we were made to be children of God and thus when we deny that understanding and reject God we neglect our human nature as given us and rebel by acting upon the concupiscence that we have inherited. In such a state, we have abandoned becoming children of God to acting as if we ourselves are gods: evil is a turning away from God and a perversion of our nature. So you are right in a ‘natural’ state we have no urge to be godlike; but unfortunately we have inherited the curse of our original parents. We seem to believe that our possession of the knowledge of right and wrong has made us “like gods.” That is the basis for all discord and the reason Baptism is necessary to salvation. At least through Baptism we have the opportunity to recognize our self-centeredness and counter the concupiscence that we inherited: freewill and a proper understanding of our nature (our final end – that which we were made for) is the remedy that Christ has given us and it starts with Baptism, utilizes Confession of Sins and strengthens us with His indwelling via the Sacrament of His Body & Blood.
Yes, I think we are. That is very much where I was tending, although far better said.
I thought so.
I splurged and got a Tacoma crew cab and must leave this conversation to get XM installed. I’ll join in when I get back, God willing. If not, have a great day.
Pretty nice splurge, if I do say so. Although I never looked at anything that wasn’t “found on Road Dead, anymore” Have fun
“As of the 2011 census, there were only 914 girls for every 1,000 boys from the ages of 0-6. This is a sex ratio that cannot occur naturally, and is the result of some combination of sex-selective abortion, female infanticide and the relative neglect of young girls. As I and my co-author explore in our recent book, it turns out that a more skewed sex ratio tends to be correlated with a greater incidence of violent crime, including violence against women. One compelling explanation is that in fact it’s the adverse sex ratio itself which contributes to an increase in crime.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/12/30/why-india-is-so-damn-violent/
Clearly rape is a global phenomenon and has existed and continues to exist in all times and cultures. It is well documented that instances of rape spike in consequence-free environments (such as soldiers in war zones) and this might suggest that a robust criminal justice system restrains or dampens the tendency of men to rape. Although interestingly these environments also have artificially skewed sex ratios as military personnel are overwhelmingly male.
Obviously rape has existed since long before the arrival of artificially skewed population sex ratios, but 20 to 30 years into the sex-selective abortion era (the largest single organised extermination of any human grouping in history) the “missing” females are now showing as absent in the reproductive age range. This phenomenon has atually been quite well documented and it’s clear that in the most affected societies (i.e. China and India) sexual exploitation of women in terms of prostitution slavery, human female trafficking, female adolescent abduction, forced marriage, dowry-related crime, industrial sexual harassment and, of course, rape are all in rapid ascendency.
I would argue that the pre-natal extermination of girls is the biggest single threat facing global feminity, and the number one “women’s issue” (although I don’t like that term) to be addressed as a matter of priority.
From the very welll respected “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America”:
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/36/13271.full#sec-4