Man in God’s Image or God in Man’s Image?

“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do”. – Anne Lamott (thanks Sarmo).

Browsing through the history of atheistic ideas one finds the notion that they claim God is made in man’s image, playing on the Genesis proposition that man is made in God’s image. I think this dual approach to man and divinity is an important distinction, which even the great philosopher and theologian Immanuel Kant picked up on and provided us with a wonderful thought.

Peter Kreeft tells us that you can tell a lot about a child based on how he or she organizes things. Suppose you give a child a baseball bat, a baseball, a basketball, and a basketball net and instruct the child to put the items away into two boxes. The structuralist child will put the two balls in one box and the two accoutrements in the other box. The functionalist child will put the baseball items in one box and the basketball items in the other box.

C.S. Lewis had a thought experiment in the Abolition of Man. Do this same operation via categorizing the concepts of magic, religion, science, and technology. The knee-jerk reaction is to group religion and magic together under one category and science and technology in the other category. There is certainly something to this distinction, pertaining to experimental and verifiable thought. But Lewis saw a deeper distinction. He placed religion and science in one category and magic and technology in the other category. Why?

Science and religion have it in common, if they are done properly, that they demand the individual conform to some external truth, whereas magic and technology have the external realm conform to the individual’s inner animalistic passions. Magic and technology gained prominence roughly at the same time, during the renaissance (magic wasn’t nearly as popular in medieval times as is popularly believed); and they both, whether for good or for worse, had nature conform to our animalistic desires. Technology, man’s conquest over nature, becomes nature’s conquest over man, we lose that which makes us distinct from the animals – this is the abolition of man.

Of course, science isn’t immune to the scientist projecting his or her own cultural, philosophical, or economic biases into research. Yet science, properly practiced, does not permit this projection. This is the whole point, if it is done properly, the practitioner conforms to the external.

The same can be said of religion. Religion poorly practiced has the external conform to our own inner desires. When we begin to project God in our own way, and not conform to his way, we lose sight of proper religion.

Kant saw this distinction, of creating God in man’s image and divided religion up into two categories, religion of worship and religion of magic. Religion of worship has the individual conform to the external demands of virtue. Religion of magic has God conform to us. Praise, communion, baptism, even certain interpretations of grace, if they are merely strategies to have God accept us and not have us accept Him, they are religions of magic, idolatry in its most devious; the form that most closely resembles truth. All of these acts have to be carried out as transforming the individual, not transforming God. God doesn’t change, but humans do, this principle applies in our salvation as well.

God in man’s image is spoiled religion. I have no quarrel with an atheist who wishes to chastise spoiled religion.