It is often said that human beings are “in the image of God”—imago dei. Momentarily leaving aside all those near-death experience (NDE) reports which typically describe God as infinite loving light, what meaning can possibly be assigned to this concept of divine “image”?

On the sixth day, according to Genesis 1:26-27, God said:  “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Western civilization has long treated these words as significant. The “image/likeness” idea is repeated four times in quick succession, in slightly variant words, therefore—given the writing style of those ancient polemicists—it must be important. The facts “male and female he created them” are presented last (the female dead last), as if two genders were a minor afterthought, so the major emphasis here is clearly on God’s image.

A literalist interpretation assumes that, because humans have faces, “after our likeness” must mean God too has a face, complete with eyes, nose, mouth, chin—probably long hair and a beard, both probably gray since wisdom is assumed to be associated with age. Most likely a body, all pretty much the same, perhaps with minor modifications for human notions of gender since the Biblical God—He—is unquestionably male.

However, the words don’t actually say that “in his own image” means the way God looks. They could just as well mean the way God “is”—and nobody can prove that’s not what they really mean. A very slight conceptual re-interpretation can take “image of God” to mean “personality attributes which God possesses,” rather than the way God “looks.” Thus, since humans display emotional attributes—joy, love, remorse, temper tantrums and so on—we can reason that God too must have comparable emotional attributes or at least the potential to have them excepting the temper tantrum part of course. In fact, numerous NDE reports do specifically mention the experiencer’s observation that God has a sense of humor, and often chuckles or laughs aloud. In a different set of claimed facts, the Old Testament speaks often of God’s anger as well as His love—not to mention his alleged self description “I am a jealous God.” As it happens, I have never seen Godly anger or jealousy mentioned in an NDE report, but it is reasonable to assume that feeling and displaying emotions may be regarded as a way in which God made humans “in his own image”—thus brushing the matter with whole new meanings and possibilities.

“Image” based on attributes can also include “intellect,” i.e., the ability to think with reason and logic—in other words, to use the God-given power of one’s mind, as some humans sometimes do. Intellectual cogitation too must therefore be an aspect of “the image of God”—the way God is understood to use His Thinking in such enormously creative ways, and how we too, even we, could consistently use our gift of this inborn Godly image—the ability to think—if we so chose. But our schools do not teach a subject called How to Think, and so qualitative disciplined thinking techniques are learned accidentally if they are learned at all. Accordingly, proclamation that no child will be left behind falls desperately short of our great potential as children of God.

Reasoning forward from intellect, yet another image of God could well refer to God’s essence, which undeniably is “spiritual”—meaning God is unquestionably non-material, or perhaps supra-material. This concept—as perfectly valid as the other concepts—can mean that humanity, by being “in the image of God,” is of the same spiritual nature as is God himself.  In this sense, “spiritual” must mean that humans consist of a God-like spiritual essence or aspect—shall we call it “soul?,” or perhaps “spirit?” Either is more immaterial than the material bodies we live in, and is substantively more than the material ways in which we experience reality and interact with the apparently material world. NDE reports strongly support this version of God’s image.

How many are the valid meanings of “the image of God?” Jordan Wessling and Joshua Rasmussen, writing in the scholarly journal Theology and Science, reason similarly that “…it may very well be that the Supreme Being experiences a range of attitudes through a creation endowed with random processes. Perhaps it is reasonable to surmise God may be the origin of still other human-like traits such as curiosity, anticipation, surprise, and—especially—appreciation over a creation in which random processes are present.” And why not? Random processes, as we’ve seen, are exactly what evolution does, and evolution is God’s tool for building a universe with life in it. Of course God, being All-Knowing, might have to artificially shield GodSelf away from the surprise parts of the random processes in order to be surprised by them, but there seems no doubt a God capable of inventing Big Bang technology can manage to do that.

If we accept the notion that “in the image of God” must mean that we humans are in one or more ways “like” God, then we have already accepted the obverse:  that God is in one or more ways “like us.” A + B = B + A (or perhaps A:B::B:A). Thus we have only to examine our own attributes to discover a least some of the attributes of God from whom we received at least some of ours—but certainly not all (how do you make a big bang? I’ll bet God is all consciousness and no “instinct” at all). Source words in the Judeo-Christian Bible, deemed authoritative by quite a few people, are very clear on this matter of “image” and “likeness”—but of course silent on the nuances explored here.

We all know how it feels to experience strictly internal attributes like curiosity, anticipation, surprise, appreciation, sorrow. Assuming God too feels these attributes, we might reasonably surmise that curiosity and anticipation motivated God to invent the big bang, and that God’s observations of the way things have unfolded since the bang enable God to feel surprise and appreciation (or perhaps disappointment in the reigns of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis, Attila, Mao… maybe where we mere weak humans feel loathing, big God feels only disappointment).

These logical speculations might even be true. After all, preachers in their pulpits proclaim all the time how certainly they “know” what God is like, and how sure they are about what God wants of you, you sinner, very much the same way so many scientists in their learned writings proclaim how certainly they “know” that God is nothing but a myth. In point of hard fact, every last one of them knows nothing of the sort. When it comes to thinking about what may be meant by “the image of God,” our speculations are just as good as any speculations from science and the pulpit. Probably better, if we can manage to keep our mindsets open.

Bodily appearance. Emotions. Intellect. Immaterial spiritual essence. Attitudes. Feelings. Obviously, there’s a lot of potential packed into that brief little verse about “God’s image and likeness.” From observing ourselves, how much is it fair to infer about God? Looking in the opposite direction, how much like God, do you think, are we purported children of God, really? My guess is that, at least, God has loftier thoughts and is much better behaved.