For Rabbi Heschel, to be human means to be made in the image and likeness of God. Being made in God’s image is the sign of both God’s love and our human dignity.

What being the imago Dei means to Heschel is a bit different than how people often think of it. Heschel says that “the words ‘image and likeness’ conceal more than they reveal.”

He writes, “The intention is not to identify “the image and likeness” with a particular quality or attribute of [humans], such as reason, speech, power, or skill. It does not refer to something which in later systems was called “the best in [humans], “the divine spark,” “the eternal spirit,” or “the immortal element” in [humans]. It is the whole [person] and every [person] who was made in the image and likeness of God. It is both body and soul, sage and fool, saint and sinner, [humans] in [their] joy and grief, in [their] righteousness and wickedness. The image is not in [the human], it is [the human].

This is very radical. I hope we get a sense for what he is after. This should put a nail in the coffin of the idea that when we are good or great or heroic or without error or perform well that we are the image of God AND when we are bad or evil or imperfect or struggling or misbehave that we are not the image of God.

Being the image of God has nothing to do with what we do or do not do. It is not something we can scratch off or tattoo over or negate or have taken away.

The QUESTION for Heschel is — Will we live lives commensurate or compatible with being WHO WE TRULY ARE in God – sacred images. THERE IS NO ONE who has ever lived and died, who was not THE IMAGE OF GOD.

So, image and likeness of God refer to the intimate relatedness of humans to the Divine which itself is sheer gift, all grace.

REFLECTION:

The burning Questions –

Will we live WHO we are?
Will we live WHOSE we are?