One of my favourite cartoon strips is Calvin and Hobbes, the story of a little boy called Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. Calvin has a very healthy self-image (sometimes he is rather too egocentric, but that is all part of childhood!)
Hobbes in this particular image does not quite share Calvin’s appreciation of being made in the image of God, commenting that God must have a ‘goofy sense of humour’ if that is the case! So often, we feel more like Hobbes than Calvin. When people talk about being made in the image of God, we look at our mortal bodies, with their flab, frailty, imperfections and (to us) ugliness, and think, ‘Really? God can’t be much good, then!’
But as Dave reminded us recently, God proclaimed that the creation of mankind was very good (Gen 1:31), and even though sin has marred that perfection, we are still loved and valued by God, made a little lower than God, to be sure, but precious and valuable to Him. It’s not good to be narcissistic about ourselves, arrogantly presuming ourselves to be higher than God Himself (the desire to be like God led to sin and all the problems in the world, after all), but neither is it good to hate ourselves, for God loves us all dearly. We need to see ourselves as God sees us and humbly walk in simple trust with Him.