Whose image are we created in?

    I have come to realize something over the last few months, and as easy for me to proclaim it, it also is a hard pill to swallow.  I have realized that the various social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Blogging) has added fuel to the fire of people attacking others.  As easy as it is to go to social media and "connect" with people from various points in school, co workers and neighbors. It is even easier to take a hot button topic such as gun control or the definition of marriage and call the opposing side a bunch of bumbling idiots, while hiding behind an avatar.  There is a part of me that wonders if we have turned into a bunch of cowards, because we are willing to post information to these sites that we would dare not to say in public or to another persons face.  Then I realized that people have been cowards for centuries and the social media sites is just another way we allow ourselves to hide behind an avatar allowing ourselves to be cowards and  bumbling idiots. 

  This has gotten me thinking over ideas and here is some food for thought.  The first one is that we lack any real desire for community and connecting with others.  We all claim that we want to live in community, but when we are hiding behind avatars and not willing to go face to face with an issue, it cheapens the community.  We are more concerned with about putting out an image of how we want people to perceive us and more importantly, I think its how we want to perceive ourselves. We do not want to let the not so nice stuff of ourselves come out.  One of the things that I have realized, those things do come out and its usually not at a good time.  We want to think ourselves and the human race as good people with flaws that we have to work through.  If we just put our nose to the grindstone, and educate ourselves a little better, we can work on our own and the ills of the world and make them better.  But as we have seen thins week, with bombings in Boston and Baghdad, I am not sure self motivation will get the job done. 

  Within the Christian community, we claim that we are all created in the image of God, but we don't act like it.  We often take more enjoyment of bringing people down than bringing them back up because that takes work and in all reality, its not much different from the world.  Sarcasm tends to make us feel better by putting others down and it tends to make us feel better when we are busting chops.   Sarcasm tends to cover up where we are vulnerable by pointing out other peoples weakness.  I know there have been countless books and blogs dedicated to what it means to be created in the Image of God, and I have a gut feeling that it has a hard time sinking in.  I could go on and on about the Image of God and how we are created, but here is the shortest way I can put it right now.  It means that we love God with everything we got and Love others as ourselves.  This means seeking forgiveness from God and others who we have wronged, along with reconciliation and restitution when applicable.  It is also forgiving others for wrongs they have committed and helping to create safe boundaries for our relationships that encourage growth in relationships with God and others. Its moving from viewing ourselves fro ether second class citizens, or God's gift to humanity and making us Children of the most high God and He is the center of our lives. If God is not at the center of it. 

   My last rant is that I think we can spend more time in community and less time being bumbling idiots if we stepped away from the computer.  If we really value relationships, both with people we agree with and those we don't, we have a better chance of seeing them for who they are and who we are and that is a people in desperate need of Gods grace and mercy on a daily basis.  Its been said by Sam Hannah (a character on NCIS:LA) that Facebook is for cowards and people who don't want to put the work in for real social interaction.  So lets do the hard work and stop placing land mines on Facebook and start interacting with each other face to face. It takes viewing each other and ourselves with God's grace and how He views us, because this is the only time where we do not think to highly or lowly of ourselves or others, but as who we are.  We maybe dirty and marred by bast choices and life events, but we are still created in Gods image with His characteristics, we just need to allow God bring them back to order