The idea of imago Dei gives me hope.
I have a table back in America that means a lot to me... we got a verbal agreement on the price for it from the shopkeeper who was in the air on a flight to Paris. Then back at the store, which was all locked up because the owner was moving, the guy with the key to let us in wanted a percentage of the deal, which we thought was nuts because we already paid for the table. Anyway we had to haggle again with this middleman.
Once we got in the door, the really hard part began. My son and his girlfriend, and my husband and I, all had to somehow get this table that was a solid 6" thick and super heavy out to the car, and get it strapped upside down onto the roof. If you saw this table, you would have thought it was too heavy to be supported by the roof of the car. Anyway, we eventually did the impossible and got it up there, and drove all the way through the nutty downtown Houston traffic to the suburbs without the table falling off, the roof to caving in, or having the car tilt over and crash. Next we got it off the roof, and into the house.
Well, now that table has been moved again, this time by professionals, but over time in the new location, it's gotten really, really warped. Where it's been joined and used to be flush now looks like an earthquake slip fault line; one side is higher than the other. A furniture doctor got called in, and he said wood has a memory and wants to go back to the way it was before to its old shape, and he doubted there was any way to stop it from happening .
I love the table even if it's warped because looking at it takes me back to the fun of acquiring it and the fun we've had sitting around it with others. I don't want to replace it even though there are other tables out there. And maybe God who made us, has nostalgia because he been with us through thick and thin, even though we might look like a Picasso portrait of ourselves instead of our intended appearance.
Hopefully like my wooden table, we might have an inner longing to go back to our original shape and are moving in that direction somehow by unseen forces. But instead of looking warped and out of whack like the wood on my table, our original shape is a beautiful one, the image and likeness of God.

Crash, another one bites the dust... Once again one of my beliefs has been challenged at seminary, and consequently I'm still trying to get my bearings. I've felt disoriented ever since class when we were having a discussion on the origin of the soul. I didn't realize that I was operating with an obsolete mental framework, and changing it would be such hard work.
Sherman was saying that most contemporary theologians believe that we inherit our soul from our parents the same way we aquire our bodies; it's a package deal because there's a basic unity to man. You wouldn't think that simple statement would shake me so, but I am having a hard time coming to terms with that. Somewhere along the way, I got the notion souls were created and waited about in heaven for a chance to come to the earth. It isn't in the Bible anywhere, but I thought God had a conference with us before we were born and it was a joint decision who we were born to and under what circumstances we would grow up. I envisioned it sort of like Mission Impossible; we would get a little run down of the situation and you decide to take it or keep waiting for something else to come along.
It just seemed like a more fair system to think that a baby born into a miserable environment might have once said okay to such a bum deal, that they knew the challenges but thought they could handle it, and God did too. Now with that whole little senerio out the window; life doesn't seem so friendly. You just get what you get at birth and have to deal with it, no advance decisions involved, only choices beginning here and now.
This really is a paradigm shift for me, but the chance to examin our beliefs is what seminary is supposed to be about...