2. Adam, the Image of God

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness." (Gen. 1:26)
 
But God, notwithstanding all His perfection, turned out to have some minor drawbacks.

First, He couldn't overcome His strange habit of talking to Himself.

Second, He was not self-critical enough - and maybe even narcissic. He considered His own image so perfect that decided to make man whom He designed as the key figure in all Creation, in His likeness.

That was too rash.

Let us imagine what man would look like if he wasn't made in the image of God.
 
He would probably be winged like the eagle. Powerful as the elephant. Would have the same potency as his distant relation - the baboon. Would run as fast as  the cheetah. Swim like the dolphin. See in the night like the owl. Be as bright and flamboyant as the macaw bird. And also he would able to talk as distinctly and beautifully as the latter.

Man could wear a bear's skin and would never sufeer from cold. He could not need any meat like a goat or a ram - without becoming the former or the latter. He could also
have a nice hump like the camel - and thus be saved frof the constant want of water, wine or beer. Could sleep upside down like a bat and enjoy ultrasound emission. Could live for three hundred years like a tortoise - and have its armour ever on.

All this is only a small part of those needful and vital organs, qualities and abilities that God had bestowed on animals in such plenty that nothing was left for man...

So can we speak of the perfection of this last creation of God but ironically or even sarcastically? It's no use flattering ourselves as the Crown of Creation. All the beasts are laughing their heads off at our expence, though we used to think them unable to laugh. It's we who cannot laugh at ourselves for the Almighty hasn't given us such an important ability as that.

Can we speak about the quality of our creation? We are just second rate creatures - and many of us can be called really defective. The main priviledge of beast is that they are not religious - devoid of this trouble.

Their main disadvantage is that they don't kill their fellows - devoid of this joy.

And their advantage is also that they are not subject to any complexes - especially superiority complex. And the fact that they don't enslave one another is their obvious drawback.

"Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being". (Genesis 2:7)
 

The Lord also blessed man - not forgetting to mention that he had to be fruitful and multiply as well. And provided him with food: "every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of. And to all the animals of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food".  (Genesis 1:29-30)

So vegetarians are probably right. God could naver imagine that both man and beast would not be content with only fruits, corn and grass and would start to eat other God's creatures also endowed with a living soul. That they would kill for satisfaction - first physical then moral... Unfortunately, God's creatures turned out not so successful as they seemed to be "in the beginning".

And now please pay attention to the fact that the Bible doesn't claim that Adam was the first man on Earth. No, he was only the first man on the land made by God!
All the biblical peaples - Adam's descendants - lived, reproduced, waged wars only within that limited expanse - without trying to conquer India or discover America. That lasted up till the times of Christ when other peoples came into action, those who had their origins undescribed by the Bible - e.g. the Greeks or the Romans.

An interesting fact. Two Gospels contain the lineage of Jesus - through the line of a common carpenter Joseph up to King David and further to Adam himself. But there is no genealogy of the great Julius Caesar or Pilat, ruler of Asia Minor. But it would be rather entertaining to trace down their bloodlines to some of the sons of Noah. And what if they turned out our Semitic brothers?..

The origins of Macedonians, the famous men of war, are not mentioned in the Scripture either.

Though all the tribes, near twenty in number, described there, have each its forefather descending from Adam directly. All those pioneers are recorded. And one can not make out why were the Macedonians, for example, not worth mentioning together with the Jesses, the Amorites and other Canaanites whom the Lord God has just driven away from Palestine promised to the Israelites... And it's not clear also if the Macedonians were better than all those tribes - and why God didn't chase them away to settle His chosen people in the beautiful lands of Greece...

So were the Macedonians lucky not to have Adam for their forefather? I think they were...

And what did Adam look like, being the first man on the uninhabited peninsula that God built? The Bible gives us no details of his appearances. We only know that he was an image of God, a replication of Him.

If so - what does He look like? How tall is He - like the Scandinavians or like the Pygmies who had to be also created in the image of God? What colour is His skin? A lot of people in Africa think that God is black - and nothing can make them change their mind!

Is He as handsome as Alen Delone or ugly as Quasimodo?

Has He got an organ of reproduction? And if He has one - what's the purpose of that device? Does He have any hair on His chest?

We can come to many blasphemous questions like these brooding over the scarce note that man was made in the image of God...

Some scientists (not all of them, I hope!) claim mistakingly that man was not made by God but had descended from the ape as a result of many ages of evolution. Evidently, they feel more likely to accept some ape - and not Adam - as their distant forefather. To prove it, they speak of the tail bone as evidence. But can a tail bone prove anything at all?..

These scientists even dare to say that the tail bone is the remnant of the tail of the ape who had given birth to the first man. An atavism, so to say.

What can we offer agains such a herecy? Only the idea that if man has a tail bone - then the Lord God has one, too! We wonder if these buffoons of science have the audacity to take up the position that God Himself had descended from...

"Then God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as holy, because on that day he stopped all his work of creation". (Genesis 2:3)
 
You see, kids, the Lord didn't bless any working day - but blessed the day-out okay! And He rested on His heavenly couch not only on the seventh day but also on the eighth, and the ninth, and the tenth one. And thus - by the end of the year... the century... the millenium... So almost five milleniums have passed, and He is still resting tirelessly from His righteous labours. 

The Lord our God teaches us, dear kids, by His elevated example that it's bad to toil - and to rest is much better. And that it's quite enough to have worked for a week in your whole life - and be able to feel like a god.