Image Bearer Quotes & Sayings

What's the matter?" And she could hear the smile in his voice. "Cat got your crotch? — Shelly Laurenston

The last thing my mother said to me was, 'SuSu, your life is a celebration of everything that is cheap and tawdry.' I've always liked that, and I've always tried to live up to it. — Susan Tyrrell

On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers. — Thomas Merton

Instead, we end up with a list of bullet points - an inventory of God's communicable attributes, those qualities belonging to God that he shares with us. Moral, spiritual, intellectual, and relational qualities make the list. What ultimately happens is that instead of being shaken by a visionary calling that will take everything we have to offer and more, we end up with a static list of attributes that are echoes of the divine in us. Efforts to pin down the precise meaning of image bearer (which the text does not do) ultimately box up the subject. — Carolyn Custis James

As when, O lady mine,
With chiselled touch
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes,
The more the statue grows. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

This father, indeed, is what the various fathers of the biblical story - from Noah to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to David - never quite managed to be with their own families. He does what they rarely managed to do with their own power: use it for ever-increasing abundance and blessing. He is an icon of the true image. Indeed, in the holy hilarity of his greeting, the lavishness of his feast, and the eagerness of his pleading, we glimpse not just an image bearer but the very One "from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name" (Ephesians 3:15), whose image is meant to be refracted in his sons and daughters. Like him, we are meant to pour out our power fearlessly, spend our privilege recklessly, and leave our status in the dust of our headlong pursuit of love. — Andy Crouch

Sin has not destroyed the creaturely relationship of man to his maker, who made him a cultural creature with the mandate to replenish and subdue the earth. Sin has not destroyed the cultural urge in man to rule, since man is an image-bearer of the Ruler of heaven and earth. Neither has sin destroyed the cosmos, which is man's workshop.

Culture then, is a must for God's image bearers, but it will be either a demonstration of faith or apostasy, either a God-glorifying or a God-defying culture. — Henry R. Van Til

The End of Idolatry At the end, idols completely fail. They not only fail to deliver the godlikeness and immortality they promised at first, they rob their worshipers of even the most minimal human dignity and agency. Of all the charges the biblical prophets file against idols, the most damning is this: "Those who make them become like them." The very human creativity that was able to fashion a god substitute is undermined and eventually eradicated by idolatry. The idol maker, originally an image bearer, becomes as inanimate and mute as a statue, no longer able to move, feel, care or love. The idol, originally invested with all the human hopes for power, ends up robbing human beings of their power. — Andy Crouch

There is only one passion which satisfies man's need to unite himself with the world, and to acquire at the same time a sense of integrity and individuality, and this is love. Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self. It is an experience of sharing, of communion, which permits the full unfolding of one's own inner activity. The experience of love does away with the necessity of illusions. There is no need to inflate the image of the other person, or of myself, since the reality of active sharing and loving permits me to transcend my individualized existence, and at the same time to experience myself as the bearer of the active powers which constitute the act of loving. What — Erich Fromm

I don't share your luxury. I believe in karma. I make karma happen. I rain down karma on my enemies."
"We are the progeny of ancient myths, so we attempt to write our own."
"I see the killing fields of the innocents crying out for justice while we hold our ranks."
"You have ventured into deep waters, leaving your wading pool of shallow pragmatism."
"Divine intervention is not without its own pain."
"When all seems lost, don't confuse this with the end, rather this is the beginning."
"Your redemption is at the gate of your conscience. You have been granted the power of a choice."
"What say you, image bearer? Have you come to save us? — Todd D. Boddy

Woman, then, stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of a woman still tied to her place as the bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning. — Laura Mulvey

I believe that people are holy because they're made in the image of God, and a place can be holy when God is present - but no place is so holy that it's worth shedding the blood of those who bear the image of God. — Jared Brock

It often is a terrible insult to some families if one of the kids turns out to be an artist and that's one way to really shake up the family if you haven't got nerve enough to turn into a homosexual. — Kurt Vonnegut

A solitary image bearer cannot adequately or accurately reveal God in the world, much less fulfill his destiny as a human being. Obviously, this is a matter of grave importance to the Creator. — Carolyn Custis James

MOST of the ugliness in the human narrative comes from a distorted quest to possess beauty. COVETING begins with appreciating blessings: MURDER begins with a hunger for justice. LUST begins with a recognition of beauty. GLUTTONY begins when our enjoyment of the delectable gifts of GOD starts to consume us. IDOLATRY begins when our seeing a reflection of God in something beautiful leads to our thinking that the beautiful image bearer is worthy of WORSHIP. — Shane Claiborne

The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground. — Peter Wessel Zapffe

Jim Crow repeated the old strategies of the reptilian powers of the air: to convince human beings simultaneously and paradoxically that they are gods and animals. In the Garden, after all, the snake approached God's image-bearer, directing her as though he had dominion over her (when it was, in fact, the other way around). He treated her as an animal, and she didn't even see it. At the same time, the old dragon appealed to her to transcend the limits of her dignity. If she would reach for the forbidden, she would be "like God, knowing good and evil." He suggested that she was more than a human; she was a goddess. — Russell D. Moore

For the past 10 years, corporations have been trained that they should use all the different media ... But the internet is becoming the umbrella. — Larry Weber

It distresses me somewhat to hear a person say, "I am a born-again Christian." What's wrong with such a statement? Well, what other kind of Christian is there? If rebirth is absolutely essential in order to get into the kingdom of God, as Jesus said it is, there cannot be such a thing as a non-born-again Christian. To say "born-again Christian" is like saying "Christian Christian." It's a redundancy, a kind of theological stuttering. — R.C. Sproul