Will and the Image of God

Faith, Will and the Image of God

Sixth essay on Panorthosia, Chapter Twenty, Reform of the Individual

By John Taylor; 2009 Feb 16, 10 Mulk, 165 BE

We have been looking at Comenius's idea that reform begins with forming an image of God in the self. This comes from his study of the Book of Genesis, which teaches that being created in God's image means that everything in our mental universe should mirror the light of God and His Will.

"Thereby you will ensure that your mind is a school of God where you see and hear Him teaching you every day, and your heart becomes a Temple of God where sacrifices are made to Him every day, and your conscience becomes a court of God where trials are held every day." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 20, para 19, p. 27)

Like an image in a mirror, the mind reflects the whole world while still being bound by physical limits. It is nothing more than a flat, reflective surface. Like the physical universe of time-space that Einstein discovered with mathematics, our mental universe is "finite but boundless."

Recent research confirms that the human brain is from the atomic level up designed to deal with the images of other minds rather than manipulate material objects. Tiny babies show surprise when inanimate objects seem to move by themselves, but not when animals or people move. The mind is quite literally a mirror image, reflecting images set before it. A sizeable portion is made up of what are now being called "mirror neurons," specialized sub-systems that calculate and simulate what other minds are thinking and feeling. Babies start thinking like this from the earliest age. If there are not enough other minds around, they make them up. About "half of all four-year olds have had an imaginary friend, and adults often form and maintain relationships with dead relatives, fictional characters and fantasy partners." (New Scientist, 7 Feb, 2009, p. 32) This mirroring of other minds primes children for mind-body dualism and makes belief in God very natural to children.

As this article in New Scientist notes, the result is that at least eighty-four percent of the human race believe in "a supernatural force of some kind," AKA God. No doubt the anti-theist editors at New Scientist found this mounting evidence challenging to their materialist presupposition that matter is the natural model of thought and that, just as the Bible teaches, the mind is an image of Deity. In designing their cover of this issue, they nonetheless did their best to throw down the gauntlet at believers. It depicts a stylized close-up from Michelangelo's painting of God's creative hand pointing at the finger of Adam with the headline,

"Born Believers, How your brain creates God."

Although some ignorant fundamentalists may find this insulting, most believers would agree wholeheartedly that "creating God" is just what God charged us to do on the fifth day of Genesis. In the month of Mulk we Baha'is are especially aware that God delegated His Dominion to One made in His image,

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion..." (Gen 1:26, KJV)

Here the mirror neurons of God are firing, creating a Being to act on His behalf. As Comenius points out in this twentieth chapter of Panorthosia, God charged Moses to, "Look that thou make them after their pattern which was showed thee in the mount." (Exodus 25:40) Having created in His mind what Baha'is call the Manifestation of God, there emanated from the Manifestation a further reflection,

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion..." (1:27-28)

Abdu'l-Baha designed a clearly understood "pattern" of what was "showed thee in the mount" when He designed the Ringstone Symbol. This symbol is a tripartite chart of the primal creative act where God is mirrored in the three stages of knowing, willing and acting. Our self-creation or reform is only complete when we too have reflected God in will and deed as well as knowledge.

"Know thou that all men have been created in the nature made by God, the Guardian, the Self-Subsisting. Unto each one hath been prescribed a pre-ordained measure, as decreed in God's mighty and guarded Tablets. All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition. Your own acts testify to this truth." (Gleanings, 149)

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John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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