My
spirituality is saturated in the biblical claim that I bear the image of God,
that we all bear the royal image of God. Hebrew scribes wrote and edited
the book of Genesis after they were captured and exiled to Babylon, an empire that
placed “images”—or statues—of their king
in public places to remind people who is supreme. Citizens were supposed to bow
whenever they passed by. The Hebrew scribes subverted this human hierarchy of
value by crafting their own creation story. The scribes stamped every
human Being with the royal image of a God of love and compassion who designed a
world without a human hierarchy of value. We are all royalty, born to bow in
reverence to each other.
When I read the Gospels through the lens of this radical royalty, Jesus jumps off the page, pitching the idea of a reign of God that belongs to peasant people who have been incessantly lied to and deceived by the propaganda of priests and politicians devoted to what the Romans called “the paterfamilias,” the imperial caste system, their version of the human hierarchy of value, with Caesar at the top and children at the very bottom, just below the women, the working poor, the sharecroppers and slaves, the chronically sick and injured.
