This past Monday, 59 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. told a crowd of about 250,000 people that he had a dream.
He had a dream, he said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
He dared to describe this dream while speaking between the 36 marble columns that protect and enshrine the statue of Abraham Lincoln, a 19-foot, white marble memorial made in the image of the 16th president.
The image no doubt stirred the passions — and still stirs the passions — of those who dared and dare to dream that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” To fully realize this dream, however, people need more than images of stone made in the likeness of men. They need to remember Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image.”
In this verse, God forbids racism and destroys any possible foundation for it, for in this verse, He establishes the value and beauty of every soul.
From the cherry-cheeked newborn to the scarred prisoner, God wanted and willed them to exist. All like David can say, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), regardless of stature, skin color, physical and mental abilities, or even the circumstances surrounding their births.
Furthermore, because people reflect God’s image, they reflect His Spiritual and moral character, and they alone among God’s earthly creation can plant and harvest seeds of love, justice, equality, pleasure, and similar ideals.
“Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’
Some believers refer to this verse as the “dominion mandate,” and through it, God gives men and women stewardship — the responsibility and privilege to bless His creation with His glory, to harness the earth’s raw potential, all that “very good” ready to explode, and cultivate it in the name of God’s significance and splendor. “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).
The dominion mandate, though, extends far beyond the garden’s borders. Because a creative God created man in His image, they too can create: They communicate ideas and initiatives through art, writing, and speeches. They enable opportunities and access to goods through financial wisdom and management. They invent devices and machines that tap into the power of God’s creation and unlock its treasures. They produce goods and services to bring pleasure and happiness to people. They build structures for rest, work and fellowship. Above all, they meekly serve others to inspire them to serve God.
“I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvelous works” (Psalm 9:1).
Unfortunately people who deny God must deny the dominion mandate, and without its truth people have abused creation and needlessly and selfishly destroyed it—and each other. Even evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.”
More recently, people have essentially reversed the dominion mandate and elevated animals above human. Without Genesis, people argue that landmarks such as rivers should wield the same rights as humans. Scientists argue society should kill human embryos instead of pigs for medical research. Without Genesis, people in 2013 gathered for a funeral for an elk. They even held hands and sang “Amazing Grace.”
But despite this, God still has a dream; He has a dream that the billions of images worldwide will repent and cleanse themselves through the blood of Jesus, “who is the image of God.” He has a dream that these new saints will “put on the new man, who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created Him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.”
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