OUR FRACTURED IMAGE

The source of humanities' burdens and struggles

When God created Adam, He placed him in a world He defined as being very good. With the breath of God, Adam awoke with a body and a spirit. Adam possessed the image of God. This image has the capacity for intimate, meaningful relationships with God and fellow man. This image could perform beneficial work that has meaning and purpose. Work that would be fulfilling. The image also has a capacity for creativity and power. It can accomplish a plan with a purpose. The image was to be immortal with the full awareness and appreciation of eternity. This image also fostered a thorough knowledge that man was more than a physical being. A man was also a spiritual being, and within that spiritual part is where access to contentment existed. Adam was complete, as God intended; his body and his spirit were alive and well. But, like all men since, Adam wanted more. He turned his back on God and, in the process, opened the door for humanity's ongoing struggles. Since that time, man has been living with a fractured image.
This book explores the struggles we all face because we live with a fractured image. We all wrestle with the pain of feeling isolated and alone. We all struggle with our meaning and purpose. We are all crushed by an awareness of our weakness and how powerless we are where it matters. We all walk under the dark cloud of our mortality as we work hard to deny our eventual demise. We struggle under the weight of emptiness with a felt distance between ourselves and our creator. These are the burdens we all share. These burdens cause unbearable pain and cry out for relief. We now live our lives focused on personal comfort at any cost. We become self-centered and self-protective. Our actions only increase our awareness of our isolation, meaninglessness, powerlessness, frailty, and emptiness.
The image was to be our glory but has become the source of our anguish. In our suffering and turmoil, there is some good news. God has provided a path of reconciliation so we can live today as God originally intended. We do not have to remain stuck in the mud of relentless misery.