Man Made In His Image

If man is made in the image of God, then does God have two arms, two legs and a torso and head?  With a long flowing white beard?  Does He look like a baby in a manger?

What if what we perceive is merely the medium of perception, and what aspect that resembles God is our spirit?  And as we all, at least poetically, subscribed to a spiritual dimension when we say "free spirits" or when nobel economists say "animal spirits."  What confounds us about life is our free will, to the point many people deny such a thing.  Calvin and his crew preached predestination, which neatly sidesteps responsibility.

Free will would be rather constrained by a physical being.  But my spirit has no limits.

And if God is Love, and the Creator, and not a being with a head and legs, etc...  some eternal ultimate power (the description bogs down because the more one describes, necessarily the more one veers off), we might ask where this God is.

Wouldn't the "where" necessarily be "freedom?"  If a king resides in a kingdom, does free will reside in freedom?  So is there an aspect to the universe called "freedom" which is in all places and all times and the "where" at which God resides?

So is our spirit with its free will, living in freedom, that which images the God who created us in His image?  And this body a mere medium of perception?  Augustine (or was it Aquinas?) taught our bodies fell farther than our intellects, and I would guess our spirits fell not at all, since they are eternal, one way or another.

The Bible in the old testament is God's conversation with the Jews on how to live.  The New Testament is the conversation continued with everyone with Jesus doing the teaching.  A few lessons:  one is God wants us to be free, "free from" and "free to."  In the old testament the Jews will be free if they fallow Gods rules.  Free from interference, free to do good while doing well.   That went off the rails when the Jews demanded of God to be put under a king.  (1 Sam 8).

So Christian theology is God became Man to be that King and save the Jews.  That went poorly, but God is Love and he extended salvation to all mankind.

Ever since Jesus, mankind still struggles with the primal force of freedom, free will, free to and free from. Jesus proclaimed the truth will make you free and Himself the Truth.  Whole lotta emphasis on free.

Over the centuries there has been a pas-de-deux in which the powers that be try to check the religious powers, at various points in history religion has the upper hand, and then the kings, some combination thereof, with the divine right of the king vying with the divine right of the pope. A very bad argument, because in time, given peoples propensity to be oppressed, we arrived at the divine right of the state.

Max Weber  in his work Politics as a Vocation claimed the state is defined as the entity with a monopoly on violence within a given territory.  (Talk about divine right!)  Now who cares what some cracker from Erfurt thinks?  But the problem is such ideas, that flatter that powers that be, get integrated as core curriculum, and the organizing principle.  No one who pursues politics, or high government position is unaware of this definition.  It is not in any rulebook, but he who makes the rules follows the principle.  Thus, Fargo ND is given millions in "anti-terror" (anti-protestor) fighting gear.

Fraud and violence are the bane of freedom.  Our economic system can be represented by the dollar bill. it epitomizes both fraud and violence.  The fraud is in USA there are 12 private bank organizations, owned by the private banks in their districts (their websites end in .org) and print the currency.  These 12 organizations have their headquarters in New York (not Washington) and work with the secretary of the treasury on getting the currency printed right.  (Under the US constitution, money is metal and minted by the US Mint.  Currency, which was once warehouse certificates for the gold in the bank, is printed by treasury.  We are far from there.)  The New York headquarters of this private org has a website too, but is ends in .gov.

The fraud is this dollar bill, this currency, is backed by assets.  Not so, it is back by counter-party risk, which is not quite the same thing.  We are to understand we can withdraw our money at any time, which is patently not true.  The violence is if we attempt to pay bills without this currency, or come up with some alternative, we will be imprisoned or worse.  We are obliged to accept it for all debts, public AND private.  Read it.  It is on the upper left of every note.

We were made to be free.  We got very close to getting it right in the late 1700s when in both USA and Hong Kong, as well as Switzerland, and San Marino, Andorra, Monte Carlo and various other places began to form free societies.  USA has gone off the rails.

God freely chose to become man and show us how to live in freedom.  If we are to develop our talents, in no way limited by physical constraints, or at least free to push to the limits of what is possible within this extremely interesting creation, then first our free wills must be in a free economy, with the only constraints being natural law.  That's what I think about on Christmas.

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