Genesis 1 was written for a people who had just left a culture in which only Pharaoh bore the divine image. Egyptian theology taught that the king alone was the visible icon of the gods. Moses' Genesis is a quiet revolution: every human is an icon. The peasant in the field, the servant in the kitchen, the prisoner in the dark — each one is a walking image of God.

From the writers we read together

C.S. Lewis

Oxford literary scholar, Anglican lay theologian (1898-1963)

Lewis preached that sermon in wartime Oxford, when bombs were falling and bodies were cheap. His point was that the doctrine of the image of God flatly forbids any view of another human as expendable. Every person you pass today is, in Lewis' phrase, either an immortal horror or an everlasting splendor in the making.

Genesis 1:27 is the verse on which all human dignity rests. If the image is real, then the unborn child, the difficult coworker, the man begging at the intersection, and the friend who hurt you last week are all eikons of the living God. Lewis is right: there are no ordinary people. There never have been.