Made in God's Image
- Paul Coleman
- Sep 23
- 5 min read
Over the last week, there has been discussion in the United States about trying to “eliminate autism.” Some leaders have spoken about it as something to prevent or even to cure, as if autistic people were a mistake or a problem to be solved. Unsurprisingly, autistic people themselves have spoken out about how hurtful and dangerous that language is.
This raises an important question: what does this reveal about how our society imagines God? When we talk about “fixing” people to make them more like the norm, we are implicitly saying that the image of God must look like this, and not like that. In other words, we have created God in our own image, white, able-bodied, neurotypical, strong, and self-sufficient.
Yet Scripture tells a very different story. From Genesis to the Gospels, God’s image is reflected in every human life, not just in those who fit a certain mould. We see a risen Christ who still carries scars in his resurrected body. We see a Spirit who binds the faithful together, not in uniformity, but in interdependence. As we reflect on what it means to be made in God’s image, I want us to ask: whose image of God have we been following, and how might Scripture open our eyes to see God’s image where we least expect it?
If I asked you to paint a picture of God, or to cast an actor to play God in a film or a play, what would they look like? We need only look at traditional art to see common answers. God is often shown as an older white man, frequently with a beard, radiating authority and strength. Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam is a striking example, with God portrayed as muscular, powerful, and in complete control.
Almost all pre-twentieth-century paintings share these features: whiteness, able-bodiedness, physical perfection, and strength.
These images communicate messages about God: God is authority, God is strength, God is whole and unbroken. But these images tell us more about the human ideals of those who created them than about the God revealed in Scripture. Christ enters our world differently. He comes as a vulnerable baby, suffers on the cross, and rises in a body that still bears wounds and scars. The God we meet in Christ is not defined by power or perfection, but by vulnerability, dependence, and love.
The Israelites received a set of commands that would shape their understanding of God, including the prohibition against graven images:
“You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” (Exodus 20:4-5)
In the ancient world, nations regularly carved images of their gods. These images were often shaped in the likeness of kings, warriors, or powerful animals. An image made the god familiar, definable, and controllable. Israel’s God refused this. God could not be reduced to human categories or cultural ideals.
If humanity is made in God’s image, carving another image risks replacing the living diversity of humankind with a narrower, distorted likeness, usually one that reflects power or strength. This command reminds us that God’s image is found in the wide variety of human life, not in the idealised, perfected, or dominant few.
In Genesis 1:26–27 we read:
“So God created humankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
All humans, without exception, are made in God’s image. This includes disabled people. Disability does not diminish or exclude anyone from reflecting the divine image. Historical interpretations often wrongly linked sin or imperfection to physical or intellectual difference, but Scripture does not. Separation from God is rooted in disobedience, not bodily condition.
Theologian Nancy Eiesland, in her book The Disabled God, emphasises that disability is not a flaw, but a part of what it means to bear God’s image. God identifies with disabled people; their experiences and bodies reflect the imago Dei as fully as anyone else’s.
Similarly, Deborah Beth Creamer’s limits model reframes disability as one expression of the universal human experience of limitation. Every human life is marked by limits, some obvious and lifelong, some temporary or fluctuating. Being made in God’s image means embracing these limits and recognising them as being essential to our humanity,
To be made in God’s image is not to be limitless, perfect, or independent. It is to be limited and interdependent. Recognising our human limitations reveals that we can't control everything and our need to rely on others highlights the importance of our relationships instead of striving to be completely independent.
Paul tells the Corinthians that the weaker members of the body are indispensable. When the risen Christ appears to his disciples, he does not come with a flawless body, but with scars from crucifixion. Jesus lived interdependently: he asked his disciples to pray with him in Gethsemane, accepted care from women who provided for him, washed the feet of his friends, and let them wash his. If the Son of God chose interdependence, then perhaps interdependence is part of God’s design for humanity.
For the church today, this understanding has profound implications.
In worship, it means creating space where all may participate, whether through words, silence, movement, or music. Worship is not a performance for the able-bodied or articulate; it is a gathering where every voice, every body, and every way of praying can belong.
In fellowship, it means learning to give and receive. Asking for help, offering care, sharing meals, providing support, these are equally holy ministries. Our strength does not lie in independence, but in the mutual care we offer one another.
In leadership, it means valuing experience, insight, and presence alongside formal skills. Those who live with limits have wisdom to share that is just as essential as polished ability.
In mission, it requires more than simply saying “all are welcome.” True welcome means removing barriers, creating access, slowing down when necessary, and honouring the diversity of ways people experience joy, sorrow, and community.
As a witness to the world, the church can model interdependence and belonging. When elders are tenderly cared for, when those with memory loss are still offered communion, when young and old serve together, the church embodies the living image of God.
To be made in the image of God is to be limited and interdependent.
Together, in all our variety, vulnerability, and mutual care, we reflect God’s image more fully than any one of us could alone. In the diversity of human life, in the embrace of limitation, in the bonds of mutual dependence, we see the living reflection of God’s glory.
Suggested reading:
Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities
Deborah Beth Creamer · 2008
Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability
by Nancy L. Eiesland - 1995
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