Image is Everything

A friend recently told me about an online meme she encountered while browsing the web. It read something like this: “If you teach one person how to avoid trafficking, you are forcing another person to be subjected to trafficking”. Just hearing that statement and reading it here, again, makes my blood boil. To think we would not save the life of one person because there will always be someone who has to be trafficked is the exact thought that opens the door to allow this stark evil in our world. It is the thought that strips value from a person. It is the thought that strips humanity from a person and we do not have the right to do that.

For many years I have pondered and held onto the scripture Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”. The theological term used to refer to this passage is “Imago Dei” which means “image of God”. So this passage tells us that we are Imago Dei. We are created, every single person, in the image of God. God is not created in our image. We are created in His. His divine nature is in every single one of us.

Image is everything. If every person is created Imago Dei then every person matters. The person rescued, the person redeemed, does not subject another person to take her place. That one person rescued and that one person redeemed means that one more person has been restored to Imago Dei. One more person has been reminded that she is valuable. There is power in that and there is power in the prevention of trafficking by teaching as many individuals as possible how to avoid trafficking. Because in their learning, they are being taught the value and humanity that they have. They are being taught that they-each one of them- are Imago Dei.

From the faith statement of Blazing Hope Ranch:

We recognize the value in every human life. Women sold as slaves are caught in the brokenness of the world, robbed of their dignity as his special creation and treated as mere objects for another’s pleasure or prosperity. We strive to share the message of redemption and the plan of a savior who can restore all things. Lead by biblical principles, in concert with effective therapeutic strategies, female survivors will be guided toward mental, emotional and spiritual wholeness and enabled to live lives of fullness and purpose.