Genesis 1:26-27 (ESV) – Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Take a moment to consider the terrible things that humans have done to one another over the centuries:

• Upwards of 4 million black people were once slaves in the United States, many of them stolen from their homes in Africa and shipped away on boats with harsh conditions.
• There were anywhere between 3-7 million Native Americans (Indians) living on this land, that would become the United States, before European settlement. Their land was systematically taken and many of those tribes extinguished. 
• Over 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust under the direction of Adolf Hitler.
• At least 20 million people died under communist-ruled USSR by Joseph Stalin.
• 45 million people died under the dictator Mao Zedong in China as he executed and systematically starved his people to death.

These are stories from just the last couple of hundred years of human history and this doesn't even account for the countless atrocities throughout the last several thousand in cultures across the globe. Why do these stories and the numbers of people associated with them move our hearts and cause us to shake our heads in unbelief? Because there is something different about human beings from every other created thing. Humans are different from mosquitoes and trees. 

We know this inherently, but not every worldview can ground that claim. Naturalism believes there is no God, and the world is a product of random chance events that brought about this world, each step unguided and meaningless. We are just evolved creatures from lower life forms. But our feelings betray us. They show us that we know that storyline isn't true. We know humans matter, and that murder, enslavement, and genocide are morally wrong and unjust. Where do we get this idea? Did we just make it up for ourselves? No. We find it in the Bible.

Scripture tells us that we are made in the image of God. Our lives have inherent value and worth. Reflect on that today. It changes everything.

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Reflection & Journal:
- In what ways are we image bearers of God?
- Why is it vital to understand our origin? How is it connected to our worth?
- How should a passage like this help us to understand who we are?

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