Dear John,

I’ve already said that we are valuable because we were created in God’s image. But what does that mean, and how does it fit with autism? It’s actually a theme that develops through the Bible.

To start with, Adam and Eve are made “in the image of God” (Gen 1:27) – and that means that they look a bit like God from the point of view of creation. They look a bit like God specifically because they aren’t just a part of creation; they also have the ability to “rule over it” as well (Gen 1:26, 28). Sometimes people talk about it as us being “sub-creators” – that we’re part of this amazing work of art that is the universe, but also that we can shape it and change it ourselves.

People are also in the the image of God because of how we are in relationship with others. God is himself a Trinity; God sometimes uses plural pronouns for themselves (Gen 1:26). And so it’s not just Adam or Eve that is in God’s image – it’s Adam + Eve, and they are told to increase in number, and they do that through relationship.

The problem is that we rejected our place in the artwork. Instead of growing the beautiful garden into the wilderness of the world, we trashed the world and made it into a noisy building site. Instead of perfect relationships, we spiral downwards into mutual blame and recriminations (Genesis 3).

As a result, we don’t show God’s image to the world any more; we aren’t in God’s image any more. We don’t have the care over the world and our relationships are often broken. We’re told that after everything had gone wrong, Adam had another son “in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 5:3), and that we’re all descended from that son, Seth.

But God’s image hasn’t completely gone. It’s like we’re an artwork which has been covered in graffiti. We still retain some of our original dignity and value. You can still sometimes see the genius artist behind us when you see some of the wonderful things that people are capable of. But you can also see the ugly bits – the damage and the scars.

We still retain some of the abilities which God gave us to worship him and rule creation. We still retain some of the dignity, hence why killing people is so wrong (Genesis 9:6, James 3:9).

But we aren’t really in God’s image any more; we’re in a broken and distorted version of that image. And this isn’t just about autism; this is every single human being (well, except one…). Thankfully, that’s not the end of the story, as I’m sure you’ve guessed… But the rest can wait for another few times!

All the best,

Future John