The Mirror of God: How the Church Can Fully Reflect the Divine Image
by Stanley K. Inouye

The story of humankind may be thought of as the story of a mirror—a mirror that is created, shattered, and restored. It is the story of how cultural differences originated and how Christ's coming brings us back to unity. Three related lessons from Scripture help convey this story: Jesus' role in Creation, the account of the Tower of Babel along with its reversal at Pentecost, and Christ's entry into history as a human being. From these lessons we can formulate a biblical rationale for why Christians from different cultural heritages need each other and should reach out to one another across racial and ethnic boundaries.

Christians believe human beings were created in the image of God. Most theologians have taught that the image of God is some static quality or faculty, such as rationality. But several key theologians, including Martin Luther and to some extent John Calvin, have recognized that the image is not some human faculty, but is rather a relationship, an orientation of the life toward God. And some theologians have compared this relational understanding of the image of God to a mirror: When human beings are in right relationship with God, they (like mirrors) reflect his glory; but when through sin, they focus on something else, they no longer reflect his image.

The idea that God created us to be like a mirror first occurred to me as I was reading Genesis. I used to interpret this portion of Scripture individualistically: Each person is created fully in God's image and likeness. We were each created to be a mirror, each possessing the capacity to reflect completely our Creator.

In time, however, I began to see that God created humankind in his image. Genesis 1:27-28 clearly speaks of God creating the man and the woman together—not just the man—as reproducing, culture-forming, world-shaping beings in his image. As individuals, we are able to reflect the image of God only partially. But as a race, we can reflect the image of God like a giant mirror, each person mirroring only a small portion of the image.

Here I move beyond the explicit sense of the text—but not beyond common sense informed by Scripture: God is reflected only when the individual pieces of the mirror, each of us, faithfully reflect their unique portions of God's image.

All of the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was involved in our creation. Yet it was the Son's unique role to do the shaping. Himself the image of God (Col. 1:15), he shaped us in the image of God as well.

The Colossians passage also says, "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in" Jesus. On the other hand, Ephesians 4, in discussing our common growth into Christian maturity, talks not about the fullness of God, but about the fullness of Christ: It says we are to be "built up until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (v. 13).

Now the fullness of God dwelt bodily in Jesus, but it is impossible for all the fullness of God to dwell in any of us individually. The fullness of God that was in Christ can only be realized in us by building up and edifying all the separate parts of Christ's body, which is the church. We, as individual believers, can only partially experience and reflect God's and Christ's fullness on our own. We cannot be whole alone, nor can we understand or serve God fully alone. Only together can we possess, experience, and reflect God's fullness and therefore fully reflect the image of God as it is in Christ.

The shattered mirror
We usually think of the body of Christ as a New Testament analogy. But a precursor of this analogy can be found in Genesis 11 in the story of the Tower of Babel. The birth of the New Testament body of Christ came at Pentecost, with the breaking down of the Babel barrier through the gift of missionary communication across ethnic and language barriers. Thus before Babel and after Pentecost there is potential for a unified human culture that could reflect fully the image of God.

In Genesis 11, it says, "The whole world had one language and a common speech." At that time there was only one world culture. But the one world culture, the giant mirror, moved away from reflecting God. These people decided to centralize their power by building a great city and a mammoth tower to symbolize the tremendous power of a united humanity.

Scripture says that they were trying to "make a name" for themselves, an identity apart from God. They who had been created to reflect the image of God were now saying, "God, we have no need of you!" And this tower was the exclamation mark on their rejection of the Creator.

The Lord knew the power of a unified human race. He created it thus. But that power was to be used for God's purposes and to bring glory to his name. Since they now rejected him, the Lord confused their language and scattered them over the face of the Earth. Thus the myriad cultures in the world were born.

Before this dispersion, the one great culture of humankind was as a global mirror, which reflected the image of the Creator. But when the mirror shattered, the broken fragments were strewn to the ends of the Earth. Each piece was a different culture, separated from its source of being and its meaning in life. As author Jim Sire put is, "A mirror without anything to reflect is emptiness itself."

Each culture of the world is an equally valid and yet equally unbalanced, incomplete, and distorted fragment of the much larger mirror we were meant to be—the mirror of God. We were meant to reflect his image, which is also the image of Christ.

Our Lord's purpose of coming is best understood from his prayer in John 17:23: "Father...may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." Jesus came to mend the mirror, to unify us so that we might once again reflect the total image of our Creator, who is Christ himself.

Celebrating our differences
It would be wonderful if we could report that in Christendom today, Christ's prayer is being fulfilled: that the mirror has been mended, the cracks eliminated, and believers from every culture and walk of life are working together in harmony; that the world is being convicted that this unprecedented unity could not be possible without Christ. Why is this not happening?

Three primary problems prevent us from achieving this unity. The first is our natural tendency to define belonging as sameness. Formally and informally, we construct complex sets of criteria for membership in the groups to which we belong. Often, the criteria simply describe who we are, and the people most welcome to join our groups are those who are most like us. We respond with suspicion and defensiveness when we are approached by people who are different from us.

This human tendency has pervaded the Christian church since the first century. We have put ourselves in the position of judging one another according to our theological interpretations, ecclesiastical traditions, and particular ministry practices. We have exercised the dubious right to determine who belongs and who doesn't.

This wrong assumption is the reason the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, goes to such lengths to establish the fundamental basis for membership in Christ's body, the church. According to Paul, the only essential and nonnegotiable characteristic of membership in the body of Christ is that the Spirit of Christ dwells in us. This is given to us. We are the chosen, not the choosers.

Beyond this essential way in which we are the same, the church is best characterized by difference, not similarity. Our differences have a God-ordained purpose within the body of Christ, and they are parts of the mirror that humankind was meant to be.

We should welcome our differences and thank God for them. We should not overlook, avoid, tolerate, or passively accept our differences. We should accept one another, not in spite of our differences, but because of our differences so that we have the most to contribute to one another.

A faulty standard
The second problem that prevents us from demonstrating our unity to the world has to do with those of us who are minority Christians -- those who are poorer, less powerful, and fewer in number. We tend to measure ourselves according to what the Christian majority promotes as the standard of what makes someone truly Christian. Because minority Christians or their churches fail to fit neatly into the majority's mold, they assume that they themselves are the ones who do not match up. Therefore, minority Christians judge themselves and their churches to be inferior, even to the point of questioning the legitimacy of their faith and walk with God. They may even feel that they are not really part of the body itself, but only colorful ethnic clothing that the body puts on.

This is exactly what Paul was referring to when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:15 that the foot might be tempted to say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body."

Just because minority Christians don't see themselves as part of the body, they are nevertheless members of the body of Christ. If they share the same Spirit, they are a part of the same body, like it or not. If we are Christ's, we are stuck with one another.

Using the mirror analogy, we are still parts of the same mirror, and only by bringing together the pieces can the mirror reflect the complete picture. It is our responsibility to fulfill our God-ordained function as part of the whole. Minority Christians cannot do that if they see themselves as inferior Christians, question the legitimacy of their Christianity, or question the legitimacy of majority Christianity.

Too often, minority Christians think they do not have anything worth contributing. And thus they deny majority Christians a valuable opportunity for growth and change. As a result, what people think of as "Christianity" remains "majority Christianity."

The minority Christian is as much at fault as the majority Christian. The sin is the same. They both define belonging as sameness and therefore do not contribute to each other or work together as they ought.

The needy and the needed
The third problem that prevents the unity Christ desires concerns the Christian majority's lack of felt need. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:21, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!" Minorities already know they have needs. They might not accept help and may even say, "I don't need you!"—but they know they need help.

Majority Christians, however, are far less likely to realize they have needs that cannot be satisfied without help from minority Christians. "We are the needed and they are the needy," majority Christians are apt to think. "What need have we of them, apart from the blessing we receive when helping them?"

But the majority Christian has just as much need for what the minority Christian has to offer as vice versa. In 1Corinthians 12:22, Paul writes, "On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." Although majority Christians might not have the same needs as minority Christians, we must learn to depend on each other for help to meet the needs we cannot satisfy ourselves.

What can the poor and powerless minority Christian offer the rich and powerful majority Christian? Although the majority Christian can give money and resources, the minority Christian can give lessons in needing and depending—two essential ingredients for an authentic walk with God. How does a rich man learn to pass through
the eye of a needle? From someone who is earthly poor but spiritually rich.

Back to wholeness
The question we must now ask is: What must we do to get the body back together again, to mend the mirror? The answer involves understanding our roles in restoration. Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:24-25 helps us to understand these roles: "But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other" (NIV).

Recently, this has begun to happen. By fostering communication between representatives from diverse parts of the church, we are attempting to connect the members of the body. Those who have been obscure are beginning to receive recognition, and their unique contributions are being understood and appreciated.

It is hoped that needs within the Christian community might be made known, and the divisions that have existed because of isolation, insulation, or ignorance might be mended. Many organizations are attempting to develop interdependent relationships -- ones not based on bringing together the haves and the have-nots, the needed and the needful, but based on the knowledge that each of the parts realizes its need for each of the others, so that all might contribute equally.

Without a sense of equal need and equal contribution among Christians, there can be no equal concern. All the parts must see themselves as God intended: that they be both givers and receivers, needed and needy. When we begin to see ourselves as equally needed parts of the mirror that reflects our Creator, we will move closer to complete unity and will reflect more clearly the image of Christ to the world, in all his glory, power, and love.

THE GIFT OF TWO CULTURES
by Kenneth H. Sidey

Moses was one. So was Paul. "Biculturals," says Stan Inouye. "They were uniquely equipped by God to play a special role in the transition and expansion of his kingdom."

What the bicultural person brings, says Inouye, a fourth-generation Japanese-American, is the ability to view two cultures with "objectivity, and yet with deep, personal familiarity." For example, as a Jew, the apostle Paul was thoroughly familiar with the Jewish ritual of circumcision, Inouye explains. But as a Christian, and because of his Greco-Roman culture, he could see beyond the cultural meaning and was able to translate that Jewish form into something equally meaningful to Gentiles. He became a "cultural bridge," a role Inouye believes bicultural Christians needs to play today.

The so-called hyphenated Americans—Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Native Americans—find themselves the products of two distinct, sometimes competing, cultures. Such backgrounds inevitably create personal tensions. But those tensions can be productive, Inouye says."The secret is to see them as a gift, not a curse."

Recovering a Japanese self
As well as being a fourth-generation Japanese-American, Inouye is a fourth-generation Christian (his great-grandfather came to the mainland with a missionary vision to minister to a Japanese immigrant community in northern California). While he experienced cultural tension growing up, he identified most with mainstream American culture. As a student at the University of California-Berkeley, he was in a white fraternity, his friends and dates were white, and the campus ministry he was involved with—Campus Crusade for Christ—primarily represented the dominant culture. "My idea of self was not very Japanese," he says.

However, when he joined Campus Crusade's full-time staff, he soon began to encounter differences between his "Japanese-ness" and his "American-ness." For example, while his fellow staff members "The Four Spiritual Laws" and other approaches to evangelism effectively, he found himself uncomfortable with those approaches and asked why.

"Initially, I was down on myself—I was not effective; I was not spiritual."

Inouye's experiences made him ask, "What role does my ethnic background have in all this? What about my background is Japanese? What is American, and what is Christian? It's difficult to identify where one aspect [of my upbringing] began and another left off."

What helped Inouye begin to clarify the cultures and the faith within him was further work in intercultural and international ministries with Campus Crusade. During his eight years with the organization, he observed and participated in relationships between the ministry's national leaders in other countries and its U.S. leadership. The positives struggles with ethnicity, faith, and ministry he saw in the organization mirrored his personal struggles.

Seeking more answers, Inouye left Campus Crusade to study intercultural dynamics at Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Mission in Pasadena, California.

"How do you guarantee that what you are primarily accountable to is not culture, but is the Word of God and the Lord himself?" Inouye asks. "Answering that is one of the biggest struggles any Christian has." What he learned about the acculturation process has helped him, he says, to know when and how to step back in objectivity and examine beliefs and actions.

Cultural bridge
To "step back in" and fulfill his role as a "cultural bridge," Inouye in 1981, founded Iwa (Japanese for an immovable rock or cliff, shaped by the natural elements surrounding it) to further evangelism, church growth and planting, and spiritual renewal among Japanese-Americans and Asian-Americans.

Inouye and the two other staff members of Iwa recently completed the first phase of their work, a seven-year study of their audience and the Scriptures, developing culturally relevant and biblically accurate models and approaches for ministry.

Bicultural people "fill nooks and crannies" in the church, Inouye says. "As long as we don't understand what's going on within us, as long as we look for a way to relieve the cultural struggle within, we will never be at ease with ourselves, nor will we contribute all we can to God's kingdom. Being bicultural is a gift...a gift given to us and to the church."

< Back to Articles

Click here to email Iwa