God's Idol - In A Nutshell

An Audio Version

In response to last week’s post, God’s Idol, one subscriber commented, “This is about 20 posts in one!” lol! He was right! No doubt, the nature of the material and the sheer amount of new information, all unloaded in a shotgun blast, was too much for most to take in. In our email conversation that followed, he tried to encourage me, “I like it; I just needed two tries. The second time was a lot easier. ” It seems I became so focused on the overall project that I failed to consider breaking it down into smaller posts. Ugh! As my dad always used to say, hindsight is 20/20.

Hoping all is not lost, I'm offering here a sort of “Nutshell” version in the form of a podcast for those who experienced a similar struggle or couldn’t make it through the first reading. I encountered the podcast almost by accident. I say almost because, while I wasn’t looking for it, I do follow the person interviewed on Twitter, where I found it.

The podcast Think Biblically is sponsored by Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. The guest being interviewed is Dr. Carmen Joy Imes. She is an Old Testament Scholar at Biola and the author of a new book, Being God’s Image, recently released from IVP Press. This edition of the podcast is about her book.

Her previous release, Bearing God’s Name, won several awards. Imes is a scholar passionate about bridging the gap between scholarship and a lay audience, a passion clearly on display in her writings. In this new book, Being God’s Image, she's not revealing a new truth but attempting to communicate what Old Testament scholars have understood for some time, to a lay audience.

Of course, she has not clue who I am or of my work, nevertheless, in the first few minutes of the interview, she largely explains the gist of my long post, which is: humanity is God’s idol, the concrete (physical, tangible) image of the Living God. You may or may not desire to listen to the whole podcast, but I urge you to listen to the first nine minutes. Again, you will then get the core message of my post, God’s Idol.

I must offer one warning. Some may be shocked to hear Imes say that the idea of salvation being primarily about going to heaven when we die is an idea the church needs to get rid of and replace with a far more faithful and robust biblical truth that includes the dignity we have as being God’s Image on the earth.

While she did not say the following, I’m confident she would agree that such a more robust truth would be something like the Scriptural declaration with which I closed my post: “The earth will be covered with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14, Nu 14:21; Isa 6:3, 11:9 Ps 72:19 Rev 4:11 Zech 9:10; Hag 2:9 with Rev 21:1-27).

Here is the link to the podcast:

Being God’s Image, Carmen Joy Imes. March 12, 2024