Storybook heroes often suffer amnesia. Raised by a shepherd, Romulus the future founder of Rome learns he is actually son of a king. Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, because he has less than “total recall” of his origins. Alex Haley traces his “Roots” to an African named Kunta Kinte. Rick Deckard hunts androids on the streets of future LA, but questions his own memories. Jason Bourne forgets who he was born to be.

Such stories are popular because even though we live in our own skin, we have a hard time “finding ourselves.” What does it mean to be human?

“Let me tell you!” glibly reply some scientific Know-It-Alls. “You are brother to gorillas. Your body holds atoms formed in hot red stars that exploded and scattered their elements into space. You evolved to survive in an atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen. You walk on two legs, seek a mate, form a family and pass on your ‘selfish genes,’ then return to the elements. Man is a common cog in the Wheel of Nature and the ‘circle of life,’ one of many animals on a remote Class M planet that circles an insignificant sun.”

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

But Genesis agrees with the human stories, and says God gave us a Secret Identity:

“Let us make man in our own image.”

“Our image?” If God is one, who is He talking with? Is the Creator using the Royal We? Is He recording these remarks on his cell phone so that later on he can drop it into Moses’ hands? Or does the plural hint, long before the birth of Christ, that while God is One, His unity is composed of a divine society?

And what does it mean for us to resemble Him?

Man alone is formed in the image of the Creator. Isn’t that unfair to tadpoles and termites, tumbleweeds and tulips, not to mention intelligent species like orangutans, bottlenose dolphins, and German shepherd? Does the Almighty walk on two legs? Ride an Uber to work? Brush a receding hairline? Obviously not.

C. S. Lewis conceded that beasts, plants, and even inanimate objects, do share some divine qualities. “Space and time, in their own fashion, mirror His greatness; all life, His fecundity; animal life, His activity.”

Yet Genesis points to four significant gaps between man and beast:

We Are “Sub-creators”

First, God created the Heavens and the Earth. We are “sub-creators,” to use Tolkien’s term.

When he was small, our son used to lay out clothing on the floor in human shape. Later, he took to drawing portraits of the Titanic. His brother built snowmen and drew pictures of the planets.

True, yellow-jackets build nests, hornets frame hives in plum trees, and beavers build dams. But when we hiked to a beaver’s dam in the winter, we tooled hockey sticks and a puck from the sticks in the dam, because beavers were too pragmatic to provide recreational equipment. When archeologists find pictures of bison on cave walls, no one ascribes them to bats with a taste for still-life portraiture.

The ability of some animals to form useful structures echoes Creation distantly. But God created for His pleasure, so art is more divine than mere weapons or nests. When humans carve a dragon on the prow of our ship, or draw pictures on the walls of our houses, we stand out in the God-like joy we take in invention.

We Reason

Secondly, humans reason. In Proverbs, Wisdom reflects on Creation:

I was there when (God) set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep … I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world, and delighting in mankind.

Biologists echo Sophia’s “delight” by calling us “homo sapiens” — thinking hominids.

We begin with simple syllogisms (“All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.”), and end with grand intellectual constructions, like Newton’s Mathematical Principles, and Aquinas’ Summary of Theology.

Or we tell stories that sketch vistas of truth in sub-created worlds. In The Lion King, Simba and his meerkat and warthog pals lie on their backs postulating what those bright lights in the sky might be. But aside from navigating birds, real animals pay little attention to stars: only humans chart constellations, map exoplanets, cast auguries. Augustine said humans are set on two legs so we can look at the sky. Some even argue that our world was fine-tuned to give us a view of the cosmos.

A saint named Job begged God to tell him why he suffered. Instead of answering directly, God pointed Job to the ostrich, the donkey, and the crocodile, and said “Look! Explain that!”

Richard Dawkins asked in The Greatest Show on Earth, “Why should we choose humans as the standard?” Wouldn’t an “indignant leech” object to our depicting man as “evolution’s last word?”

Odd that some scientists ignore the significance of their own rationality, noted Augustine:

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

Man is a “thinking reed,” as Pascal put it, so a Freak of Nature. Also, Dr. Dawkins, you are not a leech, but you are a biologist, because God gave humans the job in Genesis, appointing the first man and woman to name the animals.

We Speak

Third, “In the Beginning, God said.” Also unlike leeches, humans not only reason and create, we talk. You tap your friend on the shoulder and point at a sunset, or a turkey in the brush. You post photos of a monster cutthroat on Facebook, or of your toddler placing a blanket over your rottweiler on Tiktok.

Novelist Tom Wolfe said Life embraces three kingdoms: Plant, Animal, and the “Kingdom of Speech.” By talking, we echo our Creator, who said, “Let there be light!“ In our cells, we find true genetic language, which instructs proteins how to build life.

Many scientists are offended by the “language gap” between man and monkey. They try to get animals to speak, or reduce human language to noises designed to gain reproductive chances. In Lost in the Cosmos, novelist Walker Percy describes the efforts some scientists have taken to get animals to open up verbally. He suggests that those scientists are troubled by the implication that God may have played a role in human creation. The scientist is already “a god to his data,” and doesn’t want a bigger God. So in trying to communicate with Washoe the Chimp, “Three psychologists have had their fingers bitten off for their pains.”

If the lonely primatologist could get monkeys to speak, he would not only one-up colleagues, but “have someone to talk to.” Yet alas, for all their hooting and baying, animals remain dumb.

We Rule

Being made in God’s image, we think, speak, and make. Genesis also says He delegated divine authority uniquely to Adam and Eve.

While downplaying gaps between man and beast, many scientists exaggerated those among humans. Historian Richard Weikart describes how Darwinism helped inspire “scientific racism” and Nazism. Similarly, the Hindu Rig Veda claimed that the four chief castes were created from the head, shoulders, thigh, and feet of Brahma. Aristotle called woman a defective man, and claimed that slaves were inherently inferior to masters.

Genesis nipped all such attempts in the bud. It allows us no space to split the human race that way. Like Rafiki in The Lion King, Moses points to us and says, “You are Yahweh’s boy!” (Or girl.) All men and women are made in God’s image.

Genesis reveals our true selves as sub-creators, who reason, speak, and rule under God, while (in chapter 3) explaining our sense of isolation. (C. S. Lewis thought that owning dogs was an attempt to heal that breach.)

In many movies, we experience what Aristotle called a moment of “recognition.” Amnesia breaks. The Lion King is revealed. The Sword that Was Broken is forged again. The Boy Who Lived shows up. Luke learns that he is Darth Vader’s son.

Who are you? More than the sum of your parts. You are made in the image of God. You are called to create. You think, and tell others what you learn. God placed you in a lost garden, and told you to tend it. In fact, as we will see next, God created you to be a scientist. Then added, “And take a few days off, once in a while!”

David Marshall, an educator and writer, has a doctoral degree in Christian thought and Chinese tradition. His most recent book is The Case for Aslan: Evidence for Jesus in the Land of Narnia.