The imago dei of the...
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The imago dei of the suffering servant who brings salvation to the people of God is depicted by Isaiah as antithesis to the image of the modern hero. He who brings salvation and liberation to the people of God is despised, rejected, with no form of beauty that we should behold or value the sanctity of his personage. He or she is physically opposite of all we could ever hope for in a liberator. Conversely, the modern hero, the true grit emancipator of humanity from spiritual and moral slavery, is one bearing all the marks of the warrior unscathed: the matchless Midas of herculean strength whose handsome face and sculpted body is the epitome of divine creativity. Isaiah's picture is not pretty. His is Quasimodo, Victor Hugo's hunchback: a divine presence in a twisted and deformed body; the outcast who comes to announce; to help and save, but banished to the bell towers of human misery and isolation because we cannot bear to see him. We are simply content to "hear" the resonate harmonies of his chimings, but cannot heed the deeper meanings of his callings because he is not what we expect. In our tyranny of expectancy, in the words of Gunnar Myrdal, we limit the power and efficacy of both the message and the messenger. He is here to save us, but we cannot see beyond the face without form or comeliness because of discord in our own hearts and souls. -- Stewart
