DNA and Some Wonder About the Image of God

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…”  Genesis 1: 26

I used to think that I had some idea what this meant – to be created in the image of God, but the more I learn the more I realize how little I know, and the more I wonder…

What does it mean to be created in the image of God when most of what makes me is “junk”?

About 95% of human DNA (the ‘building blocks of life’) has been called “junk DNA;” it serves no function.  At least, not anymore.  Everything that makes me me is described in the complex double helix chains of my DNA – about 6 feet of it tightly coiled up in each and every one of the billions of cells that make up my body.  But about 95% of that code is “junk” or “non-coding DNA.” It doesn’t do anything.  It’s just there as filler, as space between the scattered functional sections. 

Some of this functionless DNA may be compared to that one drawer in the kitchen – the one that has the random bits of string, half used matchbooks, rolls of scotch-tape, pocket knives, marbles, screwdrivers, recipes, and old keys that no one can identify…an evolutionary catchall.  It’s thought that some sections of this now functionless DNA may have been functional at some point long, long, long ago in our evolutionary history.  It’s continually replicated, but no longer serves any purpose.  Whatever genes may be encoded in them have been switched off and no longer work, but we keep them around nonetheless.  We rarely clean out that drawer … besides; the stuff in there might come in handy once again at some point in the future.

So … if I am and if you are made in the image of God, what does it mean that we have all this useless material?  And what does it mean if that DNA material is pretty much interchangeable with any other creature (plant or animal) on the planet?

I don’t look very much like a fruit fly.  Neither do you, I assume, but you and I share about 60% of our DNA in common with the common fruit fly.  60% of what makes me me and you you also makes the fruit fly the fruit fly.   And this common material is interchangeable.  Human genes, when sliced and inserted into fruit flies, still produce fruit flies.   So much for the movie The Fly… 

And this is even more the case for our closer relatives like the Chimpanzee -which I do look something like - with whom we share as much as 98% of our DNA in common. What does it mean then that we are created in the image of God if what makes me me and you you is all but completely interchangeable with every other creature on the planet?

And what about Mitochondrial DNA?  The Mitochondria, you might remember from biology class is the “power plant” of the cell – producing the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which is the chemical source of our bodies’ energies.  But the DNA in your mitochondria (known as Mitochondrial DNA or mDNA) is not the same as the DNA in the nucleus of your cells.  It is, in fact, completely different.

Biologist think that mDNA may have originally been bacterial DNA that somehow was incorporated into our early (early!) genetic ancestors.   It inhabits our cells, provides us with energy, but it’s not really us.  It’s something entirely different.

I’m not a scientist.  I only barely understand these concepts.  But what I am learning forces me to abandon things I thought I knew. And this hasn’t, contrary to what Christian opponents of evolution declare, left me without a sense of hope or belief in God. Instead I wonder more and more what it means to be created in the image of God.   I don’t know what it means, but I do have a few thoughts (and a lot of wonder..)

Whatever may be different or unique about me as a member of the species Homo sapiens, I do not sit atop the world superior to and independent from the rest of creation.  If I share so much in common with even the fruit fly – then I have to consider that, in some respects, the fruit fly is also created in the image of God.  It is important. I cannot blithely destroy life – even life as obnoxious as the fly without considering that it is part of the beauty and wonder and complexity that God has created.  It is a part of me; I am a part of it.  We are, together a part of this wonderful world. 

“’All life is one.’ That is, and I suspect will forever prove to be, the most profound true statement there is.” Bill Bryson  -A Short History of Nearly Everything