How Man Serves God

Man created in the image of God enables Man to serve God by imitating God’s ethical behavior in this world.

Many of the ideas about God revealed in the Jewish Bible were considered radical ideas by much of ancient Man. The Jewish Bible emphasizes how God created the species Man, and He is not a capricious and irrational God. He is concerned with the well-being of Man, He is concerned that Man adhere to His moral principles, and God judges the world according to His moral code. In Genesis 18:20-21, we read that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah has been “very grave”, and God will “descend” to see if those cities are acting in accordance with the outcry they are making. Such ideas about God as taught in the Book of Genesis radically conflicted with many of the ancient pagan cults whose false gods in their behaviors tended to represent the absolute worst aspects of human flaws.

Maimonides in his book Guide for the Perplexed 1:54 explained a profound principle, which is that the greatest virtue of man is for man to imitate to the extent possible God’s actions.

“For the utmost virtue of man is to become like unto Him, may He be exalted, as far as he is able, which means that we should make our actions like unto his…”

Man’s purpose must be to serve the Creator, and NOT serve any of the Creations. Man’s purpose is certainly not to serve the totalitarian regimes and ideologies that attempt to replace worship of God with worship of dictators and tyrants.

A corollary to the concept of Man serving God is the concept that Man must not serve any objects in the Creation, whether natural or Man-made. Man does not exist to serve the all-powerful utopian “progressive” state.

For the West to survive without conquest by Islam or Marxist, it must seek purpose in embracing Biblical values. Man is not an animal. Animals cannot serve God, they can only exist the way God created them. Man has free will to serve God by imitating Him in doing good in the world as stated by the Biblical prophet Jeremiah:

“But only in this should one glory: In his earnest devotion to Me. For I the LORD act with kindness, Justice, and equity in the world; For in these I delight —declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23)

What is True Freedom

The cruel, depraved behaviors of the ancient false gods encouraged and legitimized such behavior among humans who worshiped such false gods. The Bible’s denial of the ancient false gods who engaged in the most depraved aspects of human behavior, and the replacement of those false gods with one incorporeal, ethical God for all of mankind, was a great step forward for mankind.

The Jewish Bible’s “radical” and “innovative” concepts of ethical monotheism caused a great advancement in human civilization. An advancement from the cruel and primitive pagan barbarism that prevailed in the ancient world to societies that recognized the uniqueness and dignity of Man as a being created in the Image of his Creator. The ideas taught in the Jewish Bible promoted a universal morality, a morality that recognized objective standards of good and evil within the world. Man became aware of the possibility of an ultimate purpose and meaning to human existence, as opposed to humans simply seeking gratification of their physical senses in this world. Man also became aware of the possibility of non-physical human existence after death, and the possibility of the judgment of Man for his actions in this world, when he reaches the next world.

The concept of Man being created in the image of God can also be understood as man’s ability to contemplate God’s actions in the Universe and then imitate and serve Him.

The concept of “freedom” must not be perverted into a Westernized libertarian concept of “libertarianism”, where man has no ethical restrictions imposed on his behavior. True freedom must be embraced as freedom from oppression and freedom to find one’s meaning in life through one’s philosophic or religious convictions.

True freedom in the Biblical sense must be understood as man’s freedom to serve God without oppression or interference from government or political forces, from criminal or terrorist forces, or from totalitarian religious or philosophical forces.

Man Created in the Image of God

וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם׃

“And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
(Genesis 1:27)

A primary understanding of the Biblical concept that Man is created in the “image of God”, as explained by the great rabbinic philosopher Maimonides, is that man possesses an ability of intellectual apprehension that no other physical creature possesses. Intellectual apprehension does not exist in animals, only in Man.

According to the Jewish Bible, the prophet Noah had three sons who with their wives reconstituted humanity after the Biblical Flood. The nature of civilization is hinted to in the Biblical descriptions of the three sons of Noach. The ability of intellectual apprehension has been especially manifested in the descendants of Shem and Yefet, two of the sons of Noah.

The Biblical Shem became the ancestor of the Semites and the Jews. The Jews gave the world the Bible and thus disseminated the concepts of ethical monotheism to the world that replaced the pagan barbarism that reigned in earlier ages. The Biblical phrase “Yaft Elokim Yefet” in Genesis hints at the concept that God will expand Yefet’s mind. The Biblical Yefet became the ancestor of the Europeans, including the Greeks, who greatly advanced science and philosophy.

The Red-Green Axis today is a worldwide alliance of powerful totalitarian ideologies, including Marxists, radical Islamists, and “progressive” Leftists including much of the current Democrat Party today. This unholy alliance is not only attempting to dismantle Western Civilization, but they are also attempting to suppress and destroy Biblical concepts such as Man being created in the image of God. Their goals are to devolve man to just another sophisticated animal and replace Western Civilization with barbarism.

Civilized people and nations must not allow the Red-Green Axis to succeed in their goal of dismantling Western Civilization and replacing it with barbarism.

Biblical Unity of All Mankind

Chapter 10 of the Biblical book of Genesis contains genealogical lists of the descendants of the Biblical prophet Noah. The book of Genesis lists seventy nations that descended from Noah’s sons after the Biblical flood, ie Shem, Yefet, and Ham. These seventy nations represent many geographic, ethnic, linguistic, and racial groups. According to Jewish tradition, all of present mankind is descended from Noah and his family, even if not all of the original seventy nations listed in the Bible are still identifiable today.

There is profound significance to the enumeration of all the nations of mankind in the Bible. The listing of seventy nations includes Eber, who was ancestor of the ancient Hebrews, but the Biblical list does not even mention the Jews who descended from Eber. The Bible is emphasizing that the God of the Bible is the God of all the nations and He has a relationship with all the nations of the world. The God of the Jewish Bible is not just the God of the Jews, and He is concerned with the well-being and destiny of all of mankind.

In Chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, it explains how God scattered mankind all over the face of the Earth in response to men committing a sin by building the Tower of Babel. There is a clear lesson from this. The Jewish Bible does not teach that all nations should dissolve their identities, or become Jews, or convert to Judaism. Each nation should maintain its distinctive language, national identities, and culture.

The Jewish Bible does seek a united world and is not obligating non-Jews to convert to Judaism. However, that world unity must be based on recognition of one God as the Creator of the world, and a universal acceptance of His Biblical commandments that define a moral code for all mankind.