Ep. 152 || Mothering in a World of Differences Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura: Welcome back to another episode of Risen Motherhood! I’m Laura and I’m excited to share a little bit about today’s special show. Today we’re talking about what it means to be made in the image of God, or Imago Dei, and how that affects the way we interact with others in different types of relationships in motherhood. The reality is, we’re all different! Language, skin tone, lifestyles, socioeconomic, where we live, what we value or emphasise in life, and even things like how we do bedtime, or what food we serve for snacks, or how we train our kids or what media we consume. Yet at the same time, we’re all created in the image of God which means no matter our differences, all people are deserving of dignity and value. Listen in as we invite several moms to share their personal stories and experiences about what God has taught them on this topic. View this as if you’re dropping in on a conversation with a few friends to hear what they’ve learned about loving other image-bearers.
Before we jump in, we’d like to introduce these women to you. We know this will go fast, so if you want to find anything here, we’ll list additional information on our show notes at risenmotherhood.com in the order each person shared.
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, has two sons, and lives in rural Missouri. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence and Everyday Faithfulness.
Portia Collins is a Christian Bible teacher, writer/blogger, podcast host and the founder of "She Shall Be Called." Portia and her husband have a daughter and currently live in the Mississippi Delta.
Dianne Jago is a military wife and mother of three residing in Pensacola, Florida. She is the author of A Holy Pursuit: How the Gospel Frees Us to Follow and Lay Down Our Dreams and the founder of Deeply Rooted Magazine.
Shar Walker is a writer and speaker and lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and son. She works on staff at the North American Mission Board (NAMB) as the Senior Writer.
On to today’s show…
Glenna Marshall: I remember when my oldest son first started noticing that people stare at our family in public. God put our family together through transracial adoption, and it definitely makes us stand out. Any time we get a weird look in public, I try to remind my sons how grateful I am for both the similarities and the differences that God has given us. Though we may not look exactly like one another, we are all bearing the image of God.
But there came a point when our differences became more noticeable than our similarities to my oldest son.
When he was about six, he began struggling with looking differently than his friends at church or than our extended family members. I distinctly remember one Sunday morning while we were getting ready for church, he came to me in the bathroom where I was doing my hair, and he said, “Mama, I don’t want to go. I’m the only person who looks like me.”
His words pierced my heart. I sat down on the toilet lid and scooped him into my lap, and I just cried with him. I didn’t know what else to do—we’ve taught him about God’s beautiful plan for diversity, how He created all men in his image, how the gospel is for all people from all nations and all ethnicities.
But in the moment, I didn’t know how to connect the truth of God’s good plan to my son’s broken heart.
But in that moment, the Lord reminded me of the verses I had studied just that morning.
It was the Suffering Servant passage from Isaiah 53, particularly verse 4: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Jesus did the most wonderful thing when he died to set us free from our sin. But that’s not all he did on the cross. Jesus carried our sins and our sadness, too, when he went to the cross. He was despised and rejected, well acquainted with grief. If anyone understands rejection, Jesus does. I could turn my son’s face to a Savior who understands our very real pain. We go to the gospel for our sin and we can also go to the gospel with our pain. In a really hard moment of parenting, the comfort was the work of Jesus at the cross. The comfort was a Savior who knows what it’s like to be human and who empathizes with our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15).
My husband and I began praying in earnest about our son’s feelings of isolation. We prayed for more friends of color, for friends with special needs, for our church to reflect the image of God on earth as it is in heaven.
It’s been six years since that day that I sat in the bathroom crying with my son and it’s been six years since God began answering our prayers for gospel-centered diversity in our church family and our friendships. My boys now run through the halls of our church with kids who look like them and kids who don’t, kids of similar skin tone, kids with special needs, kids with different socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s beautiful to see that it is Jesus’ work at the cross that unites us, and it is Jesus’ work at the cross that comforts us when our children struggle with the way God has created them to reflect His image.
I often think, though, that even if our church community hadn’t become more diverse, the gospel still offers the most comforting truth I can give my boys. Not only did God knit them together in the womb in a fearful and wonderful way, (Ps. 139:14), but in Christ, they are complete. When we follow Jesus, our lives are wrapped up first and foremost in belonging to him. Before we are black, white, male, or, female, we are his. And nothing and no one can separate us from Christ’s love (Rom. 8:37-39). When my kids struggle with identity or appearance, I know I can always, always point them to the unchanging hope that we have in Christ. When He saves us, he makes us new creatures in Christ, and from that point forward he defines who we are (2 Cor. 5:17). And who we are is his.
Portia Collins: At an early age I became shockingly aware of the poor statistical ranking of my beloved state, Mississippi. From high teen pregnancy rates, to high poverty rates, Mississippi has always been at the top of the list of bad things and the bottom of the list of good things. I have vivid memories of teachers, family members, and neighbors reminding me that I shouldn’t become just another statistic. Whether I want to admit it or not, these seemingly good warnings created a heart and mind within me that grew very partial toward others. In my attempt to differentiate myself from being “just another statistic,” I lost sight of the fact that even those who are “statistics” are still image bearers of the triune God.
We get our first glimpse of being made in the image of God in Genesis 1:26. In that particular verse we see that God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
It is easy to gloss over this portion of scripture and count it as just another component in the story of creation, but I would argue that this verse is a place where many of us should pause. I believe that one of the most quickly forgotten biblical concepts is the Imago Dei. The affirmation made here in Genesis 1:26 shows us that God created men and women unlike anything else. Although the image of God within every human life has been marred by sin, it does not change God’s original intent, nor does it eliminate the sanctity of life.
As a mom, I admit that I have been tempted to show partiality toward other moms who do not share the same background, status, or even the same skin color as me. I’ve found myself mentally categorizing other women based on my own flawed standard rather than viewing them as a fellow image bearer of God. Over and over, God instructs us to show no partiality toward others. And when we do show partiality, we sin by treating that person as if they are less than who God created them to be. When God made man and woman, he set the standard for how we should treat one another. The goal should always be to honor every person with dignity and respect, regardless of skin color, socioeconomic status, physical ability, or even religious background, because all human life has been made in the image of God.
Dianne Jago: I remember an evening when my son Kaiden came home upset because of a bullying incident. I felt so helpless. As a mom, that protective instinct jumps in and you just want to shield your child from anything bad, but I also wanted him to see that even when people do things we don't understand, they are made in the image of God and we should still love them in return.
It was hard for Kaiden to reconcile how someone could be so mean spirited to him when he’s tried his best to only show kindness. And so I tried my best to explain that this child’s actions were a result of the fall. When sin entered this world through Adam, the way the human race related to one another completely changed. Sin distorts the image of God in image bearers and doesn’t give a perfect picture of God’s image. I explained to Kaiden that he can still love his enemy, but he can also recognize the bully’s actions as an effect of sin. The gospel is what has the power to transform moral behavior, and so the only way this boy would change is if the Holy Spirit changes him. This is what transforms and "recovers" the image of God in the person as they seek to be more like Christ.
And so, Kaiden kept a little tract in his pocket. The next time that bully interacted with him in a mean way, he ignored the comments and said, “Here, I have something for you.” I told Kaiden that the bully would likely look at it and throw it to the ground—which he did—but Kaiden persisted in inviting him to church and talking about God. Eventually, the boy left him alone.
While each bullying situation requires wisdom, discernment, and sometimes intervention with other parents or school officials, these moments provide us moms with gospel-sharing opportunities not just with our kids, but for our kids to share with others too. Every person is made in the image of God, but the way sin distorts that image varies from peer to peer. Kaiden now understands that the gospel is what changes, transforms, and restores, and as his mom, I have to remind myself of this too.
Shar Walker: I’m an African American woman and my husband is Anglo-American. One day we were in the grocery store waiting in line to check out. As my husband perused the candy options, I noticed a little girl staring at us. She must have intuitively known we were together because she tapped her mother and asked, “Mom, why don’t they match?”—referring to my husband and I. Then she looked at me and asked—in the most pure, child-like innocence—“are you black?” I smiled at her, and before I had a chance to answer, her mother shhhh’ed her, and told her not to say such things.
It's common to shy away from talking about taboo topics like race. And even with our children, we may find it hard to engage with them over the differences they see. Perhaps this is because of our own lack of exposure to people different from ourselves. But when our children notice these differences, it’s an opportunity to point them to the beauty and creativity of God’s greatest creation—namely human beings.
When we got in the car, my husband and I talked about the ways we wanted to shepherd and teach our children about the doctrine of the image of God. When God created Adam and Eve in Genesis, they did not “match” because they had the same skin color (even though we don’t really know what skin color they had). They “matched” because they were both image bearers of God. We want our son, Noah, to marvel like the Psalmist in Psalm 8 at the beauty and dignity of all humans. Psalm 8:3–6 says this:
When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place, what is a human being that you remember him,a son of man that you look after him?You made him little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor.You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet…
As parents, we get the privilege of shaping our children’s worldview and how they see and respond to those who are different from themselves. We get to teach them that in all that God created—and he made a lot of beautiful things—humanity is “crowned with glory and honor” and has been made stewards of the world we inhabit.
Even at my son’s young age, we’ve tried to be intentional to normalize ethnic differences by exposing him to people of different nationalities through books, media, TV shows, and, most importantly, men and women in our church. And when he is older, we look forward to sharing with him that our ethnic differences are beautiful in the eyes of the Lord, and that when we get to heaven and stand before God—with our ethnicities and nationalities intact—we will all “match” as we perfectly image our King, like we were designed to do. We will “match” as we worship him together.