When the potter sits down at the wheel, it is with a certain image in mind: a bowl, perhaps, or a cup, perhaps a vase. Whether it’s something small or large, oblong or some other shape, the potter dreams of a thing unique, and perfect of its kind.

And so with each of God’s creations.

Theologians struggle with the thought of God creating each of us in God’s own image. They waste their intellectual energy on meaningless concepts like free will, dominion, responsibility, and then proceed diligently into abstractions and jargon that have no reference to life

They should instead focus on the potter at the wheel, and this particular potter’s infinite ingenuity and extravagant love.

Look at the grasshopper; look at the microscopic virus; look at the whale; look at the prisms of light in a drop of dew. Each was originally a thought of God.

We are all of us thoughts of God, made real by God’s grace, and invested with God’s plan for our perfection.

There is no such thing as sin without awareness of the alternative. Wrongdoing and immorality, as normally understood, have no weight with God. There is no sin in a shark eating a dolphin, or a madman murdering a child.

Original sin, the sin with weight, is knowing God’s imagining of your own perfection, and choosing something less.

Socrates said that to know yourself is the beginning of wisdom, but that’s not the heart of it. The heart is to discover and pursue God’s dream of you.