A few years ago, when my son was still small, he looked up at his mom and asked, “Will I ever be a normal boy?” It’s the kind of question a child asks when the world has already started to draw its lines.
Jackson is older now—a high school sophomore with strong opinions, a deep sense of justice, and a mind that notices details others miss. He describes himself as neurodivergent, not disabled. He doesn’t want sympathy; he wants to be understood.
Like many teenagers across the country, Jackson also checks the news. He knows when people in power speak as if people like him are a burden, incapable of meaningful work or relationships, dismissed from the future before they’re fully grown.
When Jackson hears that kind of rhetoric, he isn’t shocked anymore. But it still stings.
This is the air neurodivergent kids often breathe: a quiet but persistent message that they exist outside the frame—that the image of God doesn’t quite include them. But it does. It always has.
And maybe that’s the problem—not with them, but with how we’ve framed the Imago Dei (Image of God).
As I wrestled with these questions—about belonging, difference, and what it truly means to reflect the divine —I found myself writing not an argument, but a poem. It began not with doctrine, but with metaphor.
What if the image of God isn’t a single portrait? What if it’s a mosaic?
The Imago Dei
was never a solo portrait
but a tapestry—
shards of light
from every angle
catching the sun
at just the right tilt.
This image has stayed with me: the idea that none of us reflect God in isolation, that we were never meant to. What if we only begin to see the divine when we stand side by side?
The Theology of a Shared Image
In the first chapter of Genesis, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image” (Gen. 1:26). It’s a striking moment—God speaking in the plural, creating not in isolation, but in holy community. Genesis seems to affirm, right there in its beginning, that the image of God is expressed not through one kind of person, but through our togetherness.
For much of Christian history, theologians focused on the image of God as something internal to each person: reason, moral capacity, agency, a soul. But more recent thinkers have widened the lens.
Theologian Miroslav Volf writes that because God is not a solitary being but a communion—Father, Son, and Spirit—the divine image must also be relational. Likewise, we were made not for silos but for interdependence.
Desmond Tutu often said the same, drawing from the African concept of ubuntu, a way of living rooted in the idea that “I am because we are.” Ubuntu asserts “a person is a person through other persons.”
In Tutu’s words, “We are made for togetherness, for family, for fellowship, to exist in a tender network of interdependence.”
If that’s true, then each person carries only a part of the image. The full picture emerges only in community.
Theologians like Thomas Reynolds and Amy Kenny, who write about disability and neurodivergence, remind us that difference is not a deviation from the divine image but essential to it. The Body of Christ, as Paul wrote, has many parts. Not all are the same. Not all should be.
The neurodivergent child
who sees patterns in the wind.
The elder whose hands
tell stories older than language.
The daughter of diaspora
who dances to the rhythm
of more than one homeland.
Each life refracts a different glint of the holy.
What We Miss When We See Alone
This vision of the Imago Dei runs counter to our cultural instinct. In Western society, we prize individualism, the autonomous self, the solo success story. But when we elevate sameness—racial, neurological, cultural—we shrink the space where God can be seen.
Sociologist Robert P. Jones has shown how churches in America have often conflated cultural comfort with divine order, building systems that reflect one group’s image rather than God’s. A recent Barna study found that only one in five congregations in the U.S. are truly racially diverse. Many churches don’t just lack diversity; they actively avoid it.
The same is true when it comes to neurodivergence. A study by the Collaborative on Faith and Disability found that a third of families affected by disability have left a church because they didn’t feel welcomed.
Often, it’s not hostility—it’s invisibility: no plan, no preparation, no place. But when we fail to make room for those who think, move, speak or worship differently, we don’t just harm others, we limit our own vision of God.
As Thomas Reynolds wrote, “Welcoming others as bearers of the divine image requires expanding our view of what being human looks like.” That means letting go of rigid standards of behavior and success.
It means seeing presence as sacred, not just productivity. And it means recognizing that difference is not deficiency.
The Image Emerges in the Tapestry
So, what does it mean to live as if this is true?
It means when my son paces in circles to process a thought, he’s not a disruption—he’s a person honoring his body’s wisdom.
It means the elder who forgets a name but remembers every hymn still carries something holy.
It means when an immigrant prays in her first language, we don’t need to translate it to find God there.
Living into the mosaic means creating space—not just for welcome, but for co-flourishing. It means the church isn’t complete without the child who stims in the pew, or the person who doubts and stays anyway.
The face of Christ
does not come clear
until the whole Body
gathers—
limping and laughing,
mourning and marching,
singing in languages
no empire can own.
This isn’t diversity for its own sake. It’s theology. It’s worship. It’s how we sharpen the blurred edges of our faith.
Because the truth is, none of us sees God clearly on our own. But when we begin to see through each other’s eyes, when we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who have been pushed to the edges, something happens. The glass grows clearer.
Heaven has always been
a harmony,
not a homogeny.
And the image of God?
We see it now
as in a mirror, dimly—
but when we stand
side by side,
it sharpens, it shines—
the face looking back
is divine.
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The Rev. Dr. Jason G. Edwards is a pastor and writer based in Liberty, Missouri, where he has served as Senior Pastor of Second Baptist Church for over sixteen years. His poetry, prose, and prayers appear regularly on his Substack at jasongedwards.substack.com.
