Alyona Ivanovna And The Image Of God

I'm reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. I am loving the book, but one scene in particular toward the beginning of the book caught my attention. In this scene the main character, Raskolnikov, overhears a few people contemplating a world without Alyona Ivanovna, a shrewd old pawnbroker. During the exchange the following observations are made in justification of the murder of Alyona:

"What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange -- it's simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence? No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm."

This reasoning caught my attention because it showcases very well the relative nature of morality in our day and age. We instinctively know that some things are bad, but we will often try to downplay the severity of our sin. Most people will grant that they make "mistakes", but are generally good people because they do much more good than bad. While murder isn't usually on the list of "mistakes", the underlining reasoning is the same. One bad thing is balanced out by many more good things. "It's simple arithmetic!" Aside from the balancing act of good vs bad as a justification for the value of our lives, you also see utilitarian ethics at work here. Most people would agree that murder is wrong, even the parties in this exchange do, but you see another factor dominate this discussion: the ends justify the means. Murder is excusable precisely because it benefits the greatest amount of people: one life lost for thousands saved. These factors work together to reinforce a sense of moral relativity.

Another reason this passage caught my attention was because it resonates with this years Reformed Forum conference on the image of God. Mankind is created in the image of God. What this means, among other things, is that all mankind has inherent dignity and respect. That is the reason that murder is so heinous. Murder is more than simply taking the life of a creature, it is an assault against the God whom they image. All mankind is an image-bearer. When this fact gets obscured, we no longer value human life because of the God who is imaged by mankind, we start to value life based on other criteria. This scene from Crime and Punishment demonstrates this very clearly. Alyona is less valuable than others because she is sick and ill-natured, she hurts people and makes them destitute and miserable. Her contribution is so negligent that she is on par with a beetle, but her crimes are so great that she is actually of less value than a beetle. In these terms killing her is hardly murder, it's really a public service.

A lack of the doctrine of the image of God has many consequences for our society today. When we think in these terms, that a person's value is removed from the God who created them and replaced by their value to society or effect on others, we can make sense of a number of societal ills today. Racism, the sex trade, abortion, euthanasia, torture, civilians targeted by drones, etc. are all products of dehumanizing people. When people are no longer viewed as image-bearers, they will still be viewed in light of some competing value system. All other competing value systems, however, are deficient and fail to give life any real value.

The image of God can seem like some type of spiritual doctrine that might be important for our pastors and theologians to understand, but it is actually an important doctrine for the layperson to understand. Conservatives like talking about the sanctity of life, but that is a futile discussion if we do not understand the doctrine of the image of God, the fountain of the sanctity of life. The doctrine of the image of God doesn't immediately seem like a practical doctrine, but life is frightening without it.