SDRAWKCAB:

What does it mean to be made in God's image? Isn't everything in Creation made in His image? Aren't trees made in His image? And birds? And stars? Aren't they all the creative fruits of the Divine Imagination - or image-ination? Isn't everything "charged with the grandeur of God", as Hopkins tells us? Yes, indeed, but we know that Man is charged with God's grandeur in a unique way, in a way that distinguishes him from all other creatures. He is not an image of God but in some sense the Image of God. This knowledge enables us to know ourselves better in the light of God, but it also enables us to know God better in the light of Man. In seeing how we differ from the rest of Creation, in comprehending our uniqueness, we get an inkling of God's image in us.

We see it in the way in which the good, the true and the beautiful are present in Man in a way that is radically different from the other creatures.

All creatures are good in the sense that God made them but only Man is good in terms of his ability to freely and rationally choose the good, to choose to act virtuously, to choose to lay down his life self-sacrificially for others, which is the divine reality of love.

All creatures are true in the sense that they conform to the Logos in their natures but only Man is true in terms of his ability to reason. Man does not merely feel the warmth of the sun and see by its light, as do other creatures, he can calculate the heat of the sun and work out how long its light and warmth take to reach us.

All creatures are beautiful in the sense that they are great works of art brought into being by the Creator, who is the Primal Poet and Great Composer of the Music of the cosmos, but only Man has the creative gift to make beautiful things as God makes them, except that Man does not make them ex nihilo as God does but from other things that already exist. Unlike the other creatures, man is not merely a poem but a poet!

This is all very well but what has it to do with laughter?

Only Man laughs. Other creatures, such as hyenas, might sound as though they are laughing but they are faking it. Only Man laughs.

Laughter, like goodness, truth and beauty, is the mark of the Imago Dei in Man. 

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