GruntGod 2.1.2: Imago Dei and the Grunt
Why Genesis Says You're Good
Revising the Cain chapter for God Is a Grunt (2nd edition) required aggressive cutting of exegetical material to keep the book centered on military families rather than seminary professors. But the Genesis 1-2 creation theology that grounds human dignity—including the dignity of combat veterans—calls for fuller treatment for those interested in its underlying (Hebraic) operating system. So here it is.
The Source Code of Creation
Genesis spends six days creating, with each day concluding with the observation that what was made was tov (טוֹב, H2896): light (v. 4); earth and seas (v. 10); vegetation (v. 12); the sun, moon, and stars (v. 18); air and sea creatures (v. 21); creatures of the land (v. 25). Good, good, good, good, good, good.
Last but not least comes creation's flagship app, programmed with God's own tselem (צֶ֫לֶם, H6754), or reflection. English translations typically use "image," but tselem carries the sense of something that represents or reflects something else—like a statue representing an king or a mirror reflecting a face. Human beings were made to be walking representations of God.
The Bible refers to this first human as adam (אָדָם, H120), but that's not a proper name—it's a generic term for humanity derived from adamah (אֲדָמָה, H127), a feminine noun meaning "dirt or mud." We might call this person Clay, because that's what they are made of. Clay is the prototypical earthling, Humanity 1.0, and the youngest of "the generations of the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 2:4).
Only after creating the first human does the whole ecosystem—operating system and apps alike—get called me'od tov (מְאֹ֖ד טֹ֑וב), "very good" (Gen. 1:31). Something about humanity completes creation's goodness.
You. Are. Good.
If you remember one thing from the entire Bible, let it be this: You are good. You are good, full stop. Soldier or civilian, saint or sinner, grunt or POG, believer or atheist—you are good.
Everything is created good. This is what theologians mean when they talk about human dignity: God's likeness is fundamental to humanity. It cannot be degraded, only obscured. In the language of the Declaration of Independence, human dignity is "inalienable"—it is irrevocable and untouchable.
If anyone tries to convince you that you are not good, tell them they're full of shit. If they are Christians, tell them to read their Bible.
The Only Thing That Isn't Good
The thing that violates creation's good design isn't evil—it's isolation.
In Genesis 2:18, God observes: "It is not tov that adam should be bad" (בַּד, H905). Wait, what? I thought everything was tov (good). Now something is bad?
The Hebrew word bad comes from badad (בָּדַד, H909), which means "alone, separated, isolated." Isaiah 14:31 uses this word to evoke the imagery of a military deserter who has abandoned his post and left his unit. Evil doesn't exist on its own—Genesis is careful to contrast goodness (an adjective) with alienation (a verb).
Two things are written into the source code of creation: goodness and togetherness. According to Genesis, everyone needs a battle buddy. That's where the second human comes in. In we are introduced to the second earthling, Humanity 2.0, who is given a name, Eve. A prototype is always improving. Having two instead of one is imperfect, but still good.
Evil Deeds vs. Evil People
When the man and woman eat the forbidden fruit—because of course they do—they act in typical fashion for anyone who has screwed up: they hide. They isolate themselves from God by hiding "among the trees of the garden" (Gen. 3:8), embarrassed at their nakedness. Then they isolate from each other, creating a blaming crossfire: male blames female, and female blames an animal.
Genesis 3:8-12 shows us how NOT to screw up. We make things worse by recoiling inward with our embarrassment and seeing everyone and everything else as the problem.
God seems unfamiliar with human shame and embarrassment, asking the man, "Where are you?" (3:9) and asking the woman, "What is this that you have done?" (3:13). Notice: this thing you have done, not this thing you have become. People, symbolized by the first earthlings, are distinct from sin. There are no evil people, only evil deeds.
Genesis cautions against confusing what people are with what people have done.
Theological Implications for Combat Veterans
This Genesis framework has profound implications for how we understand moral pain after combat.
First: Human dignity is ontological, inherited not earned. You can't earn goodness by doing good things, and you don't stop become bad by doing less good things things. Goodness is part of creation's design, like the operating system underlying every app. Sin is a corrupted file, not a system failure. It can make the system run poorly, but it can't fundamentally reprogram what you are.
Combat veterans often internalize the message that killing or participating in violence has fundamentally changed them—that they've crossed a line and can't come back. Genesis says that's bullshit. What you've done may have obscured your goodness (made it harder to see, harder to believe), but it hasn't eliminated it.
Second: Isolation is the real enemy. The first not good thing in creation is badad—being alone, cut off, separated from God and from community. This is why post-combat isolation is so dangerous. When veterans hide from others (because of embarrassment) or hide from themselves (through justification and denial), they're repeating our original mistake.
The path forward isn't through shame (becoming the bad thing you've done) but through acknowledgment and reconnection. This is what Cain figures out.
Third: Combat stress is about what we've lost, not what we've become. When Genesis describes Cain's post-fratricide experience, the Greek Septuagint translates the curse as tremō kai stenon—"trembling and constricted." Tremō (τρέμω, G5141) emphasizes dread and anxiety. Stenon (cf. στενός, G4728) means "narrow, tight, enclosed"—a derivative word, steni, means "prison."
God isn't telling Cain he's become something monstrous. God is explaining that Cain will experience anxiety and avoidance, that he'll feel isolated from God and from community. Modern psychiatry calls this post-traumatic stress. Genesis calls it the natural consequence of doing bad (isolating) things, which is not the same as being bad (isolated) people.
Where This Leaves Us
If human dignity is inalienable, then the church's job isn't to "save" or "fix" war-torn veterans. The church's job is to refuse civilian stereotypes that obscure veterans' fundamental goodness, to challenge isolation by creating communities of honest confession, and to remind people of what Genesis has been saying all along:
You. Are. Good.
Even if you've done things that are not good.
Even if those things felt necessary.
Even if you can't undo them.
Even if you feel like they've changed you forever.
You are good because God made you good, and a corrupted file doesn't have the power to unmake God's operating system. It can only make it glitchy AF. Church was never supposed to stop supporting anyone's operating systems, but if yours has, then you can always install the upgrade yourself because faith is open source software.
This post expands exegetical material cut from the Cain chapter of "God Is a Grunt" (2nd edition), which examines moral pain through the hagiographic lens of Genesis 4.