What does it mean to be made in the image and likeness of God? What does it mean to be a child of God the father? What does it mean to be the hands and feet of Jesus, especially amid today’s violence?
The graphic novel Blood & Water: The Life and Martyrdom of Shahbaz Bhatti honors the life of the Pakistani Servant of God Shahbaz Bhatti, who dedicated himself entirely to understanding, answering, and living these questions.
What does it mean to be made in the image and likeness of God?
Raised and educated by Catholic parents and many other siblings, Bhatti spent his life seeking what it truly means to be a child of God. Living among the poor and oppressed, he felt not merely a calling to study political science and debate policy changes needed among politicians and laws, but to lead, and not just as any leader. He became a voice for all minorities, regardless of religion, because to be made in the image and likeness of God, which every human being is, is to be created in righteousness and holiness, and therefore to possess inherent and irreplaceable dignity.
Bhatti embodied his faith. The comic book depicts him in his early years at university, standing up for religious freedom, understanding his call to obedience to do not just what he felt compelled to, but what he knew God was calling him to do: to help his brothers and sisters.
His vision was never narrow. His concern extended beyond Pakistan’s Christian minority to all people: Muslims, Christians, Hindus alike. Bhatti understood this call to obedience, to help serve the country, was universal: “Christian or not, we both love Pakistan" (45).
From that conviction forward, the novel shows him negotiating laws and treaties, fighting to bring minorities into the workplace and the legal system by insisting that every person, regardless of faith, possesses a soul and inherent worth.
Therefore, to be a child of God the Father, as Bhatti demonstrated, is not to be selective about who gets respect and rights. He he was not just thinking “what's best for his kids, but what’s best for God’s kingdom” (52).
As a child of the Father, Bhatti understood that his mind, his intellect, will, and body were stewards, instruments of God. As violence continued and escalated around him, so did the scope of the work Bhatti organized.
He founded the All Minorities Pakistan Alliance (AMPA), aligning minorities in Pakistan to build a better democratic and progressive Pakistan.
The novel illuminates this organization bringing this mission to life through relief efforts following the deadliest of earthquakes, its work in underserved schools, and its advocacy for the destitute. This included the famous case of Asia Bibi, a woman sentenced to death row on a blasphemy charge over a cup of water.
This is what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus: to show up, to plead, to act, even when the cost is everything. Bhatti is drawn in his last moments remembering the scene with Peter asking Jesus, “Lord if it's you, tell me to come to you on the water” (102).
Jesus asks us to trust him, to walk, to show up, whatever the cost. And so when Bhatti was assassinated, he understood the cost of his obedience to God, embodying the very pattern of Christ himself: a life poured out in love, met with violence, yet never defeated by it. His death was not the end of the story, but rather the answer to every question this novel dares to ask. To be made in the image of God, to be a child of the Father, to be the hands and feet of Jesus is no easy task, but is the only task worth doing.
Overall, the strength of this novel isn’t simply in answering these questions, but illuminating them in a way that really allows actions to speak louder than works, to let the story tell itself and bear witness on its own terms.
