Pope Paul VI addresses this and other questions:[i]
Can we truly know God? (See Wis 9:13, 16: Rom 11:33-34)
Wis. 9:13 — “For what man can learn the counsel of God? Or who can discern what the Lord wills?” — “We can hardly guess at what is on earth, and what is at hand we find with labor; but who has traced out what is in the heavens?”
Rom. 11:33-34 — “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”
The Bible states, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Gen 1:26). What is it about us that is made in the image and likeness of God?
Nothing about God is small. God is infinite. His love is infinite. It cannot be measured.
His love could not be contained so He decided to create Man in his image and likeness.
What is it in us that is the image and likeness of God?
We call it the soul.
When God created your soul, he loaned you a little piece of himself and he wants it back, pure and unblemished.
The soul is like God because it is a spirit that will never die and has understanding and free will.
Do you fashion God after your own image?
“God made us in His image and we have been making Him in ours ever since.”
Can a person be moral without believing in God? Is not virtue its own reward? (See Rom. 2:15)
Rom. 2:15 — “They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them…”
This verse says something which is extremely important. Earlier St. Paul speaks of the existence of a law, of divine origin; here he adds that it is written on men’s hearts. The voice of this law, “ever calling him to love and to do good and to avoid evil, tells him inwardly at the right moment: do this, shun that” (Gs 16). Conscience and law reinforce each other.
Because of the divine source of this law, a law which conscience applies in each particular situation, it has been called “the voice of God”; it is at the secret intimate core of a person, where he is alone with himself and God. All through life this voice will be with him; and it will be present when he appears before God’s judgment seat (Gs 16).
As well as listening to the interior voice of divine law, moral conscience also needs to be instructed by someone endowed with authority, to enable it to determine how the law must be applied in each case. St. Paul provided this teaching for the first Christians in Rome (Rom 14:17) and Corinth (1 Cor 8) on moral questions about the use of meat of sacrificed animals. We too need someone to give us guidelines, for “in order to walk in the right direction when it is dark, that is, when the Christian is entering the mystery of the Christian life, he cannot rely on his eyes, he needs a lamp, a light. And this light of Christ does not distort, does not inhibit or contradict our conscience; on the contrary, it illuminates it and enables it to follow Christ along the straight road of our pilgrimage towards that vision which is eternal.”
[i] Paul VI, Address, 12 February 1969.