Schaeffer on Imago Dei

Imago dei has been rather life changing for me especially in terms of my identity. In his sermon No Little People, I appreciated Francis Schaeffer's brief discourse on this doctrine's importance in how we relate to humanity as a whole and to fellow believers. I am also reading Ordinary by Michael Horton with my small group. One of the problems Ordinary addresses is celebrity Christianity, so I found it interesting how Schaeffer relates a right understanding of imago dei to leadership and warns what may happen when we forget this common ground:

Our attitude toward all men should be that of equality because we are common creatures. We are of one blood and kind. As I look across all the world, I must see every man as a fellow creature and I must be careful to have a sense of our equality on the basis of this common status. We must be careful in our thinking not to try to stand in the place of God to other men. We are fellow creatures. And when I step from the creature-to-creature relationship into the brothers-and-sisters-in-Christ relationship within the church, how much more important to be brother or sister to all who have the same Father. Orthodoxy, to be a Bible-believing Christian, always has two faces. It has a creedal face and a practicing face, and Christ emphasizes that that is to be the case here. Dead orthodoxy is always a contradiction in terms and clearly that is so here: to be a Bible-believing Christian demands humility regarding others in the body of Christ...

...if we deliberately and egotistically lay hold on leadership, wanting the drums to beat and the trumpets to blow, then we are not qualified for Christian leadership. Why? Because we have forgotten that we are brothers and sisters in Christ with other Christians. I have said on occasion that there is only one good kind of fighter for Jesus Christ - the man who does not like to fight. The belligerent man is never the one to be belligerent for Jesus. And it is exactly the same with leadership. The Christian leader should be a quiet man of God who is extruded by God's grace into some place of leadership....

The people who receive praise from the Lord Jesus will not in every case be the people who held leadership in this life. There will be many persons who were sticks of wood that stayed close to God and were quiet before him, and were used in power by him in a place which looks small to men. 

No Little People, Francis A. Schaeffer, InterVarsity Press, 1974, pp. 20, 24-25. PDF available here.