"God made man in his own image, and man returned the favour"
About this Quote
Wedekind’s line snaps like a trap: it pretends to bow to scripture, then quietly flips the authority structure. The first half borrows Genesis, the kind of phrase that arrives pre-packaged with reverence. The second half - “and man returned the favour” - turns piety into a social mirror trick. If God makes us, we make God back, not as a spiritual mystery but as a human projection dressed up as revelation. It’s a joke with teeth, the kind that lands hardest in cultures where religion is supposed to be beyond critique.
The intent isn’t merely atheistic swagger; it’s an attack on the self-flattering machinery of belief. Wedekind implies that the divine often functions as a personalized endorsement: our morals, our hierarchies, our prejudices, even our appetites gain cosmic legitimacy when we stamp them onto God. The phrase “returned the favour” is doing the real work: it frames theology as reciprocity, almost nepotism. You make me in your image; I make you in mine. Fair trade, except one side controls the narrative.
Context matters. Wedekind wrote in the anxious, modernizing turn of the century in Germany, when old certainties were colliding with urbanization, bourgeois respectability, and a growing appetite for provocation in art. His plays (notably Spring Awakening and Lulu) specialize in exposing hypocrisy around sex, authority, and “morality.” This aphorism belongs to that same project: stripping the sacred of its untouchability to reveal the human desires - for control, comfort, and permission - hiding underneath.
The intent isn’t merely atheistic swagger; it’s an attack on the self-flattering machinery of belief. Wedekind implies that the divine often functions as a personalized endorsement: our morals, our hierarchies, our prejudices, even our appetites gain cosmic legitimacy when we stamp them onto God. The phrase “returned the favour” is doing the real work: it frames theology as reciprocity, almost nepotism. You make me in your image; I make you in mine. Fair trade, except one side controls the narrative.
Context matters. Wedekind wrote in the anxious, modernizing turn of the century in Germany, when old certainties were colliding with urbanization, bourgeois respectability, and a growing appetite for provocation in art. His plays (notably Spring Awakening and Lulu) specialize in exposing hypocrisy around sex, authority, and “morality.” This aphorism belongs to that same project: stripping the sacred of its untouchability to reveal the human desires - for control, comfort, and permission - hiding underneath.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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