Blaise Pascal, theologian from the 1600’s, captured in his writings the paradox of being an image-bearer and a sinner in a cursed world. Look at what he says.
What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstruous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earth-worm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe… Man’s greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness! (Quoted in from Pascal’s Penseesin God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom[Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009], 53).
In other words, both realities exist side by side. The height from which we have fallen dictates the damage of the fall; it also points to the glory of a previous held position along with the goodness of being a creature. In other words, sin tells its own tale of humanity’s glory.
Perversion has a way of pointing to what is pure—it points to what we were and what we can be again through Christ. Pascal points us to a paradox we must always recognize in humanity. We have tremendous dignity We stand in need of tremendous grace. Both are profoundly true.