FALSE NARRATIVE: YOU ARE AN ACCIDENT

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy describes a view (not his own view, because Tolstoy was a Christian) of the human person, based on a theory of reality he saw emerging in his day. It is a narrative that maintains that everything is secular (meaning there is no God and no spiritual dimension to life or to humans). In his book A Confession, Tolstoy named this view of the human being:

Tolstoy was describing the emerging intellectual view in his day, a view that is widely accepted today in the modern world.

This narrative was articulated by the atheist author Richard Dawkins, who wrote, “The universe, at the bottom, has no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is.” Science writer and atheist Marshall Brain echoes this narrative in the area of our souls: “Your ‘soul’ is make-believe just like Santa. When the chemical reactions cease, you die. That’s the end of it.”

According to this narrative, the deep longing to be wanted, the yearning to be connected to something bigger, the need to believe you were intentionally designed and desired, is simply make-believe. Because, this view holds, you are a mere accident. All of us are little lumps of matter that do not matter. We “ferment” for a time, then “disintegrate.” Tolstoy wrote those prophetic words in 1880. Dallas Willard, commenting on this view, wrote in 1997, “There has been no advance beyond this position since Tolstoy’s day.”

The accepted view of the human person in academia today, in the universities, is that we are accidental beings who only exist because a female egg and a male sperm began the “fermenting” that became you and became me. This narrative arose because the spiritual realm, God, and the human soul are not detectable by scientific inquiry. If it cannot be measured and quantified, the secular narrative maintains, then it is not real. God, the soul, prayer, and the afterlife are human constructs, fantasies and wishes not based on reality. Reality, this narrative holds, is secular. And somehow this narrative became accepted as true. Religion is tolerated as an opiate to the people, as a way to help people cope. God and the church and its teachings are matters of faith, not knowledge.

And yet, as Tennyson wrote, “Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.” We may not be sure why we exist, but we do know we are not keen on dying or comfortable with the belief that our loved ones who have died were just chemical reactions who ceased reacting, fermentation that just stopped fermenting. We look at the created world and feel that there must be a Creator. We see order and elegance in the world, we feel a longing for beauty and goodness and truth and want it for ourselves and for others, and we are not satisfied with the idea that our existence is all “blind” and “pitiless.”

Something rings untrue with this narrative. Surely we are more than “a collection of atoms destined to disperse.” Something about this creates a sense of dissonance. The longing to believe that we and all of those we love are not mere accidents that live for a time and then cease to be is something that simply will not go away. Perhaps the narrative that we are divinely designed, intently pursued, and lavishly loved precious beings who are, in fact, intended will not go away because it is true.

TRUE NARRATIVE: YOU ARE WANTED BY GOD

The Bible tells us another narrative: the good and beautiful God intentionally created the good and beautiful you. You are of divine origin, you were planned, you are wanted, and you are perfectly, intricately designed by God and loved into existence. God created you in order to be with you because God loves you. God designed you with marvelous capacities to think and feel and create, to love and be loved, and an unquenchable longing for the transcendent, for beauty, goodness, and truth. You were created to connect with God and to glorify God with your one, precious life. God designed you to live a life of joy and to enjoy life with God forever.

I am not big on surprise parties, but one time my wife put together a birthday party for me, and I was not aware of it. Several old friends gathered together, without my knowing, at a restaurant. When I came into the room and saw everyone excited to see me, I felt a warmth in my soul and body I had seldom experienced. Those smiling faces and loving eyes looking at me touched me in a very deep place. I think this is because we all want to be wanted. This is not an example of selfishness or narcissism. We have a deep need to know that we are desired and valued by others, even if only a few others—our souls hunger for this. In this life, in this broken world full of hurt people, it may be difficult to find. The good news is that the One who created us wants and desires us more than we can ever know.

We are not accidents or little lumps of something. We are all original works of art. Our value is determined by the One who made us and by the inherent qualities that we possess. While all metaphors break down, I find the metaphor of the seed to be a great illustration of our true identity. Seeds contain life and form that remain invisible to us. They are an actuality that contains a possibility. They contain a blueprint for something far greater than what we can see merely by looking at the seed. Foxgloves are one of my favorite flowers, but if you only look at its seed you can never imagine what it becomes. It looks like a tiny speck of dirt, but within that seed is a glorious purple flower that makes my heart glad.

Seeds contain a form. The great spiritual scholar and writer Adrian van Kaam uses a term for God that I have grown to love: the Divine Forming Mystery. I love this description of God because God is clearly divine and clearly mysterious and clearly loves to form. Look at the universe; it is full of matter. And every single inch of matter has been formed, from the stars we see at night to the large star we see in the day, which we call the sun. There is intention and structure and purpose to every single form. Genesis 1 describes God as One who forms: earth and sky and water, birds and beasts, fauna and flora, planets and stars, and finally . . . humans. God created—God formed—and said that all of that was good. And when he formed the humans, he called it all very good (Genesis 1:31).

Fr. Adrian coined another term I love, a term he used to describe all human persons. He said that God, the Divine Forming Mystery, created “divinely formed mysteries,” which is us. We are not accidental—we were created with intent. We are not lumps of something but intricately formed, highly complex beings. The Bible teaches us that as human persons, you and I have been preformed. Long before we were born, we existed in the mind of God. God, therefore, foreknew us.

In Jeremiah, God says to us: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, / and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1:5). The apostle Paul echoes that same sentiment: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family” (Romans 8:29, italics added). God foreknew you, and you have been predestined—determined in advance by divine decree—to emerge and to be made in the image of Christ. Like the seed that contains a form, you came into this world with many forms (soul, body, spirit) and one other uniquely human form: the Christ-form. Your destiny is to be con-formed, and trans-formed, into the image of Christ. Your essence preceded your existence, and your essence and existence are fascinating.

YOU ARE GOD’S POEM

God made you. God deliberately made you: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). There was no hesitation—there was a complete declaration. God said, “Let us make ________ (fill in your name).” You were intended. You are far from an accident. Psalm 139:13-16 offers this narrative for how you came to be:

God formed you. God knit you together. God saw your frame long before any sonogram technician did. God’s eyes beheld you, and looked at you with eyes of love.

And God is a great artist. From the tiny atom to the massive Milky Way galaxy, God has yet to create anything less than a masterpiece. Paul told the Ephesian Christians, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10 NASB). The word “workmanship” is poiema in Greek, and it is where we get the term poem. You are God’s poem. God said, “Let there be you,” and you came to be, and it was good—a very beautiful poem. A poet forms words into a poem. I love this metaphor because words by themselves have a simple meaning, but when you put words together (as I am doing right now) they interplay with one another to create something greater than the sum of the words.

A good poem creates an image no one has ever imagined before. A good poem creates a resonance and a spark in the reader, brings delight, creates a depth of feeling, and can make you laugh or cry or feel awe. A good poem creates joyful shivers, and is full of mystery and magic. And that is what you are, especially in the mind of God. This is what God feels when God sees you. And is what others who know you can feel, in some measure, depending on if they have eyes to see and ears to hear.

You were called by name and created for God’s glory (Isaiah 43:7). God has a name for you that no one else knows, not even you, not yet. One day God will give you a white stone “with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Revelation 2:17 ESV). Jesus made you, and Jesus is holding you together, right now, even as you read: “in him all things in heaven and on earth were created . . . and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17). God said to Isaiah as he says to each of us, “I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16).

You are not an accidental little lump of something. You are not unwanted or unplanned. You are a divinely designed, unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe, as Dallas Willard often said. You were known and wanted from the foundation of the world, and you have been built to last. You are designed to make your own poems, your own creations. Made in the Creator’s image, you are called to create, and your creating will never cease. While the body you inhabit now will expire and start decomposing, you will not. You will be composing and recomposing, ruling and reigning in the heavens, for all eternity (Revelation 22:5). People often create a three- or five-year plan. I tell people, “You should create a ten-thousand-year plan. Because, as we sing, ‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years . . .’”

THE SOUL FELT ITS WORTH

We all long to be desired. It is embedded in our souls. We will spend time and money trying to get other people to find us desirable. The pursuit of being desired by others is fraught with frustration and failure. People are fickle and their evaluations of us are unreliable, often saying more about them than about us. If we have enough “likes” or get enough praise, we can feel, for a moment, that we are wanted or desired. But that can all change in the next hour. Jesus understands this need we have, and Jesus is the true answer to our longing to be desired.

Jesus became a human just like us. His incarnation is the source of our validation. His save-and-rescue mission was an act of love driven by God’s desire for us. He is like the shepherd who searches high and low for the lost sheep. You and I are that sheep. He will go to any length to find us. God sent Jesus because we are the apple of God’s eye. You and I matter to God more than we can know. We are worth the incredible risk God took in becoming human, in submitting himself to suffering and death. Jesus endured the hurt and rejection and abandonment in order for us to know that we are the object of God’s love.

I love the Christmas hymn “O Holy Night” by Adolphe Adams. My favorite verse is, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.” The incarnation is proclaiming to you and me that we matter to God. We bear God’s image. The fact Jesus became human affirms that all human lives matter, that we are all of inestimable worth. Even in the midst of our failings and faults and peculiarities, the you that is you, uniquely you, matters to God. You and I will never discover our true worth in the eyes of others—even those who love us the most in this life. It is only in the eyes of Jesus that we can discover our true worth.

YOU ARE AN ORIGINAL

Some homeowners in Sweden discovered a painting in their attic. It had been left by the previous homeowner, who had assumed the painting was not of any value. But the new homeowners suspected it might be an original painting by Vincent van Gogh. They brought it to Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum in 1991, but the curators there deemed it inauthentic because it lacked Van Gogh’s trademark signature. However, a few years later, art historians used new technologies to reexamine the painting. They could tell by examination that it followed the exact brushstrokes used by Van Gogh in his other paintings. Adding to their certainty, an 1888 letter from Vincent to his brother Theo described the painting in detail, and even mentioned the exact day he painted it. It is now on display in the museum.

What makes the painting so valuable? It is an original Van Gogh. If they had not authenticated that it was painted by Van Gogh, it would not be so valuable. You and I are original works of God. We were divinely designed and created by a masterful Artist. We are all originals, and this is why we are so desirable. Each of us carries within us our own originality. As our lives unfold, we begin to see more and more how uniquely each of us has been designed. God has a divine reverence for our radical originality. This is why it is so painful to God when we devalue ourselves.

Jesus longs for us to repent of the sin of finding our worth as defined by the world. Jesus died and rose to establish our new life, our true life, that has been hidden in him from the beginning. To be hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3) is to be taken out of this world that has drugged our original selves with cheap satisfactions. To be hidden in Christ is to live in the penetrating light of his original life. Our originality, transformed in Christ, is the deepest originality we can live into. Discovering our original selves in the light of Jesus is far better than being lost in the masses trying to establish worth in what we have, how we look, or what we accomplish. Christ in me is the emergence of my original self that is from eternity in him.

I feel the pull to find my validation, my desirability, in the world I live in every day. But I have learned it can never be found there. And I have come to believe that attempting to establish my worth in this world is not only being unfaithful to God, but is actually being disloyal to myself.

Nonetheless, God is forever faithful to us, forever loyal to us. God is loyal to our spiritual identity that he created out of love. Before you existed, God loved you. It was the love of God that brought you into being. For our part, we can reject it and often do. In so doing, we are rejecting our unique selves that came into existence without our asking for it or deserving it.

What will you do with this gift, with the unique gift-that-you-are? God longs that your loyalty to your soul be as great as God’s loyalty is to you. God does not force you to do so—you can reject your true worth and neglect your sacred value. God does not coerce you into saying yes to your soul. God instead waits for your answer with infinite compassion and gentleness and patience. How you answer will determine whether you are living your one true life, or one constructed from the narratives of your world. If you fail to live into your true spiritual identity, into the gift-you-are, you will suffer a sickness of soul. Your soul cannot endure the constant striving to establish your worth in any way other than in God.

YOUR EXISTENCE IS YOUR VALIDATION

What is at stake in all of this? Does it matter if we know and believe that we are a divinely designed gift? What will be lost if we do not understand that we have a soul? What can be gained by an awareness that we have dazzling dimensions, preformed and predestined, that have and will shape the person we are and become? Why is it important to understand that we are not images of God, but are made in God’s image?

A great deal, it turns out. The single answer is this: if this is true, then we do not need to find our identity—our identity will find us. Our identity is given by God; we do not have to search for significance. Significance has found us, and living then becomes a process of discovering and living into that significance.

We do not need to seek validation. Validation, as they say, is for parking tickets. Your existence is your validation. You are, as Mark Nepo writes, “an invaluable, irreplaceable seed in the ground of existence, each of us a small miracle waiting to blossom in the large miracle.” But there are voices who will try to tell you that you are not enough—not smart enough, not beautiful enough, not talented enough. We live in a culture of rejection. The world around you will tell you that you cannot be loved, how you look is undesirable, and what you have is insufficient. Those voices, those assessments, are not telling the truth. The truth about you is this: you are a divinely designed gift.

To believe that we are divinely designed gifts should not lead us to narcissism but to doxology; it should not cause us to have pride, but should cause us to experience humility. We did nothing, after all, to merit or earn or deserve it. God chose to create each of us with aptitudes and talents, within a specific time and place and family, with incredible capacities to think and feel and imagine and dream. This should lead us to live with wonder, awe, and reverence for who we are, and for the One who made us. We are divinely designed sacred people who have been created by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As such, we should pray, as Macrina Weiderkehr prayed so eloquently, “O God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful.”

When Jesus said we should not worry about our lives, he asked us to make a comparison between ourselves and grass: “Consider the lilies of the field. . . . Even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:28-30). If God does such a fantastic job adorning the flowers and the grasses of the earth, how much more can he adorn us? In Dawn’s story at the beginning of this chapter, she was given an epiphany that a single blade of grass “was created by God and was meant by God to be in the world in this very clump of grass in this very yard.”

I think Jesus was saying the same thing. God cares about every single flower, about every blade of grass. And yet, the flowers and grasses are, as they say, “here today and gone tomorrow.” But you and I are unceasing spiritual beings, not accidental little lumps that are here today and gone tomorrow. How much more does God intentionally design and entirely sustain you and me. We are divinely designed, and deeply loved, unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe. As such, we are a part of a larger and more significant divine conspiracy. You are a divine work of art, a masterpiece just as you are. But God is not done with you. God, “by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

I have found that remembering my Source, remembering that God, the Divine Forming Mystery, formed me and formed you, fills me with joy and passion. Remembering that our formation began before we were born, remembering that God lovingly preformed all people, and remembering that God is the hidden ground of all of our lives is a “thought from above” (Colossians 3:1-2) worth setting our minds on.

To that end, I have also found it useful to pray a prayer written by Fr. Adrian van Kaam. I leave it with you as a kind of benediction: