We are Wonderfully Made

Many years ago, I used a little call-and-answer bedtime ritual with my youngest son. I would ask him, “Who made you?” And he would smile and answer me. “God made me.” And I would respond, “How did he make you?” And he would say, “He made me good.” And I would agree. “He sure did, honey. He made you fearfully and wonderfully. He made you so very good!”

One night after this exchange, I found myself overcome with emotion. In that dark hallway, as I closed the door to my son’s room, it occurred to me that I had believed, as the gospel truth, that I was not good. I went back over many interviews that I had given over the years and heard myself explain my teenage rebellion as evidence that I was a “bad kid” who had a special “gift for being bad.” It became glaringly evident that I believed this at my core: I was not good.

I asked my husband, “When will our son turn bad?” I explained what had just happened. My husband responded in a deadpan voice, “I think it’s around age seven or eight.” And we both laughed. But I didn’t keep laughing. I got curious.

Why are we so attached to the idea that we aren’t good? The doctrine of original sin didn’t come to be at the heart of Western Christianity until the year 1054, but ever since then, this internal dread that we are not good plagues us. But if the dominant way we view people (including ourselves) is through a lens of depravity, how might that affect the way we treat each other? I believe this is the crux of the seemingly endless cynical thinking that fuels our behaviors. If we can’t view ourselves through a lens of worthiness, how can we view anyone else that way?

There is only one way that our theological self-loathing can end—and it’s in the person of Jesus.

Respond

How do you feel you are “not good,” or unworthy of being called “wonderfully made”? Write these things down and take them to God in prayer. Invite him to tell you the truth about who he made you to be.