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God created, formed, fashioned each person

By Sean Martin
John Paul II Generation

I often tell my wife that I think our kids personalities reflect how they came into this world. (My theory is still being tested!) Each one of our children’s labors and deliveries has been fairly different. I agreed to cut all the kids cords after delivery (if all went right and I was able.) After our first son’s long labor and delivery, I nearly missed this opportunity. The doctor had laid him on my wife’s chest; he screamed and cried and never seemed to take a breath. My reaction time to cutting the cord was delayed because I just stared at him pondering for some moments (I guess it was a bit too long) the reality that this was our son. After our second child was delivered, she casually looked around with not a peep out of her mouth. The silence caused my wife to think that something was wrong with her. Our third child caught us a bit off guard and came out very rushed (we nearly delivered him on our neighbor’s driveway.) Our fourth child nearly died from having her umbilical cord wrapped up in a knot nearly the size of her head (we often wonder how this reveals her personality… she is daddy’s pretty princess!)

What makes human persons different from each other?
I think we have a crisis in our culture today. For some reason, we do not know who we are anymore as human persons. Some people think we are simply an animal with no immortal soul. Others are even “confused” about what gender they are. For some reason we have forgotten who we are and what God wants us to be. There are people in our society today describing themselves as being transgender, agender or metrosexual. In order to know who we are and what God has intended us to be, it is important for us to take a look at the beginning of humanity.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). We are human persons comprised of a body and soul composite. We are neither plants nor mere animals. In the beginning, God created us in his own image and likeness, and He designed us to be either male or female.

“Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). It is God who gives us life. He breathed life into us. “The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman” (Genesis 2:22-23). God created, formed and fashioned us. Each and every human person is an unrepeatable unique being, like no other. No one has ever existed exactly like us and no one will ever come after us that is exactly like us. Each one of us has inherent dignity and worth. No person has the right to violate or take away our dignity.

It is God who created us different. It is He who gives us our personalities and our male and female genders. It is in the Lord that we find our worth! We ought to be thankful for how special and sacred we are, instead of running and hiding from the person God created us to be!