For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. - Psalms 139:13-14
When I hear or read these verses I am reminded that we are God’s creations. This brings about both feelings of love but also conviction. You were MADE by God. You are HIS creation. That body you walk around in and speak with isn’t even your body; it belongs to God, he’s just lending it to you.
Now think about it: If someone made, for example, a custom car for themselves with a custom body and engine with really nice rims and everything and a fresh paint job and they let you borrow that car, how would you treat it? Would you go mudding in it or street racing or do donuts in corn fields or enter a destruction derby with it? You’d be a lot more careful than that, right? You’d take the utmost care not to mess it up. So why aren’t we like that with our bodies? Like I said, our bodies don’t belong to us they belong to God. So why don’t we respect ourselves like we would respect someone else’s belongings? What could possibly cause us to be so reckless with someone else’s creation and belonging? Especially when that someone is God?
Well, think about a white board. When a white board is new or clean it’s pure white, correct? I’m about to drop some science on you guys. Did you know that the color white is actually not the absence of color, but actually the reflection of many colors? As everyone’s favorite research tool, Wikipedia, puts it, “White is the color the human visual system senses when the incoming light to the eye stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the eye in nearly equal amounts.” So basically, the white board isn’t actually pure and colorless, rather it’s a compilation of many colors that exist in perfect balance creating the reflection of pure white. If the balance was even slightly off you would see not a whiteboard, but a green board, red board, or blue board. Now imagine that whiteboard represents us as God created us. When God created us he didn’t do it half-heartedly, “A little good looks here, a little intelligence there, a little athleticism- oh crap! Too much! Ehh we’ll just balance it with some insecurities. Wooaahhh that was WAY too much. Oh well. Good luck kid. On to the next one.”
No.
God is a perfectionist. He takes his time making sure all of his creations are perfectly balanced. We’re pure white. And then sin takes a hold of us and leaves this big black mark on us like someone took an Expo marker and dragged it all over the whiteboard. And then the people around us see that big black mark and tell us “You’re terrible. You’re ugly. You’re gross. You’re wrong.” And then we look at ourselves and think, “Why don’t they think I’m good enough? How can I be perfect in their eyes?” And so we start to distort God’s creation attempting to balance our imperfections. We try to lose weight, we spend all our money on our clothes and hair, we try to work out as much as possible so we can have impressive bodies, we speak in phrases and sounds instead of our own words, we smoke this and drink that, f* this and f* that. We even change our personality. And please don’t think I’m writing this thinking I’m Miss. Perfect while I point out things all of you do, because believe me I am just as guilty as each of you.
Middle school was an extremely difficult time for me. For those of you who don’t know or may have forgotten, I was home schooled up until the middle of my sixth grade year. I was pretty sheltered too. I honestly didn’t know anything about public school. All I knew was what I had learned from books and television and those things taught me that public school was a place that no one wanted to go to especially if they’re different.
If you’re different, you get bullied until you hate your life and yourself and everyone around you and could even possibly die because of it. That’s what I genuinely believed. And there I was, an extremely small and extremely white, book loving, home schooled pastor's daughter. I’m about as different as it gets where I come from. So going into public school I was on high alert. I was terrified that I would be bullied and wind up dead. I used most of my energy observing people trying to figure out how I should act in order to avoid getting bullied.
Pretty soon I caught on that people wouldn’t make fun of me because I was so “cute” and “quiet”. In fact, they would protect me and even carry my lunch tray for me because I was clearly far too small and delicate to do such a “difficult” task. So for about a year I kept up this act of being this cute and shy person just so that people wouldn’t dislike me. As time went on though, I got tired of being treated like a little girl. I hated people talking to me like I was a child and asking if they could pick me up and treating me as though I couldn’t do anything by myself or like I was inferior to them. So I slowly stopped pretending to be this person that wasn’t who God created me to be.
But as my fear of being bullied started fading away and I started being more like myself a new fear crept into my heart. That was the fear of never being loved. I thought that since people clearly viewed me as a child or a little girl there was no way a guy would ever be attracted to me or love me. And if they were they were probably like a pedophile or other form of creep. I wouldn’t say it was a lack of confidence because I knew I was cute and I was never really ugly or anything, I just didn’t believe that men would be capable of loving me, and as a 7th, 8th, and 9th grader this was a terrifying thought. Even though I wasn’t distorting God’s creation in any way, I was still selling it short. I was telling God, “You know I really like your creation but um, I don’t think many other people would. It’s really not that great.” I didn’t appreciate his creation as much as I should have. And when you don’t appreciate yourself you tend look for other people who appreciate you which doesn’t end well.
The funny thing is that while I was telling God, “Why didn’t you make me a little taller or a little more womanly? Why didn’t you make me so that everyone would like me? I’m short, I look like a little girl, I’m bad at math, I’m not the best athlete, I have way too much pride, I’m stubborn, I can’t sing solos, my eyelids are uneven, I suck at spelling, I have a big forehead, little stubby thumbs, I care too much about how people view me, I procrastinate, I lack motivation, I have a terrible sense of direction, I’m a hopelessly optimistic romantic, my legs and torso are disproportionate, I trust too little or too much, I’m naive and no one could possibly love me. Nothing about me is perfect.” While I spent years growing and cultivating that list of imperfections in my heart, while I was searching for someone to make me feel worth, while I was tearing God’s creation to pieces; God himself was telling me, “You are full of characteristics and nuances that make you exactly who I intended you to be and I have loved you since before the world even began. That makes you absolutely, 100%, perfect.”
When we give ourselves back to God after we’ve allowed ourselves and the world to just tear us down and cover us in black marks, If we just apologize saying, “I’m sorry God. I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of your creation. I’m sorry I allowed it to get so messed up and just covered in sin.” God takes us in his arms, looks us the eyes and says, “It’s okay. No hard feelings. Look! You’re good as new.” And he takes away all those black marks that sin left on us.
He takes his big eraser, wipes that board clean, and we are revealed to be just as he created us; pure white.
