Identity and Origin
Life, my friend, is a vast ocean on which we sail individually in our small crafts. The vastness and complexities of life tend to overwhelm us. To make sense of life—navigate its seas and oceans, trek its plains and flatlands, ascend its hills and mountains, or descend its slopes and valleys—there are certain fundamental issues we must resolve and questions we must answer.
Two such puzzling yet essential questions that have plagued humans are, “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” They concern identity and origin. There are two fundamentally differing approaches to them. Based on Darwin’s theory of natural selection and random arrival of the right circumstances, evolution teaches that life began by the chance interaction of the proper gases resulting in a unicellular organism that over millions of years produced all life, including humans. Scripture, on the other hand, proposes that God created the universe and life. In the former, life is without design or designer; for the latter, God masterminded it all.
Genesis 1:26 sheds light on these significant issues. Speaking to the issue of identity, the text illuminates origin. First, it identifies us as creatures and products of a divine intent. Second, it speaks to humans originating with God, not by chance. There was a designer. Genesis says this designer, a power greater and higher than ourselves, created us in God’s own image. This designer is God. I support the latter: The