Who made you?

by Jamie Pearce & Brad Frey

“God.” I can picture my 3 ^rd grade-self answering this as I tried to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “1. Q: Who made you? A: God.” The answer seems very simple, and it is true God did make us. But there is a space to think deeper on this question, “Who made you?” After all German existentialist Martin Heidegger said we are “thrown” into existence and the courageous person creates meaning only as we acknowledge we make ourselves. “Who made you?” your parents – their way of life. “Who made you?” Your city, town, or countryside. “Who made you?” the answers are endless and answered in different ways. These questions come up commonly in a college setting. College is unique in that people from all backgrounds, from all walks of life, move into one common place. This place holds so many people who must learn to do life together even if they have different assumptions about life. Sometimes we forget that other people were shaped by different circumstances, made in different places.

I stepped into college and I began to realize how much my home had shaped me. I am from the South, so I say soda - not pop. I am used to Chick-Fil-A’s on every corner, and warmer days. I was shaped by warm weather and had never experienced seasonal depression. I transitioned easily to the Pennsylvania culture, but when I returned to Georgia I realized how different I was. I returned home that first semester and one of the first things my friends said to me was “You’re a lot meaner, Jamie!” I didn’t know what to think. The North is colder, maybe in more ways than weather, and people are a lot more direct and to the point. I had picked up these habits while I had been in the North, even for such a short time. At home people “beat around the bush” a lot more, and friends were taken aback when I spoke bluntly.

“Who made you?” Society feeds us the answers it wants us to believe, most specifically that we make ourselves. Because we can’t trust anyone to help us, we must do it all on our own. How do we handle the constant bombardment of society telling us that we can only make ourselves? What an odd idea for people trying to think Biblically. We cannot make ourselves – those around us shape us, good or bad.

When I came to college I encountered many people who had a lot of more painful pasts than I and, sometimes, that took me aback. It made me consider Steve Garber’s question “Knowing what I now know about the world, can I still love it?” I didn’t always know what to do – because those who had made them had left battle wounds I had never seen before. But talking about who made us is so important. When we come to a place like Geneva we have to be willing to look at the people around us, focus on who made them, too.

“Who made us?” is a question that also demands that we think about place. In a mobile world we don’t think about place often. We are constantly thinking about the next thing, the next place – rather than thinking about where we are now. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove writes that we live in a society of “placelessness,” a society that focuses more on what will build us up rather than the place where we are. He says, “We long for home – for community, for roots, for a basic sense of belonging” the very things that can help answer “Who made you?”  

“Who made you?” The people, the city, the town, the hurt, the pain, the love, the brokenness. We all come to this place carrying these things. You can talk to someone on the first day of classes and not know who made them. Sure, you can ask, “Where are you from?” and maybe you can pick up a few cultural differences. Maybe they say “Y’all” or maybe they have an accent, but those outside characteristics only tell you so much. There is so much more to uncover than just different looks or different accents or different geographical areas. It is important to invest in others and find out who really made them—and not just to discover, but to celebrate! Let’s remember that while some of our pasts could be broken or the places we come from may be broken, they made us who we are today. “Who made you?” “God.” “What else did God make?” “God made all things.” This is something to celebrate: He made us. He made the things that shape us. Let’s rejoice in the sovereignty of the One who made us all.