The Author of Life

Today's Reading

Read Genesis 2:7: "Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."

Then read Acts 17:24-28, where Paul tells the Athenian philosophers: "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything... for 'In him we live and move and have our being.'"

Reflection

Before we can ask the hard questions about when life may be taken, we must first reckon with where life comes from. And on this point, Scripture is emphatic: life is not ours. It belongs to God.

Genesis 2:7 gives us one of the most intimate images in all of Scripture. God does not create humanity from a distance. He forms Adam from dust — hands in the dirt, like a potter shaping clay — and then breathes into his nostrils. The Hebrew word neshamah, the breath of life, is used almost exclusively of God and humans. It marks something unique about human existence: we are not merely animated matter. We are creatures who carry the breath of the Creator.

Paul makes the same argument to the sophisticated philosophers of Athens. Against both the Epicureans (who believed everything was random atoms) and the Stoics (who believed everything was impersonal fate), Paul insists that a personal God "gives to all mankind life and breath and everything." Every heartbeat is sustained by divine will. Every breath is a gift renewed moment by moment.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing in the shadow of a regime that had systematically devalued human life, saw the implications with terrible clarity: "The right to life is in essence not an individual right, but a right of God over human life. Since God has created human beings for life, the destruction of human life means nothing other than a violation of God." This is a staggering claim. It means that every debate about life and death is ultimately a debate about God's authority — not about our preferences, our convenience, or our political platforms.

Augustine captured the restlessness that haunts every attempt to live as though life were merely our own possession: "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee." If we are made by God and for God, then we belong to God. And what belongs to God cannot be treated as disposable.

This is the foundation everything else in this plan rests upon. Before we discuss abortion or euthanasia or capital punishment, we must settle this question: Is life a gift, or is it an accident? If it is a gift, then every conversation about ending life must answer to the Giver.

Going Deeper

Spend a few minutes in silence considering the breath in your own lungs. You did not choose to begin breathing. You cannot sustain it by sheer willpower. Every breath you take is evidence that God has not yet finished with you. How does this awareness — that your life is sustained by God's ongoing will — shape how you view the lives of others?