Individuality (A Quote for Kait)

My wife and I often have conversations about individuality and why is so undervalued by the Church. Why is it that the people claim to believe in the Creator are so loathe to acknowledge the diversity of His creation?* Here’s a great quote I just read in CS Lewis’ The Problem of Pain:

If He had no use for all these differences, I do no see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. You soul has a curious shape because it is…a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.

God is infinite; we are finite. We are tiny little expressions of His glory, such that sum total of human individuality barely scrapes the surface of the depth of the character and wonder and glory of God Almighty. We are each one of us expressions of Him, and it is His desire to perfect that expression. Not to remove our individuality but to purify it and present it to the universe as one of His prized creations.

And so, to my wife and to any others who wonder why God made you as He did, let me say this: You are exactly who God wanted you to be. You may not be exactly “how” He wanted you to be, but that’s what the Holy Spirit has been sent to fix.

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.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18

*I’m not talking about using individuality as an excuse for blatant sin or moral laxity.