The DNA of God

I received a sideways compliment recently. Hearing of my involvement with missions to Venezuela, I was asked by Michael Horner while we were in London if I had some Hispanic heritage. I don't as such and said as much. I'm not very dark compared to many, but I'm dark enough to have made the Hispanics at work wonder if I was Hispanic. So, I understand where the question came from. I went on to explain my mutt heritage: English, German, Irish and other north European, Cherokee, and something unknown that seems to be Mediterranean of some sort. Michael mused that he noticed that people of mixed heritage do tend to be physically strong and attractive people.

Where does one go with a comment like that? I duly appreciated it, although I've never seen myself as particularly attractive. So I opened up a discourse on genetic speciation and the reintroduction of lost genetic potential in isolated populations. (It's okay - he understands these things. One of the things I enjoyed in London was the intellectual capital represented in our group.)

At precisely the same time as this was taking place in London my wife, Lois, and our kids were spending time in the Sierra de Perijá with the Yukpa Indians. I had wondered from an anthropological perspective of their level of homogeneity. After they got back top civilization, Lois posted some photos from their time there and I noticed striking morphological clues that this tribe had likely been genetically isolated for some time. While she respectfully didn't get any photos, she offered recently that there was an alarmingly high incidence of physical deformity in the tribe. That's an indicator that the population size has remained small enough to lose the genetic variety necessary to cover genetic defects. In other words, people can't find mates in their own ethnicity that aren't too closely related to them. That's the problem with Kinism. (By the way, it also evidences that speciation does not result in eventual mutation.)

Also in London with our group were several people from South Africa. Our purpose was to minister to an ethnic group who vacations in London in the summer. Remarkable about the presence of the South Africans is that there were white and black South Africans working side by side. I remember the years of Apartheid and how God changed all that seemingly overnight. There are still racial tensions in South Africa, but the testimony of our brothers and sisters we met in London is that God had changed their hearts. Now, with new hearts for the people of God here were two ethnicities formerly at great odds working side-by-side to reconcile yet a third ethnicity to the One who reconciles all things.

Genetic information is what causes all living things to reproduce after their own kind. Young are produced in the image of their parents. If this is observed then could it not also be observed that God creates his spiritual children after His spiritual likeness? This is DNA that comes directly from God. It is inextricable from the existence of those who have His DNA. Just as physiological DNA determines our basic morphologies, spiritual DNA determines our basic spiritual nature. We don't need a good mix of genes to give us healthy spiritual DNA, however, because God gives His children spiritual DNA that is perfect and incorruptible. Inasmuch as we are His, we possess His beauty. It doesn't matter what your human ethnicity or physical DNA - if you are a child of God, you are beautiful.