Copyright 2016 by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
They say that no two snowflakes have ever been alike. The same may be said of human beings. However our uniqueness is not where the comparison ends. Snowflakes also have two other qualities that we share; neither being as attractive to the 21st<\/sup> century American mind as the first one.<\/p>\n Snowflakes are obviously quite numerous and they are also quite short-lived. While people are perhaps not as numerous on the planet we still number in the billions. While people live far longer than snowflakes what is 80 some odd years in the face of thousands of years or, for that matter, in the face of eternity?<\/p>\n We are a society that has put a huge premium on human individuality during this period in our history. We are constantly told by the cultural metanarrative of the Post-Modern West that we are unique and therefore intrinsically of incredibly value. The radical individualism of our time is intimately connected to our race\u2019s universal bent towards pride and self-centeredness. To live for God and for others, in that order, before ourselves is increasingly seen as heresy in the secular world today. It sometimes seems like the only remaining virtue that the majority of people can agree on is a lifetime search for self-fulfillment on their own terms. It is assumed by many today that this brand of self-fulfillment is an absolute human need. One of the things that this is driven by, at least partially, is the supposed necessity to prove how unique and original we are versus everyone else.<\/p>\n While it is a fact that our Creator created us all with a certain degree of uniqueness like the snowflake he also made us very much alike<\/em> in other ways and in those common aspects of our humanity He desired that we would identify with and support each other. Making our vaunted individuality so primary to what we consider to be \u201cthe pursuit of happiness\u201d has cost us something far more truly primary: our ability to put ourselves in a secondary position to\u00a0the deeper need for authentic community and healthy interdependence. Both of these needs seem to be increasingly ignored by many Americans. This is dangerous because a nation of iconoclasts eventually ceases to be a nation at all.<\/p>\n More importantly it also creates a breeding ground for the kind of pernicious pride that keeps us from the deepest need of all, to love with all our heart, soul, mind and strength the One who created us. Two things can help us to move away from our obsession with self-centered individualism and towards love of God and love of neighbor. They, too, are found in the snowflake comparison. These two things are as follows: we are each just one of billions of our kind and we are all only on this earth for a short time.<\/p>\n When we think of ourselves as being just one among billions of human beings it might help us to put our existence in its proper perspective. We may be unique but we are also, in a sense, quite common in this world. We may be unique but we are also surrounded by multitudes of our kind, each of whom has not only their own uniqueness but also their own commonality with the rest of the human race. We also equally share the same dependence on God and interdependence with each other, whether we know it yet or not.<\/p>\n As for the brevity of our lives most people in this time and place in history do their level best not to think about this reality at all. In our feverish quest for self-fulfillment as unique individuals we tend to forget that all of what we attempt to do, at least in and of ourselves, for others to recognize will begin to vanish in their memory upon our deaths. More importantly what we truly have \u201cmade of ourselves\u201d here will be primary to how we will be evaluated hereafter by a God who values what we have done with His Son infinitely (and eternally) more than how we have strived to be different from other human beings just for the sake of the difference.<\/p>\n When a snowflake melts its moment of earthly uniqueness is lost forever and it ceases to exist. This is where the analogy breaks down for we will exist forever somewhere. Where that will be is not determined by our individuality but by whether we have made of it an idol, something that keeps us from putting God first. In the end what does it profit us to be unique but lost?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright 2016 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved They say that no two snowflakes have ever been alike. The same may be said of human beings. However our uniqueness is not where the comparison ends. Snowflakes also have two other qualities that we share; neither being as attractive to the 21st century American mind as… <\/p>\n