The Power of Genetics

Earlier this week, I was browsing Facebook and looking at post after post of pictures from Father’s Day weekend. Many images of dads and their children made me smile; some even brought tears to my eyes, especially the one I posted of three generations of the Lucius guys.

We no longer have any little grandchildren, and that realization alone made me teary-eyed. (In fact, our youngest grandchild will be an 8^th grader this year.) So, it was a bit of a shock for me to see how tall the pictured grandson was, in comparison to his father and grandfather. It was also shocking to see just how much these three Lucius men favored each other. Their similarities are usually subtle, and at times, almost non-existent.

In this photo, though, I noticed that all three of them had the same facial structure, a resolute, square-shaped jaw. Despite this similarity, they each had a very different smile, and I stopped for a long moment to enjoy each unique smile on the faces of these three guys I love so dearly.

But that moment inevitably led to thoughts of a face that was absent from our holiday photo. A face that also had a similar facial structure to that of my husband and these other two Lucius men.

As many readers know, our youngest son, Chris, died three years ago, and his absence makes Father’s Day a little harder to navigate for my husband and the rest of our family. And this year’s official family picture was missing Chris’ deeply dimpled, smiling face.

For just a moment, the absence of that dimpled smile in my holiday picture took my breath away. Ironically, Chris’s face also took my breath away on the day he was born.

When our newborn son cried for the first time, his entire face filled with those unexpected dimples. I remember thinking, “Where did they come from?”

Forty years later, we are still clueless. No one on either side of our family had similar dimples. Even our oldest family members (from three generations back) could not recall one single family member with dimples that pronounced. Chris’ dimples were and still are a genetic mystery.

So, as I sat there thinking about all my Lucius men, I began to seriously ponder other aspects of their mysterious, miraculous genetic makeup. Their physical differences and similarities, as well as the God-designed generational genetics of these three faces, were mind-boggling to me.

Of course, my pondering led me to research the genetics behind those faces. And since I was certain that God had a big lesson in store for me, I started with the basics.

According to the genealogists at LegacyTree.com, it all comes back to DNA:

Every person inherits basically half of their DNA from their parents, about one quarter from their grandparents, one eighth from their great-grandparents, and so forth. However, this division becomes less even with every subsequent generation. After five or six generations, there may be ancestors from whom a person inherits no DNA at all.

From this same article on genealogy versus genetics, I also learned that even after two generations, the inherited DNA really begins to vary. Biological cousins, and even siblings, can inherit different percentages of DNA from shared grandparents.

This knowledge only muddied the waters of my lesson on genetics, because I have 34 cousins alone on just my paternal side of the family. That number does not even touch my maternal cousins – or both sets of my husband’s cousins.

In essence, the genetic possibilities were almost endless for our two sons. So, we may never know where Chris got those dimples. And those dimples may or may not show up again in the faces of my great-grandkids – or in the faces of the descendants of our countless cousins. That inheritance is not up to me. God alone knows if those dimples appear again in our family. He alone will determine if some other little boy or girl will ever resemble Chris Lucius.

But here is what I can determine: How much I resemble my Father.

Now, we were all made in the image of God, according to Genesis 1: 27. That is an indisputable fact of man’s creation. Sadly, our sinful nature is also an indisputable fact.

The Old Testament explained it this way in Ecclesiastes 7:20, “Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins.”

That fact is reiterated in the New Testament via Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

So, yes, we were made in God’s image, but sin marred that likeness instantly, according to Psalm 51:5. Therefore, the only way we can ever be anything like our Father is through the salvation offered through His Son, Jesus.

That’s exactly why Jesus came to earth – to conquer sin once and for all. And He did it even when we were absolutely marred and unrecognizable as children of the Father: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

So, it’s not a matter of genealogy or genetics, but it is a matter of blood – the blood of Jesus Christ, the perfect, sinless sacrificial Lamb, the One who died in our stead. Yet, accepting that salvation from Jesus is only the beginning of the process. To become a person who truly resembles the Father, we must become more like His Son.

The late Dr. Adrian Rogers explained the “imaging” process in a short devotional: How to Be Like Jesus.

According to Rogers, we can never become more like Jesus by eliminating the bad things in our lives. Nor can we simply imitate our Savior, because this process is never going to come to fruition through sheer determination.

Instead of elimination, imitation, and determination, Rogers outlines another three-step plan to becoming more like Jesus. That plan involves first receiving the image of Christ through personal salvation and then retaining that image by fixing our eyes on Jesus. Finally, by constantly beholding Jesus, we become living mirrors, continually reflecting the image of Christ.

As Rogers concluded, “But a mirror doesn’t have to work to reflect. Many times, you’ll not even be aware that you’re reflecting Jesus because it just becomes second nature.”

Just like that, my lesson on family genetics ended with a simple statement on nature – exchanging ours for His. And in honor of this exchange, I pray that all of us will behold the beauty of Jesus Christ with such awe and intent that we become mirrored images of Him.