Is This for Real?

You are as created

July 16, 2008 on 7:47 pm | In History, Philosophy, Religion | Comments Off

I love the quote from C.S. Lewis that says, “You are a soul, you have a body.”  Interestingly enough the manufacture of the human being by our Divine Creator happened in the opposite order of this statement, yet this statement holds true.  We read the order of events in God’s Word.  The account is found in the Book of Genesis:

“The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”  Gen. 2:7 NIV

Physically speaking, our bodies are formed from the elements found in the material universe.  We also know this by our senses when we engage in scientific observation of the physical.  Mentally speaking, we are more than our bodies.  We know this scientifically when we engage in scientific observation of the psychological. We are more than biological machines.  We are spiritual beings that live in biological machines that together with the spiritual fully integrate and make up what we know as our ’selves’.  As we develop from infancy, we come to understand this.  We naturally and innately know that we are different from animals.  We know there is something unique about us, something higher, something cognitive, something sentient.  We have self-awareness and can ponder our existence with rational thought.  We can communicate our thoughts with complex and rational words.  Animals do none of this.

It seems that only when we try to subvert ourselves and tear down natural understanding and deconstruct what is true, that we start to think otherwise.  Movements that try to debase humans to the level of animals, or exalt animals to the level of humans with the goal of trying to confer civil rights for animals are erroneous, unnatural, and intellectually dishonest.   Any honest human being naturally knows human beings are different.  just consider that phrase “human being”.  We’ve known that we are not like the animals and have thought of ourselves as ‘beings’.  We do not think of animals this way.  When was that last time you heard of a ‘fish being’ or a ‘rodent being’?

This term ‘being’ carries a meaning of uniqueness and distinction.  When we are philosophically honest, we know that our thoughts are more than material chemical reactions happening in our brain.  The very fact that we can attempt to be ‘philosophically honest’ shows that we are different.  We have a mind.

What is this mind?  Where did we get it?  How is it that a cognitive mind rests inside of us whereas what animals do is only material and merely instinctive?  Our minds came from our Creator.  The account in Genesis tells us that God took the inanimate biological machine formed from the dust of the ground and did something unique with it.  He breathed the breath of life into it, and made it a living being.  What did this do scientifically speaking? I will attempt to describe this in my own feeble way.

God is the source of all material, life, truth, existence.  His putting of this described ‘breathe’ is a way of saying a spiritual essence was placed in the body of humans.  The ancient languages often use derivative of words that mean air and wind to describe what is the spiritual.  This act of blending of spirit and body we know in philosophical terms to be what Descartes described as mind/body dualism.  We know that the mind effects the body and the body effects the mind.  This is God’s unique design of human beings.   No other biological being has this unique essence attached to it’s cell structure.  No other beings are made in His image.  Unlike animals that simply cease to function as a broken biological machine (die), when bodies break down completely (die), our consciousness is still real, still alive, and had an eternal destiny.

We see in God’s Word in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 that God has set eternity in our hearts, yet as the writer struggled on philosophically trying to grasp purpose and meaning in life, he questioned what he knew was true.  He saw the struggles that we face and wondered if we actually were in fact better off than the animals.  At the end of his theses, the writer King Solomon finally did figure out the absolute truth:

“Not only was the Teacher wise, but also he imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. 10 The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true. The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one Shepherd. 12 Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.  Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.  Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

There is nothing greater than to know God and do what He says to do.  And I want to tell you dear reader that you can know God.  God loves you and created you to know Him personally. He has a wonderful plan for your life.  God’s Love “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  God’s Plan “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3)

This is for real

references:

http://www.campuscrusadeforchrist.com/knowing_god/knowing1.htm

www.biblegateway.com NIV translation

http://www.needhim.org/g/pages.php3