…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 (Genesis 2:7).
What does it mean to be human, a member of the human
race?
What sets humanity apart from every other life-form? What
is distinctive about beings labelled homo sapiens?
Among the creatures of the earth, do the members of
mankind alone possess a soul?
From where does our difference,
value, worth, dignity and uniqueness originate?
Some have tried to argue that human life is no different – and certainly no more valuable – than any other life-form. In a decidedly reductionist proclamation, prominent atheist biologist Richard Dawkins asserts that human beings are just “throwaway survival machines” whose only purpose is the replication of genes.
But although those provocative positions are advanced in debates – to sell books, gain notoriety, or entice double-clicks – nobody lives that way. If they did, they would be labelled psychopathic.
The true test:
how they/we react to human death.
Why do we grieve
differently, more deeply, and with more community formality at the passing of a
member of the family or friend than for a beloved pet?
Deep down at the existential core, everyone perceives something deeply different about mankind. And yet many remain unprepared to affirm what is evident: the profound uniqueness – sanctity – of the life of a human person as contrasted with the life of any another earthly creature.
That’s why reports of human slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide evoke a higher, more intense order of visceral horror than the abuse or destruction of other life-forms.
So, what sets mankind apart? What is it – what does it mean – to be human?
What is it that gives you value and identity? What makes
you, you?
Taxonomists – those describing, classifying, and identifying various life-forms to determine what is distinct, different, and exceptional about each – have enumerated over 80 types of primates. However, man is unique in the order in that he is not covered in fur or feathers.
Alternately, are we to be measured by what we do, what we
achieve, the data on our CV?
In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin observed “man as the tool-making animal”.
Karl Marx is associated with the term homo-faber:
man the fabricator, the worker, the producer. So is human essence simply a
consequence of our productive activity? Are we inextricably linked in terms of
value and identity and otherness to our work, our labour?
Or are we simply interchangeable cogs in the greater
societal wheel??
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian theologian
executed by the Nazis in the final weeks before Germany surrendered in WW2 characterized
the mid-20th century context this way: “the individual is understood only in terms of usefulness to the whole, and the community only in terms of its use to an all-controlling institution, organization, or idea”.
Does each have value only as we contribute to community,
and community only as a tool of Big Brother?
By the end of the 20th century a profoundly different – some would brand as plainly muddled – attitude emerged vis-à-vis
the dignity of the individual person.
Some contemporary self-appointed pundits assert that the
value of any person is simply their commodity worth as measured by the zinc,
copper, iron, magnesium in their bodies.
Others measure by the number of Facebook followers they
have collected; or the magnitude of their social media footprint; or how many
Google entries surface when typing in that name?
However, what is obvious to everybody is that human
beings are qualitatively different in dignity. And that is evident when
reversals occur to those we love: human misfortune and calamity, crises in
health, and the walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
And yet agreement on what makes mankind unique, what it
means to be human, is elusive, increasingly provocative, and too often highly
controversial.
Underpinning the entire conversation for 35 centuries, the Bible’s assertion is vibrant and emphatic: God created all life and matter, and it was His sovereign decision to create mankind differently from every other creature.
What is man that you make so much of him, that you
give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him
every moment? (Job 7:17,18).
Evident in the creation account of the first chapter of Genesis are these 2 fact:
- as momentum builds through Creation week, the narrative reaches its zenith on day 6 when God
created man in His own image (v.27); and,
- five times God commented on His day’s production recognizing it was good; however,
after the creation of man on day 6, the text indicates God saw all that He
had made, and it was very good (v.31).
Genesis chapter 2 provides another unique piece of Day 6 production detail. After apparently speaking the creation into existence by the creative power of His oral command, God flipped the script for human beings to be much more “hands on”.
And verse 7 briefly summarizes the
entire creational yield of Day 6 as being accomplished in 2 phases:
1st: the
LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground
2nd: and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life…
Takeaway: a basic biblical worldview embraces as
foundational two assumptions:
1) God is all-knowing (omniscient) and all-powerful (omnipotent). He is eternal and is sovereign over all He has made – forever.
2) mankind
is created by Him, and therefore our ontology (being) and dignity or value is
assigned by Him. It is derived, contingent, and dependent on God alone.
This is the beginning of understanding of my own identity
and purpose, and of those with whom I love and interact.
And this is what it means to be human.
O LORD, what is man that you care for him, the son of
man that you think of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting
shadow (Psalm 144:3,4).
