"...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
-Romans 3:23
I realize that it has been almost a month since I have written on my blog, but I've been a bit busy with school. That being said, I started listening to the podcast titled "Let my People Think" by Ravi Zacharias. Ravi is an apologetic speaker and I really enjoy learning more about apologetics (in case you couldn't tell). If you don't know what apologetics is, it's defined as defending a position. It's almost exclusively used to refer to defending a religion through use of theology and reason. Today I want to talk about one important question that we should ask ourselves, "who are we?" This seems to be a very simple question, but not everyone would answer it in the same way.
To try to answer this question, I want to start off with the viewpoint of an atheist. Atheists believe that there is no God, and that everything can be explained by science in one way or another. Atheism has become much more popular than it used to be, due to a number of reasons I don't want to get into right now. If I were to ask an atheist "who are we?", or "what is a human", they would most likely answer with a scientific explanation. An answer may be that "we are just atoms", or that "we are just a biological thing".
I think even atheists would have to admit that those answers aren't quite complete. If we are just products of biology and evolution, how are we able to think? How are we able to feel? How do we have moral standards? In one of the podcast episodes, the speaker proposed a great and profound question- "if we are just biology, why is it wrong to treat each other as such?". If we're just a collection of atoms, what's wrong with hurting each other? Why is it wrong to mistreat each other?
It's my belief that we are not simply "biology". We have things within us that can't be explained with just "biology". We have morals, emotions, logical reasoning and intellect. Many Christians would call this our soul. Christians might answer the question of "who are we?" by saying we are a body with a soul. However, I would have to agree with Ravi Zacharias when he says that we are not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body. Our body is not the essence of who we are, our soul is. Our soul is who we really are, not our body. Your intellect, emotions, moral standard, character and personality are not part of your body, but your soul.
Why does having this view of who we are matter? Does it even make a difference if we are just a body or something more? Of course it does. Our soul is not something that can be explained in the context of this world. We're more than just flesh and blood, more than just biology. This is crucial to understand because it defines how we should live. We shouldn't just live only thinking of the body, but also the soul. In other words, we can't just focus on the physical, but also on the much more important spiritual.
-Smart
