subject: The "Human" Who Makes the Christian Conversion Journey [print this page] The "Human" Who Makes the Christian Conversion Journey
There are some things that we are taught to memorize when we are young although we didn't understand their full meaning at the time.
One of these things for me was the answer to the Baltimore Catechism question "What is Man?" Although I was only seven years old at the time, that answer began to form my concept of What Man (Human, Male and Female) is. It is a concept that remains grounded in the short Catechism answer some seventy years later. But my understanding of each part of the answer has deepened and grown as I matured intellectually and spiritually.
The original answer to the "What is Man?" question was, "Man is a creature composed of body and soul and made in the image and likeness of God."
My lived experience, graduate study and teaching of philosophy, plus other catechisms especially the late 20th century edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church all played a role in my 21st century answer to the Human question.
Man is a creature.
I am a unique creature. The physical part of me, my body, the "without" of me is animal/mammal. I am the most complex of animals in terms of brain and nervous system. But I am also a person, a human being. I am a self reflecting being, who knows that he knows. I can review my own behavior and repeat it or change it.
As a human person I am actually, directly dependent for my being, origin, and continuation in living on Another God The Light.
Man is composed of body and soul.
As a human being I am both a body and a spiritual soul (a "without/within"), whose unity is so profound that the presence of the soul, each of which is directly created by God, makes a material body into a single unique human being with a single human nature. The mind-body-spirit connection is a distinctly human feature.
Man is made in the image and likeness of God.
Because I am made in the image and likeness of God I'm not just a something but also a someone capable, as I wrote previously, of self-knowledge and of freely giving myself in relationships with other persons.
As I also learned at the age of seven as an answer to the question "Why did God make me?", that I was made to know him, love him, and serve him in this world, and be happy with him forever in heaven. Humans are the only creatures whom God willed for their own sake to share by knowledge, love and service in God's own life. That's the fundamental reason we exist and for the dignity and value of every human person at all stages of his/her life.
God created everything for us but we in turn are also required to respect all of his creation and to be good stewards of it. For all that exists both in the animate and inanimate realm, has a purpose determined by the Creator. As good stewards we will one day have to give an account of our stewardship.
