World Report • Human Uniqueness

WE HUMANS HAVE A SPECIAL DESTINY

BY Prof. Dr Thomas V. Jacobs | St John Vianney Seminary, Pretoria

EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGISTS point out that there is only a 2% difference in the DNA between humans and their closest cousins, the chimpanzees. In other words, man and the chimpanzee have 98% of the DNA in common. Does it mean that a 2% difference in the DNA accounts for all the advances man has made over the chimpanzee? It doesn’t stand to reason. The real reason for all the advances man has made over the chimpanzee is because of the breath of life God breathed into man’s nostrils (Gen 2: 7). The story-myth expression of the breath of life of God is to be understood as the faculty of consciousness and a spiritual entity called soul. These two entities only can account for all human achievements such as the ability of speech, ability to learn mathematics, philosophy, music, art, architecture and mysticism, just to mention a few. Since the human person is endowed with consciousness and an immortal soul, humans have a special destiny, a life beyond the grave. A special destiny for man is the culmination of the Divine Intelligent Design.

THE DESIGNER

What scientists call the Designer, Super Intelligence, Mathematician Extraordinaire, the Mind etc. is not an abstract entity, but a real living Entity. He is the God of religion, just and loving. This God is deeply interested in His creation. As such, He does not expect His creation to dance according to His divine tune alone. He allows His creation to make itself to a large degree. That is why in the evolution of the cosmos and life forms on planet earth, there is flexibility and rigidity. If there is no flexibility in the evolutionary process, there would not have been anything new evolving in nature. A ‘hands-on Creator’ who works in and with His creation continuously is more pleasing to humans than one who did His job aeons ago and rested.

At the same time, we humans are endowed with a special faculty called free will, by which each person is enabled to choose and make decisions for oneself. The relationship between God and man is not that of a master and a slave, but a love affair between the human soul and a loving and caring Father. In that relationship there is no coercion. It is a free choice of the individual. This is the way the God of religion acts. There is a degree of independence granted to creation to make itself. Such independence is also granted to the human person, who is a body-soul continuum, the soul being the image of the divine. God’s love towards every person is like an eternal sunshine and each person can choose to stay in the sunshine or move away into the shade and darkness. It is up to each person to make that choice.

HUMAN BEING IN THE COSMOS

After Charles Darwin’s publication of his book, The origin of species through natural selection (1859), a number of critics claimed that man had lost his pride of place in the world. Man was nothing more than any other animal; to claim some sort of pride of place in nature was sheer arrogance. Do these deductions stand to reason? Many enlightened evolutionary biologists do not think so. Man still holds the pride of place in the world. The faculty of consciousness and a distinct level of intelligence set him apart from his pre-human ancestors. Let us reflect on the following imagined scenario: Leonardo Da Vinci’s acclaimed painting, the Mona Lisa, happened to have been lost in transit in the Amazon forests. Many a passing animal would have been fascinated by that curious object, stared at it and carried on with their routine activities of feeding and breeding. They would have been totally incapable of perceiving the enigmatic smile and all-seeing eyes on the face of Mona Lisa. The situation doesn’t change when it comes to the world around us and the cosmos itself. The mysteries of the cosmos would have remained mysteries, until intelligent man began to understand them and appreciate them. Hence, we can reasonably assume that the appearance of intelligent beings was an essential and ultimate component in the evolution of the cosmos; without them the cosmos would have remained an intellectually barren wasteland. So, man definitely has a unique place in the cosmos.

When Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens, a special faculty called consciousness was added to Homo sapiens, by which humans were enabled to reflect upon their thoughts. From a religious point of view, a soul was infused into the human person. How and when this infusion of the soul occurred is a matter of debate. The truth of the matter is that we humans have become a body-soul continuum; not a body harbouring a soul. The soul existed before a human person came into being and the soul will continue to exist even after a human person departs from the earth. The soul that departs from a person has a life of its own. It does not get absorbed into a divine flame, like a spark that falls back into a burning furnace. The soul has its own identity and individuality for all eternity. The loving and merciful God of religion, who created the human soul, wants every soul to spend eternity with Him in bliss. This is the culmination of the intelligent design of the Divine Designer.

A WEAK HUMANITY

However, in the dealings of the Supreme Being with humans, one notices a certain trait which is clearly written in the Scriptures. While we accept the notion that the God of religion is not a tyrant, but a loving Father who grants independence to His creation to make itself to a certain extent, we also accept the fact that we humans are endowed with free wills to choose for ourselves. However, when the misuse of the free will was leading humans astray, egocentrism and selfishness, inherited from pre-human ancestors, rendered them perverts. In the letter to the Romans, St Paul quotes from the Psalms and prophets to illustrate the general human condition:.

“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practise deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom 3: 10–18).

A loving Father could not have just sat down and watched unconcerned. If nothing had been done about it, the whole of humanity would have been doomed to perish and God’s grand design would have been thwarted. A loving and just God could not have allowed that. Hence at decisive moments, God intervened in human history.

Altruism and concern for one’s neighbour had to be inculcated in the minds and hearts of human beings. In order to achieve this goal, the God of religion, the loving and benevolent Father decided to prepare a people for Himself and God Almighty intervened in human history. He chose a man called Abram and asked him to leave his land and people and live in a new place. God Almighty made a covenant with Abram and named him Abraham, who eventually became the father of all believers (Gen 12–18).

GOD INTERVENED once again in human history. A young man named Moses, expelled from the Egyptian Pharaoh’s court, was chosen by the Lord God to liberate His people from slavery in Egypt. Moses felt himself inadequate for the overwhelming job, but God gave him strength and eloquence to face Pharaoh and demanded the liberation of his people from bondage. Moses, in the face of insurmountable hardships, led a motley crowd through the Sinai deserts for 40 (many, indefinite) years towards the promised land (Ex 1–40).

CLIMAX OF GOD’S INTERVENTIONS

However, an amazing intervention by God in the history of humanity was in the life of a simple peasant girl from Nazareth in Galilee, prepared from all eternity to be the mother of His Son, Jesus. God’s messenger, Angel Gabriel revealed to Mary her role in God’s plan. Though Mary was petrified and perplexed, she told the Angel, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said” (Lk 1: 38). Upon this ‘fiat’ rested the redemption of the human race and the fulfilment of God’s grand design.

All the above interventions were preparations for the greatest one, the birth, life and death of Jesus. In this intelligent design, the role of Jesus of Nazareth was paramount and unique. Jesus, the Son of God, was a unique personality in human history. In world religions we read about gods taking on human forms to sort out some specific problems on earth. Such avathars were mere shadows of the real Divine Son becoming incarnate to establish a spiritual kingdom to lead all humans to a life with the loving Father.

OLD TESTAMENT

However, when we peruse the initial books of the Old Testament, we are introduced to the Lord who was in close contact with His people and yet, rather aloof and distant, abiding on high mountains, whose very name was forbidden to be pronounced. He appeared to have been easily provoked to anger and He readily meted out punishment to miscreants.

However, the nature of the Supreme Being YHWH cannot be so, if one understands the fullness of the Intelligent Design God had in mind. When human beings succumbed to selfishness and abandoned altruism, they drifted away from God and forfeited their intended destiny of living in eternity with God. God was deeply distressed and designed a plan to lead humankind to eternal bliss. The method used by the Lord was something which human imagination can hardly fathom.

God sent His only Son into the world, denuded of all heavenly glory, to live among humans and to establish a heavenly kingdom in the hearts and minds of His followers. The sum and substance of that heavenly kingdom is in direct opposition to the values and aspirations of mundane kingdoms. It requires a total paradigm shift in the mindset of His followers. First of all, God should take pride of place in the minds and hearts of human beings. Love God with all your heart; equally important is the need to have care and concern for one’s fellow humans, particularly the less fortunate ones. Apart from establishing a heavenly kingdom in the hearts and minds of his followers, God wanted His Son to offer Himself to redeem humans from the bondage of sin through sufferings and death on a cross. Now one can begin to understand the depth and immensity of God’s compassion and love for human beings.

JESUS, THE REDEEMER

Jesus taught His disciples to address God YHWH, Abba, Father. This was a novel and revolutionary idea for the average Jew and Jewish religious authorities. It is to be kept in mind that the Jews of the time could never pronounce the name YHWH when reading the Torah, but substituted it with Adonai, meaning the Great Lord. Apart from addressing God as Father, Jesus insisted upon inculcating fellow feeling in His followers. Over and over again, Jesus emphasized the sum and substance of the kingdom of God as ‘love God with all your heart and love your neighbour as you love yourself’.

Apart from teaching his followers the basics of the kingdom of God, Jesus offered Himself willingly shedding His blood and giving up His life on the altar of the Cross. By doing so, Jesus became the only Redeemer. As a sacrificial victim, He opened up the gates of Heaven to those who follow Him. This is the economy of salvation, envisaged by the Father in the intelligent design of the cosmos and mankind.