Grave Photo by DuBoix, 2011, MorgueFile.com

Have we become gravediggers burying GOD?

If we do so, we are burying part of ourselves as well.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and atheist, who claimed, "God is Dead." He thought the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending that life—such as God or a soul.

Of course, this is ridiculous, a contradiction to who we are. We have a soul--each of us, and that soul came from God. When we say we’re made in God’s image, our human soul is what we’re talking about. It is the one and only way we are like God, who is pure spirit.

However, my human soul, and yours, are not pure spirit. Spiritual, yes--but not pure spirit. Man is a spirit in matter, in the form of a body. He is spirit and body. God and the angels are pure spirits because they are not dependent on matter, as we are, either intrinsically or extrinsically. To be completely independent of matter, for any material being, is impossible. The human soul is intrinsically dependent on matter for some of its activities. But our soul is not purely material either, because for other activities it is not intrinsically dependent on matter.

So the human soul of man belongs to both the realm of the spirit and the realm of matter. Man is the lowest of the spirits, and the highest of the material beings, and he alone belongs to both the realm of the spirit and the realm of matter.

As the new Catholic Catechism explains; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature. (CCC 365).

Most human beings understand that the soul, by its nature, is often in opposition to the body. This is the struggle of every human person. Because we have free will--we can choose.

Nietzsche struggled with many questions, and used his free will--a component of his soul, and part of his human spiritual make-up--to come up with his own wrong answer about a living God, only because that living God gave him the freedom to choose.

We have the same freedom as Nietzsche, and many other God-despisers like him, because despite what they say, they have inherited spirituality from God.

When we make personal, even political, decisions, are we helping to dig those societal graves that want to bury God, too?

Well, it cannot be done without burying ourselves--we are part of Him.

 

Copyright Kaye Hinckley, 2015
Photo by DuBoix, 2011, MorgueFile.com

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