Who Am
I?
Late one night in a discussion at Yale, a student suddenly asked: "Who am I?" Some of the other students, not catching the depth of the meaning of this question, laughed. I did not laugh because I knew that this inquiring student had asked one of the most profound questions ever asked. A long time ago, Socrates said: "Know thyself." Modern man is even more perplexed by the quest to know himself than the philosophers of the past. Many of our modern thinkers wonder if man is knowable. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? What is the reason for my existence? These questions plague every thoughtful man.
It was only a few years ago that man thought he could rule the world by his scientific achievements, and so he threw God out the window. However, man is beginning to realize that he also threw himself out. While man has achieved brilliant success in science, he has made little advance in understanding himself. Dr. Fred H. Klooster says: "True, man has come to a more realistic awareness of himself, but this experience merely shadowed his old myths and left him in skepticism or despair. Stupendous manifestations of evil in industrial society and distilled violence in world wars have shattered the liberal myth of man's innate goodness."1
Pessimism
Modern writers depict the pessimism of our times. Many have thrown up their hands in despair and said there is no answer
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to man's dilemma. Ernest Hemingway, in Death in the Afternoon, says: "There is no remedy for anything life . . . death is a sovereign remedy for all misfortunes." Millions agree with Mr. Hemingway's words: "I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug in to." Eugene O'Neill, in Long Day's Journey into Night, typifies the philosophical attitude of our day, that life is a search for the meaning of life. "Life's only meaning is death," he says, "so face it with courage and even love of the inevitable. Death becomes like a blanket on a cold night." A film such as The Misfits, which was the last film Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe were to make, is the story of "lost people." Arthur Miller's After the Fall is the story of the hopelessness of existence. This is an age of spiritual emptiness in which man is desperately searching but few seem to be finding.
Thus man has become secularized. He is now in danger of entering a state of spiritual nihilism. He negates spiritual values. He has lost his faith and denies any higher ideals than the satisfaction of his appetites.
"While Nietzsche asserted that God died in the nineteenth century, some now add that man died in the twentieth. Since the relationship between God and man is so close, when faith in God fades, then man's knowledge of himself is also impossible."2
Modern man's dilemma is that he does not know who he is or what the significance of his life implies.
In my travels throughout the world, some truths have made a great impact on me. One of them is the truth that man is the same all over the world. His hopes, dreams, problems, difficulties, and longings are essentially the same whether he is in the heart of Africa or in the heart of America. Another truth that has impressed me as I have studied man on every continent is that man is essentially no different today
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from what he was a thousand years ago. His circumstances change, but human nature remains essentially the same. As Goethe said: "Mankind is always advancing. Man remains ever the same."
Thus the problem facing the world today is the anthropological problem. What is man? What is his purpose for existence? There is only one book in the world that gives an adequate answer, and that is the Bible. Man's nature and destiny are revealed in the Scriptures.
Man Made for God
The Scriptures tell us that God made man in His image. The present condition of man is not his original condition. The Scriptures tell us that God made man after His likeness. This was not a physical image, for God is a spirit and does not have a body. Man bears the image of God in his rational and moral faculties and in his social nature. God gave to man freedom of the will. Man differs from all other creatures in the world. He belongs to the same order of being as God himself. Thus because we are made in God's likeness, we can know Him. If we were not like God, we could not know Him.
Adam and Eve were perfect. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says: "God has made man upright." Genesis 1:31 indicates that man was morally perfect. There was no such thing as lust, greed, and hate in the beginning.
Because man was mentally, morally, and socially like God, he was also free. He thought, he understood, he was good, he had affections, and he could make choices. With regard to moral choices, his will was absolutely free. He had the ability always to choose the right, but he had also received the power to choose evil. Adam's freedom is implied in the commandment of God:
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"Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). If man could not do evil, then why warn him? If he could not but sin, then why punish him? Man had the ability not to sin and he had the ability to sin.
There is no conclusive scientific evidence that man is "up from the ape." While the animals were created "after their kind," we are told that "God created man in his own image" (Genesis 1:27). The Bible does not tell us exactly how God created man. There is no use speculating any further. We know only that man is unique, different, and special. As far as we know, there were no other creatures in the universe comparable to man. He was the crowning act of God's creation. An animal is conscious, but man is self-conscious. The animal does not objectify self. If a dog could once say, "I am a dog," it would cease being a dog. The animal does not distinguish "self" from its sensations. Man is a self-conscious and self-determining being, made in the image of his Creator and capable of free moral decisions between good and evil.
Man's Partnership with God
In the beginning, God and man were friends. They walked together and talked together. They made great plans as to how this planet was to be populated and developed. The planet earth was to show God's glory to the entire universe. It was to be the center of God's activities in His partnership with man.
It is quite evident that God desired the fellowship of a creature like man. Thus man was created with a high and exalted purpose, a high and exalted destiny. Man was to be
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God's closest friend, His partner in cultivation and development of the earth.
God did not create man a piece of machinery so that He could push a button and man would obey Him. Man was no robot. Man was a "self." He had dignity and he had ego. He could choose whether he wanted God's friendship and fellowship or not. God did not want His creature to love Him because he was forced to do so. This would not be true love. He wanted man's love and fellowship because man chose to love God.
Thus from the very beginning God proceeded to test man's love and friendship. This is why He put the tree in the garden. He said: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17).
God promised to reward man with "the tree of life" if he obeyed, but God invoked the penalty of death for disobedience. We do not know all that "the tree of life" implies, but the reward must have been something far beyond our comprehension. If we accept the Genesis account, which Christ certainly accepted, then all of life has meaning.
Life with Meaning
When students rioted on a Labor Day weekend in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, some of them were interviewed as to why they did it. Some of the answers were very enlightening. "We have no purpose, nothing to live for." "Life has no meaning." In the midst of the world's crisis and change, there are thousands striving to find the purpose and meaning of life. The question being asked is "What is meaning?" Nietzsche said: "If a man has a why for his life he can
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bear with almost any how." Albert Camus said: "Here is what frightens me. To see the sense of this life dissipated. To see our reason for existence disappear. That is what is intolerable. Man cannot live without meaning."
But man made in the image of God has meaning. There is purpose, destiny, and meaning in life. In a book called From Death Camp to Existentialism, Victor Frankl, who suffered the worst of Nazi horrors, said: "Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival."
Jean Paul Richter once said: "Never shall I forget the phenomenon in myself . . . when I stood by the birth of my own self-consciousness, the place and time of which are distinct in my memory. On a certain morning I stood at the door of the house, and looking out toward the woodpile as in an instant the inner revelation 'I am I' like lightning from heaven flashed and stood brightly before me. In that moment I had seen myself as I . . . for the first time and forever."
This "I" was made in the image of God for fellowship with God. Without God it is miserable, empty, confused, and frustrated. Without God life has no meaning; but with God at its center there is life, an inner strength and peace, a deep satisfaction, an unfading joy known only to those who know Jesus Christ. With Him, even the troubles and sufferings of life can become the means of that inner joy that glories in tribulation.
"Apart from Jesus Christ we know not what our life is, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves,"3 wrote Pascal. With Jesus Christ, we can know.
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1. "The Nature of Man" in Carl F. H. Henry, ed., Christian Faith and Modern Theology (New York: Channel Press, 1964), pp. 147-48.
2. Ibid.
3. Pascal, Pensées.
