The Greatest Affliction—The Death of the Body or the Neglect of the Soul

6 people were killed today in fighting in the Middle East. A sixteen year old boy was shot to death outside his home. A hurricane took the lives of 11 people in the Caribbean. These are the headlines of our times. The ultimate evil is the loss of human life. The most honorable act is that which saves lives. I do not intent to undervalue the dignity of human life, but rather an attempt to magnify the human soul. The human body is sacred precisely because it houses a human soul made in the image of God. If the soul is not inherently valuable, or merely a figment of our imagination, why then is the human body of any more consequence, rather it is of even less.

Political thinkers of the last century have looked back with disgust and sharp criticism for a politics that concerns itself with the care of the soul—a politics that supported the oppression of the people by the state’s endorsement of mandated religions and superstitions. People’s freedom was stifled by a morality imposed on them from religious and government institutions. So, what has secular politics given us? It has given us only the care of the body. What are the consequences of a politics that provides limitless freedom for issues of the human soul? You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t harm anyone else’s body (thanks, Mill for this idea!).

When saving physical human life becomes the ultimate measure of human accomplishment, the human soul is neglected. So, we go about our lives trying to protect and cherish the human body at the expense of neglecting the soul. What, after all, is life all about? If it is a matter of keeping human bodies safe from harm, we might as well create a political order out of the mold of Orwell’s 1984. There are much more efficient ways of keeping human bodies from suffering illness or harm. Which is what it seems that the “civilized” West is attempting to do to varying degrees at the outset of the 21st century. The only thing worth dying for is the saving of another person’s physical life.

The consequence of this paradigm extends into every aspect of our lives. Concerned primarily or only with protecting physical human bodies, we may neglect the human soul.