The non-physical composition of a human being is surely the most complex and mysterious of one’s personhood. Even though there yet remains much about our physical self we don’t understand, our non-physical self is simply mind-boggling. We know so little about us that it ought to evoke a profound humility. Just what it is that makes us tick truly does defy comprehension, at least in many areas of our being. And, logically, we ought to know our own humanity rather thoroughly, ought to have answered virtually all questions about our being, but we haven’t. Is there anything we should know better than our very own composition physically and non-physically? Yet, we don’t, and only the most arrogant and truly ignorant would say we do.
Over the past 50 years, we have conversed with many doctors, very learned and capable physicians, well-credentialed, who had been in some delicate situations of neurosurgery, but they were forced to shake their heads and humbly say things like, “We haven’t figured that out yet. We don’t know why that is,” or, “That’s something we’re still looking into, or “We hope to get a handle on that later.” Or, some say, “Our best research hasn’t been able to understand that yet,” and other like statements. And these are the experts, and we don’t like this. We want the experts to have the answers. And, while we are grateful for the answers they do have, many of which they didn’t have twenty years ago, still, by their own humble admission, there is yet so much we do not know. If there is no area of our physicality where this unknowing is so prevalent as in our brain, the neurological part of our being, it’s almost as if our brains defied discovery. Oh, to be sure, much has been learned. Real progress has been made in the neurosciences, but it appears that every new venue that seems to be mastered merely opens a new one that is completely untouched, as though we are looking at an inexhaustible phenomenon, this human brain. Those who know it best continue to marvel at the incredible complexity of what they yet do not understand. And here is where we can inject a reminder of the psalmist who stated it so well three-thousand years ago, “Surely, I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well.” It’s in Psalm 139. Just think of that! Without the benefit of laboratories, microscopes, stethoscopes, x-rays…three thousand years ago, the psalmist credited his Maker with having fashioned the human body in a most extraordinary way. We can only conclude the psalmist had a profound appreciation for the way his entire being was designed and constructed by the Creator God he worshiped. He even exclaimed that his soul, that is the totality of his very being, grasped that concept in a comprehensive way. “That my soul knows right well,” said he. It might well be said that if there is an understatement anywhere in the Bible, this may qualify…”Surely, I am fearfully and wonderfully made; that my soul knows right well.”
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