Seeing our complex nature in its wholeness

In my mind, I can still visualize the classroom setting when we learned our catechism and discovered that each person can be divided into a body and a soul. Of course, the motivation of the lesson was to impress upon us that we were spiritual beings, and that it did. But it did so at the expense of our material nature.

I laugh now at images of spiritual “milk bottles” and how souls could be “filled” with grace (or “blackened” by sin and the harsh sweep of an eraser). But I regret that the simplicity of an earlier age, no matter how well-intentioned, left us with the stark impression that our being was somehow fractured and consistently at war among its parts, with the bodily side always coming up the loser. Is it any wonder that such a view formed the underlying basis of how many of us feel about ourselves?

Now growth in theology is showing us that such a division or “dualism” does harm to fundamental perceptions of what we really are and how we view our worth. We are discovering that dualism gives a limited vision of our wholeness and does injustice to certain aspects of our humanity.

But the updating of our Parent tapes is a difficult process for those who remember the Catholic school training a la the “Patent Leather Shoes” era. Some are still left with “feelings” that their bodies are unworthy partners, almost baggage if you will, in the ultimate quest to get their souls to eternity.

What are especially tragic about this dualistic concept are the effects such a limited viewpoint has had on people. For many have tossed in the white flag of surrender at the first sign of inevitable weakness, choosing instead the aimless paths of selfishness. Others have left the church of their youth in frustration and even anger at a perceived, if invalid, insensitivity. Still others have remained, but have done so shackled by the constant warfare that results from obsessive worry.

But I believe the good Lord never intended such tension in the understanding of our nature. Granted, we are complex creatures. But it should also be evident in these days of psychological progress that our complexity leads to a blending of powers and a genuine hierarchy.

Beyond bodily functioning, which is self-evident, we show psychic powers in the play of the imagination, mental images and an interior sense. We display our mental prowess in abstract thinking, judgment, reasoning and use of the will. And at the inner core, which lends harmony to our being when all of our abilities are subordinated to its presence, lies the spirit, the source of our ideals, reasonableness and love.

As I read Scripture, it becomes very clear to me that this complexity of powers actually represents a whole. I am an embodied spirit.

When God breathed life into man, he became a spirited creature or, as Dr. Paul Tournier expresses in one of his books, God “became incarnate in the whole of the human animal, in his body as well as his psyche or his mind; the spirit animates all of them, it expresses itself in each one of them.”

An earlier understanding of human nature fails to appreciate the action of the spirit flowing out through a tender caress. Yet a better perspective of the wholeness — and wholesomeness — of what we are opens up visions of growth and happiness, while respecting the primacy of the spiritual order.