What Is Humanity?

Three thousand years ago a shepherd boy stood on a hillside and looked up at the night sky. He could see a few thousand stars with his naked eye, a few planets and the moon. He considered the sight and thought, in view of all this vast array, ‘What is humanity?’ (Ps. 8:4).
This young shepherd, whose name was David and who went on to become the greatest of the kings of Israel, didn’t know the half of it! Today with aid of optical and radio telescopes as well as the orbiting Hubble and James Webb telescopes, we can ‘see’ so much more. When we consider the known universe which is about 40,000,000,000,000,000 stars at the last count, our minds go into overload. Yet there is likely so much more beyond still to be discovered.
In view of this, we ask the same question that David posed 3000 years ago: ‘What is humanity?’
There are two broad answers to this question: nothing or everything.
Nothing
The secular atheistic answer of nothing is losing traction these days. That is the idea that humanity is, in the light of the vastness of the known universe, nothing; that on a cosmic scale we have no meaning, no purpose and no significance; and that we will have no effect and leave no mark. In its distilled essence, secular humanism would state that out of nothing, nothing made everything; everything will wind down, tending towards absolute zero useful energy (-273C) and freeze. Nothing will see it, observe it or consider it.
What is humanity? According to this bankrupt ‘philosophy’, humanity is nothing.
This isn’t a modern idea. Epicurius, who lived 2400 years ago, reflected on the meaninglessness of life. A saying attributed to him is this: ‘Eat, drink, be merry; for tomorrow, we die!’ Since there is no ultimate meaning to this tiny spark of life, let’s enjoy what we can while we are alive because we are a long time dead!
Everything
The shepherd boy, David, gave an answer which lifts the gloom and changes nothing to everything.
What is humanity? David says, ‘You made them’ (Ps. 8:5).
The ‘You’ here is God. The Lord, Yahweh! The eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present being (Ps. 8:1). With the decline of bankrupt secular humanism and atheism there is now a resurgence of a sense of the ‘divine spark’, echoes of eternity and the call of the deep within us!
God made us to know him and to enjoy his universe. God set humanity apart from every other thing (matter, energy) and being (plants, animals, life) by setting within us his own image! God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image … So God made man in his own image; in the image of God he made man’ (Gen. 1:26-27).
It is this ‘image’, or the soul, the bit that thinks and considers (I could say so much more!) that sets us apart from everything else. It enabled David, and it enables you and I, to do that which no mere animal can, to simply ask the questions we ask.
Since this cogent answer is true, it changes everything! Far from being ‘nothing’, I am everything; made to know God and enjoy him forever. Despite the ravages of sin destroying our central purpose, deep down we ‘know’ this is true. The Bible says, ‘Deep calls to deep’ (Ps. 42:7) and ‘He [God] has planted eternity in the human heart (Ecc. 3:11).
The most devastating effect of sin has been to destroy our central purpose and drive us to try to find meaning in the creation rather than in the Creator himself. It is doomed to failure, but deep within we cry out for ‘better things’. Thanks be to God that, as well as being eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing and everywhere he is also loving, merciful, compassionate and wonderfully kind. Although we have sinned and deserve death, in his Son, Jesus Christ, our purpose can be restored.
How? Have a read through the Gospel of Mark and ask God to show you how. If you are sincere, he will.