Chapter 5: The Person, Created and Chosen
Catholic Social Teaching from the Ground Up
[If you want to begin with chapter 1, follow this link. At the end of every chapter, there will be a link to the next.]
To know what a good society looks like, we have to know what people are like and what is good for them. John Paul II, in the encyclical Centesimus Annus, asserted that “from the Christian vision of the human person there necessarily follows a correct picture of society.” This Christian vision helps us to see where we come from, what it means to live a good life, and where we are going.
When You Look, What do you See?
Jesus warns us that it is possible for us to have eyes but not to see (Mark 8:18). Many people looked at Jesus and did not see that he was the Son of God. Some (like the Pharisees) saw him as a spiritual competitor, a so-called prophet with a new teaching; some (like the Romans) saw him as a potential political adversary, the King of the Jews; many in the crowd saw him as a wonder-worker, whose coming to town was an exciting event. Jesus invited all those who experienced him (and he invites us) to see his works as signs of the deeper reality: God coming to be with His people, to redeem them, to make all things new.
If people could look at Jesus and not see him, we should admit that we can look at other people – even at ourselves – and miss what is most important. The world offers many competing visions. Advertisers want you to see yourself as a needy consumer who is happiest when he gets new things. Political activists want you to see yourself as someone involved in a great struggle against the other side. The identity culture wants to define you by the racial, sexual, and generational groups you belong to.
We might rely on our personal opinions, but our opinions of our own value are a shaky foundation. Pride makes us value ourselves for the wrong reasons: I’m valuable because I’m smart, because I’m beautiful, because I earn a lot of money. On the other extreme, many don’t feel valuable at all. Some are convinced that they are worthless failures. Depression and anxiety leave some unable to see anything to love about themselves or their lives.
Fortunately, as Catholics we don’t depend on the culture or our own opinions for a clear vision. We rely on revelation. God has told us what He sees when He looks at us. Catholic revelation offers a true picture of the human person – his origin, his dignity, and his nature. The foundation of Catholic social thought is the dignity of every human person. This picture is not a pious, sentimental hope. It is not wishful thinking. It is a fact. We know where we come from, we know why we were made, we know where we are going, and that we need to go there with others. When we look in the mirror, or at a neighbor, the Church encourages us to see someone of unimaginable worth – the human person. When we look at society, the Church invites us to evaluate everything in light of human dignity.
In Catholic teaching, the proof of our dignity has three parts:
1. God created us, and values us.
2. God created us in His image
3. God restored us to communion with Him through the death and resurrection of His son, the third person of the Trinity.
In the rest of this chapter, we’ll start with the first part – that God created us. We’ll examine the other parts in the next chapter.
God, the Master Appraiser
The most important proof of our dignity is God’s estimate of our value. Fifteen years ago there were several popular reality shows about appraisal (Antiques Roadshow, Pawn Stars). The attraction of these shows was that someone has some odd thing (a lamp from grandma, an old machine). Maybe it was junk, or maybe it was worth thousands of dollars. The fun was in finding out just how much something was worth. We trusted the appraiser to tell us how much someone was willing to pay for the piece.
These shows tell us something about value: things are valuable because they are valuable to someone. Before we are of value to anyone else, we are valuable to God. God is the most convincing witness to our value, because He is the ultimate someone to whom we are of value, the absolute appraiser. Who can better judge our worth than the one who created us? In the first creation account (Genesis 1), human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creation: after creating us on the sixth day, He took a step back, saw that everything He had created (including us) was very good, and rested. God created the earth, the plants and animals, and then gave human beings dominion over them. We know that all created things are ultimately for God’s glory, but within the created order they are made for our sake. This doesn’t mean we can do anything we want with creation, but God has put us in charge of the rest of creation, to care for it and to meet our needs out of it.
The second creation account (Genesis 2) communicates the same truth, from a different angle: God plants a garden, and then puts a man in it to take care of it and to provide for himself from it. God intended Creation to meet our need for food, and our need for work. Like a father, God provides for us, and gives us productive work to do.
The order of creation reveals that God created us for our own sakes. God loves the plants He created, but he also created them for us. God loves the animals He created, but he also created them for us. Human beings were not made for the sake of any other created thing. The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes notes that man is “the only creature on earth which God willed for itself.”
This love of God is not simply His love for us as a species; God loves each of us individually. He does not look at me and say “there goes another one of those humans I created. I love humans, so I guess I love Andy.” God says “I love Andy!”
Psalm 139 is a touching reflection on the care God takes for each one of us. Here is just a sample:
LORD, you have probed me, you know me: you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar.
You sift through my travels and my rest; with all my ways you are familiar.
Even before a word is on my tongue, LORD, you know it all.
Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me.
…
You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works!
My very self you know.
My bones are not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.
The love of God for each human being described here is simply astounding. Our Creator is the best judge of our worth, and He loves and values each one of us. I urge you to take this psalm to heart, and make it part of your prayer.
Everyone you came across today – your co-workers, neighbors, that homeless person – was created and is loved specifically by God. He knows all of our names, and is glad to have made us. The same is true of everyone the airplanes that passed overhead today, of each of the 1.4 billion people in China, the 1.4 billion people in India.
How can God possibly love so many people individually and personally? Meditation on God’s love is just one of the ways that we come up against the infinity of God. He made each of us, keeps us in existence in every instant, knows everything about us, and loves each and every one of us. It seems impossible, crazy even. However much our minds fail to comprehend the magnitude of it, though, this is a fact of our faith. It should color everything we think about the society in which we live.
But wait, there’s more! We’ve only just scratched the surface of what God has planned for us and has done for us. The next chapter goes deeper into the mystery of the dignity of the human person.
Discussion Questions
1. Do you find it easy or difficult to think of yourself as loved by God, created especially by Him for you own sake?
2. Do you find it easy or difficult to think of other people as loved by God, created especially by Him for their own sakes?