What Constitutes Human Nature?

This question of what makes up human nature has baffled people for eons.

Books by theologians, philosophers, and psychologists abound with varying views about what comprises human nature. Most positions emphasize one facet of humanness as all-important. 

Rationalists teach that the mind is the key to understanding human nature. 

Romantics argue that the heart is the crucial thing. 

Hedonists say no, the body and its pleasures should prevail. 

And Gnostics say the spirit alone is real. 

But the Self Compass approach asks why not combine all the parts that God has made in us, so we can function with a complete package? As you might expect, the compass model presents the case for holistic human nature, suggesting that since Christ, the God-person, experienced and expressed his mind and heart, body and spirit, then perhaps you and I should, too.

The Human Nature Compass

                                                                          

The compass approach is intuitive. Common sense tells you that the mind is for thinking, the heart for feeling, the body for sensing, and the spirit for communing with God. Simple though it is, the Human Nature Compass combines the sophistication of a multifaceted model with the witness of Jesus Christ’s human nature as revealed in the Gospels.

Jesus affirmed our human natures as he affirmed his own, because Christ values the whole of our humanness. In fact, many Gospel stories reflect his complimentary use of a holistic human nature. 

Do you remember when he ran across a woman who was hemorrhaging from an embarrassing female disorder? Jesus sensed her touch of his robe, even though a crowd was pressing him from all sides, and in that touch she was healed. Turning to face her, he thought about how helping her would offend those religious folks who judged her as “unclean.” Nevertheless, he felt compassion for her twelve years of torment. With spiritual authority he extended kinship to her in the family of God: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace” (Lk 8: 43-48). 

There is a message here. I think of it this way: when God created the cosmos, he paused to say, “It is very good.” Then, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son to become fully human. In taking human nature forever into the Godhead, Christ says to us: 

“You are my kin—

I’ve made your human nature very good, too.”