Who is man?

[AI translation] I have had similar experiences, and I'm sure many others, to what the psalmist is talking about in the Word he reads. I can imagine that on a starry summer night, out in the open air, once he looked up at the sky: the sense of infinity almost pushed him down into the dust. His soul shook with wonder: oh, how great is God, and oh, how small is man! The great, reverent wonder was formed into a prayer in his soul, "When I see thy heavens, the work of thy new ones, the moon and the stars which thou hast made, what is man," saith I, "that thou shouldest remember him? and the son of man, that thou shouldest care for him?" (Psalm 8:4-5)Perhaps never has this Word been more relevant than today. For what the psalmist of that time suspected of the mysteries of the starry heavens, man today is searching for, measuring, even beginning to penetrate with telescopes and even with ever more sophisticated rockets. Today, when the true proportions and dimensions of the universe are really beginning to be revealed to man, there is a temptation to loosen the link between the believer and God as the concept of the universe expands. This pious wonder of the psalmist, "what is man, ... that you remember him?" is today heightened to doubt: is it conceivable that the Lord of the Universe should care for man? Is it possible that the Universe of God can be conceived of in the universe? For indeed: let us try to think what is man? Can you imagine how microscopically tiny your forty, fifty, sixty, eighty years of life must be compared to the age of the world, of our Earth, or the universe, or even more so, of eternity? No sooner is he conceived than he is plunged into the silence of oblivion. Is it possible to perceive at all in eternity the nothingness of my life in time, in the passing of millennia?
But it is not only in time that man is so small, but also in space. The scientific view used to be that the Milky Way, to which our solar system belongs, is the only universe. Today we know not only that thousands of solar systems populate the Milky Way system, but also that thousands of Milky Way systems populate the universe. And how many worlds there must be beyond the cosmic distances, beyond the infinity of millions of light years! Worlds that mankind may never see, or even glimpse, in its brief moment of existence! In this cosmic perspective and scale of the universe, let us try to find and formulate the answer to this question: what is man? Is it enough to say that he is a grain of dust? In this perspective, the Second World War, for example, with its world catastrophe, its mass oppression, its destruction, its suffering, would perhaps not mean as much from a cosmic point of view as when, somewhere on the island of Capri, two bees collide with one of the millions of flowers, and in the struggle two of the six legs of one of them fall out (dislocate)! What then is the individual man that God cares for him? Is it even possible to perceive from eternity the nothingness that I am now here, in this geometrically indefinable point of the infinite world?
Thus is the old faith in God faltering slowly for many people! Someone said the other day that he believes in God, he believes that there is a God, but that God must first control the Milky Way systems, so that all kinds of cosmic catastrophes and fatal collisions do not occur in the universe. Moreover, if he has a lot of time left, perhaps he will see our tiny planet somewhere, and there he might intervene from time to time in the process of what we call the history of mankind. But that he should find me in it and care what happens to me: that is very, very unlikely! It would be a very arrogant conceit on man's part, almost grotesque, to imagine and take seriously that God is interested in me, that God cares for the individual man! Such a thing can only be imagined by a book as old as the Bible, which knows nothing of real dimensions, and has no idea how ridiculously nothing man is in the universe as a whole!
Well then, indeed, "what is man" that God should care for him? Surely, no man could ever think of himself that he is someone in this world whom God the Creator could give the attention of God to, that he should be noticed by God at all! And when the Bible asks this question of who man is, it knows better than any of us the difference between God and man. Yet he asks, not with the despair of shaken faith, as modern man does, but with the reverence of prayer, with the joy of wonder, "Oh, how wonderfully great is God that he cares for me! It is perfectly true that man is but a speck in the infinite space of time and space, and it is quite inconceivable that the mighty God should count this speck of man - but it is so! The Psalmist is just marveling and rejoicing that God remembers him, the nothing, God remembers him, the individual! The great thing is that we can believe what is unimaginable, what is incomprehensible, what man would never have known on his own if God had not told him! But He so often proves in His revelation that not only is the universe of mankind, as a mass, the object of His care and interest, but that He "has a care for you." He says this to you: "Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine" (Is 43:1b): "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." (Jer 1:5) So now, when the world's dimensions are expanding and we begin to think in planetary terms, do not fear that you, the little one, are less of a concern to God, less of a concern to you than the Milky Way! In fact!
But who is man, indeed, that God should have such a care for him? Can we know what man is by a chemical analysis of what he is made of? Are those few pounds of water, and iron, and carbon, and phosphorus, and lime, the price of which would cost a few forints at the drugstore, man? Is it something else that makes a man a man?! There is the Bach chorale "O Christ-head, thou crushed". When it is played, on the organ or sung, it physically creates a certain number and intensity of vibrations, which are pushed through the air into our ears and perceived as sound. But no one would think that the number of vibrations of certain notes is the essence of the Bach chorale, that this is what the chorale is made of! No, in fact these physical vibrations are only the vessel of the actual reality of the chorale. During these physical vibrations, a happy encounter between man and God takes place: here one prays, one comes into contact with eternity. This is what makes that sound vibration coral. It is something like that with man: a collection of chemicals, a whole chemical factory, but it is only the vessel that carries the essence.
As far as our material components are concerned, Uranus, or even Jupiter, has immeasurably more value than you or your children. Man is the one in the created universe whom God created to be a love-community with Himself, whom God intended to be His child in the great created universe, and therefore loves! He loves you so much that, again, you can only believe it because He said so. Remember? Jesus once said, "What shall it profit a man, though he gain the whole world, yet shall he gain his own soul?" In one pan, the whole world: the Milky Way systems, solar systems, planets, stars, moons, and in the other, the being of a single man: a man, say, who was not sorry to be burned in a gas chamber by his fellow men, or who was not valued by his brothers and sisters more than the 20,000 for which Joseph was sold in his day. So in the other pan would have been such a completely worthless man. Which do you think is worth more?" asks Jesus. Well, in God's eyes, it's the nobody man!
I don't know what concrete experience convinced the psalmist that the mighty God who created the world still cared for him personally. Perhaps he was astonished at the word of conscience which he perceived in himself, as a sign that Someone knew and saw everything with him, Someone who was the silent, invisible witness of all things. Or perhaps he was in some sort of blissful prayerful silence, when Someone stood by him in a way that transcended all understanding, and helped him in his distress when he asked? But one thing is certain: I know today that God cares for me personally, that Jesus was here on this earth, in this dusty part of creation. In the person of Jesus, God spoke to me personally, took me by the hand, looked me in the eye and told me that he loved me! He forgives me for everything I have ever done against Him.
The person, death and resurrection of Jesus is the tangible testimony that the Eternal God, Lord of infinite time and space, knows and loves you as his child. Infinite emphasis on the speck of life that you are! You are closer to His heart than the entire universe! You are free to reach out to Him through infinite space: He sees, and He grasps! Free through the music of the spheres to lift up thy little voice, To praise his holy name. Free to bring thy joys and sorrows, Thy little matters before Him: He hears this child's voice, and answers it. Yes, He cares for you, He remembers you, He takes care of you! And that, that is your dignity as a human being! Live it and see the same dignity in the other person! There is no man who is worthless - neither is your enemy - there is no nothing-man, there is only a man whom God cares for as much as he cares for you, whom God loves with the same redeeming love as he loves you! If you believe this, let as many of your fellow men know it as possible! Always remember them as God remembers you, and care for them as God cares for you!
Amen
Date: 11 October 1959.