What is Life? by Brian Shilhavy for Health Impact News
Life. It is one of the most common words in the English language. It is something to “live,” something to “spend,” something that begins and ends, something that is evaluated as “good” or “bad,” as “healthy” or “unhealthy.”
But how do we actually define it? Is it defined by our culture, or does it have an intrinsic meaning that transcends how the culture uses the word?
How you understand or define “life” affects pretty much everything you do, and I doubt that very many people have actually spent time evaluating their understanding of “life,” but passively just accept how the culture defines it.
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“Life” is closely associated with “truth,” which means that the meaning of “life” is not dependent on people’s opinions or understanding of what it is.
It just is. It transcends even language, therefore it requires that we examine the language we use to describe and define life, and the closer we can come to its actual intrinsic meaning, the closer we come to understanding “truth.”
To help you decide whether or not you want to continue reading this article, I need to repeat my working premises that I have publicly explained in previous articles, and which are the premises I have accepted as true and are the foundation for all the articles I have personally written and published on Health Impact News for the past 12 years, which is that the Ancient writings of the Bible, also referred to as the “Scriptures,” are true in so much as they contain truth.
They are not the total embodiment of truth, as that originates from God (Yahweh/Jehovah) and his Son Jesus Christ, who is the “living Word of God.”
So for example, one of the “truths” found in the Scriptures is: Love your neighbor as yourself. This is written in English, so to properly understand this truth, we need to define “love” and “neighbor,” which is generally defined by our culture and language. It is also an “imperative” (command) truth.
