Spoul searching are the words that describe a situation when we are trying to make a very difficult decision. This essayis for politicians.

Soul Searching
Soul searching are the words that describe a situation when we are trying to make a very difficult decision. What do htye mean? Are we really looking into the centre of our being, the spiritual spark that is hope, love, caring, all the good reasons for living. The media presents the views of Australian politicians on abortion and obtaining stem cells from human embryos. At no time have we heard anything about the "soul" of the huma person. Let us do some soul searching together.

The Hebrew, when speaking of man, by implication means man in the presence of God...he is always flesh.."flesh" in this sense is not a part of him, it is his very being, and never is he to forget that he is flesh for his whole life and in all his deeds and experiences. At the same time he is always "soul". Again "soul" is not a part of him; he has no soul, he is soul. He exists because God created him as a living soul. God's sticking to him is his very life. For Aristotle, the soul was simply the form of the body, i.e. the way the body behaved, and thus not capable of existing separately from it. For Plato, most Christian theologians of the first millennium AD, Descartes, and many others, the soul was the essential immaterial part of a human, temporarily united with its body. Most modern philosophers deny the existence of an immaterial soul. Do you agree with them?

St. Augustine soul searched looking for God. He asked the deep, the movng breezes, the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars and tney all said, we are not God, He made us. St. Augustine asked of himself: 'Who are you?" He replied "A man." And look, in my person are body and soul, one without, and the other within. He talks about his inner self. "For to it all the body's messengers made report, as though to a president and judge, about the replies of heaven, earth and all the rest which contain, saying: "We are not God, he made us." These things did my inner self know by the service of the outer self. I, the inner man, understood these things, I the soul. Through the body's sense. I asked the whole mass of the world about my God and it replied "It is not I, he made me." (Confessions of St. Augustine"

The Australian Pocket Dictionry contains the folllowing definition of soul: "soul is the immaterial part of man regarded as immortal or as subject to salvation or damnation...the true self, or as the organ of emotion of thought and will, the essence or inspiration of life." I am concerned about the beginnings of human life being used for experimentation. Please do some soul searching (if you believe you have a soul) that the embryo is human and should be afforded the most basic of human rights - the right to grow and live and prosper.

Copyright Hilarie Roseman January 07