Unnur Birna, newly crowned Miss World says her motto is, “You are what you do.” Apparently she does a lot. In addition to studying law and anthropology, Birna “is chairman of the college social club and teaches dance, she also enjoys acting, singing, all types of dancing, snow-boarding, hiking, camping, horsemanship and has a special talent for choreography and playing the piano.” Miss World is one busy woman.

Birna’s motto reminded me of something Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Being, in the case of human beings, is equivalent to doing. Man reveals himself, under observation as an organized unit of behaviors and comportments.”¹ In other words, Sartre believes that people are what they do, they are defined primarily by their actions.

I disagree. In fact, I wrote a paper about this in college…

Humans are not merely defined by their actions, they cannot, or should not be reduced to their functions. But in modern society that is just what has happened. People have been reduced to their physical and social functions. It is this reduction which has caused a loss of awareness of what it is to be human, to have significant being.

In his essay, Existence and Human Freedom, Gabriel Marcel critiques Jean-Paul Sartre’s views. He argues that the idea that being is equivalent to doing is more than just a simplification. This view is “a misapprehension of what is deepest and most significant in the nature of man.”²

“You Are What You Do.”

Birna and Sartre are not alone in this view. Today there seems to be an underlying belief that people are what they do, that being is equivalent to doing. Though many would verbally deny this idea, it permeates our society. When two people are introduced for the first time, a volley of questions ensues. One of the first of these questions is, “What do you do for a living?” At some level, our society relates who a person is to what he or she does. Humanity is deemed equivalent to function.

Humans cannot successfully be reduced to their functions. To be human means that one has ontological needs. Humanity innately desires significant being. Just as humans have physical hungers, they have an ontological appetite for purpose, love, and belonging. When society reduces people to their functions, they are left, “unfulfilled, pressed into roles or obligations that seem meaningless, or trapped by unknown forces in conditions they can’t explain. They are looking for meaning, purposes, a place to belong, asking Why am I like this? Who am I really? What makes people like they are?”³

Ontological loss means a loss of identity, of personality, of purpose. A life defined by functions cannot remedy this problem. The functionalised world plagued by ontological loss is a sad, hollow world of despair. This is the world which occurs when “Being, in the case of human beings, is equivalent to doing.”

In learning of an upcoming college graduation, a person most generally asks the student, “what are you going to do with your degree?” This ominous question has sent many a senior into a panicky sweat of anxiety. For the religious student, this question becomes even more significant. The student relates her action to God’s will and call on her life. She asks not just, “what am I going to do?” but, “what am I going to do for God?” In asking this question, tomorrow becomes an impending haze of uncertainty, with all the doom of a freight train barreling down upon her.

When “who am I?” is made equivalent to “what do I do?” there is a loss, or a dulling down of the sense of worthwhile being. This ontological loss fosters anxiety.

But if this Christian student instead asks, “Who am I going to be, in Christ?” The burden of self accomplishment is lifted off of her shoulders and the fog of tomorrow is pierced by the light of grace. No longer does the student see herself as a collection of functions, but she becomes aware of her ontological needs, the needs for purpose, meaning, and belonging.

“What are people for? Only in Scripture can we find adequate explanation. God formed human beings who would be capable of fulfilling their purpose. Unless we understand that purpose, nothing makes complete sense. That purpose is to glorify God, to love and be loved by Him, and to enjoy forever interacting with Him in His creation.” – Billie Davis⁴

1. Gabriel Marcel, The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Citadel Press, 1995), 80. [back]
2. Marcel, PE, 82. [back]
3. Billie Davis, “A Perspective On Human Nature,” Elements of a Christian Worldview, ed. Michael D. Palmer, (Springfield, MO: Logion Press, 1998), 215. [back]
4. Davis, 215. [back]