A SHORT TEST OF PERSONAL EXISTENCE

How personal is your way of being?

In Christian thought, a person is not a collection of strong qualities but a mode of existence. The person is not an individual enclosed within the self but is realised in relation to the other — not because the other is the source of one's existence, but because only in relation can freedom, love, and the reception of the other's uniqueness become real. C. S. Lewis gives this thought a powerful image in Till We Have Faces: God sees in us not a mask of qualities but a personal face; only one who has acquired a ‘face’ can stand before Him — one who has moved beyond the self-enclosed individual and become a person capable of standing before the other and answering a call. We receive life from the Father as gift and calling; in the Son we become children of the Father, and through the Holy Spirit this existence opens into freedom and communion.

This is not a diagnosis and does not measure your worth, faith, or mental health. It only reflects which pattern of relation is most visible in your answers today.