lack, if atoms filled all the space, they would not be able to move and create new combinations. The fact that physical reality is revealed to our senses as diverse and changing is determined by the foundation of lack, by space and opportunity. It can be said that the interaction of being/entities (atoms) and non-being/lacking (emptiness) is a necessity of all real existence. However, attempts to bluntly apply this atomistic understanding of physical reality to human beings would cause extensive damage. At the level of atoms, everything is determined by physical laws and the outcomes are known in advance. In such a reality, a human being would be perceived only as a combination of atoms, only of physical nature. It would not be possible to regard people as free, rational, moral agents who unpredictably change reality by their actions and relationships. 1.3. Lack as a mark of humanity Human beings are temporary, finite, fallible and limited. They experience lack in a variety of ways but are able to advance themselves precisely because of those insufficiencies. Such is the human nature that separates us from the physical and metaphysical world. People differ from physical nature by their freedom to institute change. From the divine metaphysical world, people differ by their inability to achieve complete perfection. We can start from the fact that a human being is born naked. In many societies nudity is associated with poverty and a lack of status. Having been born in such an early stage of biological development (compared with other mammals), individuals need a lot of things to survive and to continue to grow up. The birth of a person is the first shock into lacking – coldness, insecurity, hunger, a natural need for closeness and attention (Matulevičius 2015: 231).
Theologians talk about being created in “perfect dependence” (Syssoev 2016), about the “needy man” (Wolff 1974). They argue that this 23
