Becoming Human

My apologies for being so slow to write this blog. Now that we are well on our way in the new year, I hope that we can get a bit of momentum rolling again.

I frequently hear--and have often said myself--something like, "Oh, there I am again, just being human..." when a person faulters or fails or falls short of their highest ideals. For example, in a fit of anger someone may say things they later regret and attribute it to being 'just human.' Or divisiveness may develop among a group and someone may say, "Let's not let our humanity rule us!"

The assumption in these statements is, of course, that being human is a bad thing. Our weaknesses and failures can be attributed to the fact that we are 'only' human. If we could just become something more, problem solved. In fact, I've sometimes heard people express this in very religious terms. The goal of the Christian life, they say, is to do away with their humanity and become more 'spiritual.'

I have a problem with that. It seems to me that that approach mis-diagnoses the goal of growth and maturity. The goal of growing, it seems to me, is not to become less human, but to become more authentically human. When the Bible describes the terrible tragedy of our world, particularly in Genesis chapters 3 through 11, it is describing what is often called the 'fall' of humankind. Under the influence of that 'fall,' humans are now less than we can be, less than God created and wills us to be. The horrible stories in those chapters--the disobedience of the first humans, their fall from innocense to a state of shame, their sick tendencies to rule over one another, the description of the world's first murder, the division of the world in the story of the tower of Babel, and many more--describe the new and horrific reality of us in our world, where we are now considerably less than fully human.

Why is this important? It seems to me that when we describe the goal of the Christian life as something like "becoming less human and more spiritual," we will inevitably fail to recognize the life-giving presence of God in the mundane and normal activities of our human lives. We will tend to split the world into a false dualism, a 'spiritual' world and a 'merely human' world. We will begin to think of the spiritual tasks and experiences as the important things in our lives, and everything else is mundane. The spiritual dimension of life might take place in a church building and a prayer closet, but there it stays. And the stuff of everyday life--our sexuality, relationships, money matters, keeping up a house, tending a garden, etc.--is on the other side, the less holy side of life.

If, on the other hand, we could embrace a goal of becoming more fully and authentically human, and if we could recognize Jesus as the truly human one, then we might see our lives in this world as the exact place where God is at work. All of life--including the paying of bills, the raising of children, the work that we do throughout the week, and even our sufferings--all of life could be embraced as holy. We might come to think of Christian spirituality not as something that takes us away from everyday life, but as something that takes us more deeply into it. Our goal would be Spirit-empowered living--that is, cooperating with the Holy Spirit who animates and empowers us to become more fully, freely and genuinely human.

That's what I'm thinking about today. I'd love to hear your thoughts!