What Does it Mean to be Human?

Let's face it, the question-title of this post is not something you find on the FAQ page of most websites, technical manuals or brains. Some thoughts from the midnight hour.

I don't let anything encroach on my sleep so, without opening an eye, I grabbed my moleskine (set aside especially for this purpose) and scrawled a few words in slanty, disjointed type in hope that, one day, I may riddle the mysterious vocables together to answer the above question.

That day, my friends, is today.

Genesis 1 "YHWH Elohim took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."

Now it seems to me than man is made to be above creation and below God. This idea isn't completely new, most Christian ideas aren't - in fact NT Wright pretty much says what I just said, so now no-one can scholastically marginalise anyone else for plagiarism because we are all friends. Magic.

So what does 'under God' mean? I would suggest, in all my youth and academic naivety, that it means that in the great order of things, we are positioned to give glory to God above and for his good pleasure. 'Over creation' is a fairly controversial topic at the moment - shall we destroy the planet because we think God will destroy it eventually himself, or do we preserve it because we are still gardeners?

Now our temptation, as man, is to take our position over creation and use it to glorify ourselves or use it solely for our pleasure. We play God with ourselves. This is called sin in the technical language and self-deification is the root of it all. We want to be like God, oh wait - we already are? No, we want to be God. This not only disrupts our relationship with God, but also something within our own humanity. We can't separate ourselves from our sin and say that it only matters in our soul compartment, there are no compartments, every cell holds our soul. Neither can we say that our abuse of our position over creation does not affect us, we see that now, what happens to our earth, happens to us. We destroy it and we destroy ourselves. Utterly depraved. Besides the inherent wholeness of God, there is nothing left that hasn't been skewed by our love affair with ourselves.

So now, how do we reclaim what it means to be human?

All through the story of Scripture we see this word sacrifice. It takes the sacrifice of something to right this, but how? When the chosen family sacrificed an animal, part of a crop, part of a wage, a day of the week or a meal, they were taking a part of something that they had control over and giving it up solely for the pleasure and glory of God.

So sacrifice restores the balance, the order, the shalom of life and what it means to be human.

Perhaps when we're sacrificing we are as close as we can be to what God originally intended. When was it said that Jesus glorified God the most, when he taught with groundbreaking insight or when he gave it all up for the glory and pleasure of God? Make no mistake, Jesus restored our relationship with him through his death, but his eyes were not on us (although our ego would like it) his eyes were on his Father, seeking only to do his will, and thankfully, his will is perfect, restorative and benevolent. The created order was restored through the supreme, worshipful sacrifice of Christ.

When we sacrifice, we take what we have dominion over and instead of using it for our own deification we use it for what it was originally meant for - the worship of God.

But none of this makes it easier. Sacrifice still sucks because we still rage against our broken humanity. It is only through being found in Christ that we can even hope to live in a restored manner. And it is only through sacrifice that Christ was able restore us anyway. Huh, interesting, sacrifice keeps the world turning.

So to restore the balance, our relationship with God, creation and yes, even ourselves requires the voluntary sacrifice of our entire lives for the pleasure and glory of God.

Welcome to true life. It'll kill you but, paradoxically, you'll never feel more alive, more restored, more human.