Wednesday Word: Not Human Enough?
I read something the other day that made me stop and rethink the idea of being human.
We have all said, I’m sure, at one time or another, “Hey, I’m only human.” This is often said in response to some mistake we’ve made, or following some instance that highlights our fallibility. The sentiment is derived from our sinful nature and the many examples, both in Scripture and in life, of people making mistakes of all kinds and any number of lapses in judgment.
Examples include, but are not limited to, Adam & Eve eating forbidden fruit, Noah getting drunk, the golden calf incident, all of Judges, Peter’s denial of Jesus, Paul admitting he doesn’t do what he should, and other incidents of which I’m sure you can recall. We tend to blame our shortcomings on our humanness.
Jesus, however, didn’t have any of those shortcomings that I know of. “Well, yes,” you might say, “that’s because he was God incarnate.” That is certainly true, as we hold that Jesus was fully divine.
But Jesus was also fully human. One of the beautiful things about the Incarnation was that it gave us the example of how to live as humanly possible in relationship with God. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus destroyed sin and death, making the whole creation new.
Instead of blaming our shortcomings on being human, what if we tried to be more human in the same way that Jesus was human, living into that new creation that he made possible? Our humanity is a gift from God, and Jesus showed us how to unite that humanity to God.
May we look at our humanness not as a defective state of being prone to mistakes, but as the way we are drawn into relationship with God, and then work to live like Jesus – being more human.
Blessings,
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