To Be Human

It’s noon. She’s finally asleep. I throw myself on the bed, close my eyes and celebrate the silence. Before my skin can embrace the $49 duvet cover from Garden Ridge that is untidily sprawled across my bed, it happens. He calls to me.

I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. I make a list of things that need to be done. He calls again.

Like a nudging from deep within my being, He calls to me. He beckons me to go away with him. Like a teenage love affair, He whispers sweet nothings into my ear. He reminds me of His love letters that remain unread on my shelf. He longs to sit with me. To hear my voice. To finish my sentences. He wants to BE with me. I swallow.

Rather than return my lover’s embrace, I make myself busy. To be with Him now would be acknowledging that I have been with another. I’ve grown bored with the pangs of guilt that surface in response to my infidelity. I’ve learned to ignore my lover.

Still He pursues me.

“Later,” I whisper to Him. We both know what later means.

There is work to be done. Busyness to attend. Meetings to have. These are my loves. These are my gods.

I sigh. I get up from the bed, hoping to motivate myself to prepare for my day. I hear a noise in the distance. It’s a text.

Its Jenn. She wants to meet for lunch. O brother.

Lunch with Jenn is never lunch with Jenn. Lunch with Jenn is ordering food that you mindlessly nibble on while you carry on a life changing conversation. We suck at small talk.

I arrive at the restaurant early, and as soon as Jenn enters she grabs my arm, leans into my space, and gazing comfortably into my eyes animatedly says “Hi”. This is not going to go well. Within twenty minutes, Jenn is excitedly telling me about the new book she is reading.

Jenn is always reading a book she is excited about. She is inherently an easily excitable person. But this time her excitement was coming from a different place.

Jenn talked a lot about experiences she was having with embracing discontent and disappointment. She was unhappy where she was, and was excited about it. Her spark was becoming a flame and she was dying to catch afire. Sitting next to her, you could feel the heat. It was contagious. I felt inspired.

We weren’t talking about church and cool new worship songs. Trends or famous speakers. We were talking about God and justice. Violence and radical change. And it was here that I felt the shadow of my lover looming near.

In truth, it seemed like a great time to pray. Right there in the middle of the restaurant Pentecost-style. But it didn’t feel right to me. I felt a little bit like a wife coming home after an affair with another lover. I couldn’t just jump back into the swing of things, right? These things take time. And that’s when I re-embraced my little god.

Yes, you read right. Many of us have one. It’s our little god. The god that arises from the wondrous invent of imagination. The god who claps when we mindlessly read the bible toward attempts at piety. The god who is more like an imaginary friend than a sovereign being. The god we can explain to anyone who has questions. He is our jeweled cross necklace, and our Easter Sunday. He is a creation that gets boring and predicable with time. He is a god who asks us to be less human and more something less colorful. And while we work to please our little gods, children are raped, people are sold into slavery, and genocide covers the earth. But we don’t notice because little gods don’t expect us to do anything about that.

So after lunch with Jenn, I embraced my little jesus and asked him what I should do next. And my little god gave me the obvious answer. “Go get a book to tell you how you should be!” Duh! Of course-- I need a guide that could tell me how to be more like something else and less like myself. This would make me more attractive to little jesus.

As I fingered through the endless titles of books at the library later that day, that same twinge of disappointment began to resurface. “Thirty seconds with the Master by Dr. Deacon Mega-church”. That didn’t seem right. “One minute to spiritual transformation by Prophetess So and So”. Excuse me? “How to uncover your spiritual destiny in 14 days by Bishop Acclaimed Speaker”, “Dr. Reverend’s guide to becoming like Christ”, “How to lead your church by Minister Business Man”. This is not what I was looking for.

After nearly thirty minutes of searching, I came across a title from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Page One.

“…God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world…While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, God becomes human; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings.

Page Two.

“…God does not seek the most perfect human being with whom to be united, but takes on human nature as it is.” This Jesus, a friend of sinners, who embraces humanity as is it, who asks us to be ourselves is looking a lot less like my little jesus.

Page Three

“…Contempt for humanity and idolization of humanity lie close together. Good people… who withdraw in disgust from people and leave them to themselves, and who would rather tend to their own gardens than debase themselves in public life…their contempt for humanity…will stand the test no better than the tyrant.”

Little gods ask us to become less human, to hate what we are. To feel shame and guilt. To make prayer and devotionals base rituals we start and stop throughout the year. But God asks us to be human. Only when we are human do we feel the pain of others and are motivated to change the world. Humans touch and love. Humans speak and do.

The God of the Bible destroys cities. The God of the Bible delivers nations. The God of the Bible is brutal and unpredictable. Maybe this God does care about church building funds. And maybe He is working on getting me that new car. And maybe He did help the Saints win the Superbowl, and Halle Berry get her Oscar. But I’m not convinced that He did. I think He’s up to something more.

I think He is about spreading discontent. He wants to shake the suburbs and rain on soccer games. He wants to take our cul-de-sac Christianity on the road. He wants nice Christians who blend in to speak out against injustice. He wants us to take a stand on politics and fight AIDS. He wants us to feed the orphans and not ignore the fact that Sister Leader is crying during worship. He wants us to be human!

Then why is it that I struggle so much with the desire to become less human?

I think it goes back to that fateful day in the garden. The tree of knowledge of good and evil. The desire to be more like God and less like man. The original sin.

The Bible never asks us to be like God. In the journey of divinity, we find ourselves reaching toward a version of sanctification that will save us from our humanity. And as good and noble as we become, we find that we are still not who we want to be. The journey to become like God will always lead to dissatisfaction or complacency because we will never be like God. But instead, the Bible asks us to be like Christ. A friend of sinners. Comforter to the weak. Meek and lowly at heart. A sufferer. A martyr. To become like Christ is to become more human. To become more of who you really are. Christ is as human as it gets.

I mean, what if sanctification is less about piety and more about justice? What if holiness is less about being noble and more about being human? What if Christian spirituality looked less like the Pope and more like Nelson Mandela?

So what am I getting at?

Before the end of my lunch with Jenn, she started to tear up. Whenever we have conversations like this, she cries. I never know how it happens, I only know that it always happens. She is not an emotional friend, so when she cries, I always feel it. But rather than embrace what I feel, I immediately disengage. During this particular lunch, she called me out on it.

“Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Whenever I start to cry, you steel over.”

“Is it noticeable?”

“Yes. Very.”

I laughed it off, but her observation struck at the core of my existence. Rather than embrace the natural emotion that flows from seeing human vulnerability, I disengage. Become less human. Because maybe, just maybe if I don’t cry, then I won’t feel anything. And if I don’t feel anything, then I won’t have to do anything. And if I don’t do anything, then no one will need me. And if no one needs me, then I won’t need anyone. This is the height of selfishness. This is non-humanity.

The less human you are, the less there is to lose.

The less human you are, the less people expect of you.

I’ve been spit out of God’s mouth before. He wants me hot. He’ll take me cold. But He can’t stand it when I’m lukewarm. When I do nothing, I’m lukewarm.

So what does all of this mean for me? For us?

I’m praying for tenderheartedness now more than ever. I’m looking for opportunities to be human. My eyes are open. Wide and bright. I’m studying justice. I want to experience what it means to fight for people. I will take the words that God gives me and give them away. I want to love violently. I want to do something. I will do something. I WILL change the world.