I read a quote from Sigmund Freud yesterday. He said, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”
I am quite sure that in many ways, Mr. Freud was much more intelligent than I. And yet there is a part of me that says that on this (as with a number of other issues), he was wrong. Or at least only partially right. For one thing, is “work” a cornerstone of our humanness? There are some people I know that cannot work. They are incapable of it, for one reason or another. Josh, for example, is a young man that I know. He was in an accident and is a paraplegic. He will probably never walk again, let alone work again (barring a medical miracle from the Lord). And yet, though he’ll never walk again or work again, my sister who works with him will tell you that he is certainly very human. He loves, he wants, he hurts, he lives.
Is “love” a cornerstone of being human? I don’t know. My baby Samantha was born on June 2, 2008. Will she be capable of love at some point? Certainly. Does she love right now, at the ripe old age of 10.5 months? I seriously doubt it. Is she human? Most definitely. She inspires joy, she wants, she hurts, she lives. Ok, this is a weak excuse to insert a photo of my beauty…
The instant I read that quote from Freud, I thought of another quote, but I couldn’t place it in my memory. All I could remember was that it started out, “What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be human?” But I couldn’t bring it to the front of my brain. It’s a terrible thing to get old.
Google to the rescue. “What does it mean to be human?” gave me 56,000 results. But “What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be human” gave me exactly 7 results – one of which was a page with the quote from an ooooollllllldddddd Rich Mullins album. His intro to the song “Higher Education and Book of Love” starts out with this spoken essay….
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be human? I cannot help but suspect that at one time in the history of thinking that people believed that it meant that we were spiritual and that we could make choices and were capable of aspiring to higher ideals… like maybe loyalty or maybe faith… or maybe even love. But now we told by people who think they know, that we vary from amoeba only in the complexity of our makeup and not in what we essentially are. They would have us think as Dysart said that we are forever bound up in certain genetic reigns – that we are merely products of the way things are and not free – not free to be the people who make them that way. They would have us see ourselves as products so that we could believe that we were something to be made – something to be used and then something to be disposed of. Used in their wars – used for their gains and then set aside when we get in their way.
Well, who are they? They are the few who sit at the top of the heap – dung heap though it is – and who say it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. Well, I do not know that we can have a Heaven here on earth, but I am sure we need not have a Hell either. What does it mean to be human? I cannot help but believe that it means we are spiritual – that we are responsible and that we are free – that we are responsible to be free.”
As this blog grows, I suspect that you’ll hear a whole lot more about Rich Mullins – he’s easily my favorite artist of all time, bar none. I think that he hits the nail on the head here. And yet I think that there may be something that I can add.
There is a large segment of society that preaches that we are only better-looking monkeys – and there are some who would even dispute the statement that we are “better-looking.” There is another (smaller) segment of society that teaches that we are simply spiritual – that the physical body in which we live is something to be shucked off at the moment of our physical death so that our spirit may live forever.
Is it not true that when we talk about our humanness, we are both spiritual, as Rich insists, and also physical? Our spirit will live on past our physical death, yes; but will not our physical body be resurrected to an eternal life also? Will not our bodies exist forever in a relationship with God that we call “heaven”?
Consider Jesus. He is born into our world, our physical/spiritual time and space, following in the footsteps of our father Adam who was also perfect at the beginning. As opposed to Adam (who failed miserably), Jesus lives a perfect sinless life. He is killed regardless of the fact that he has done nothing to deserve it. His dead physical body is placed in the earth. By the power of God working through and with the Holy Spirit, the body of our Lord Jesus is raised back up from death. He is not a ghost, not solely some mystical spirit. He meets with his disciples. He eats with his disciples. They touch his hair, his arms, his back, his hands, his side. His body is real, it is resurrected, it is raised up to heaven in the ascension – not left behind or shucked off when he leaves this earth. It is eternal. It will live forever along with his spirit.
Was not our Lord Jesus the only person to ever be able to truly claim the label of “human being”? Wouldn’t it be fair to call we who follow in his footsteps “sub-human”? We may be greater than the animals, yet surely we who fall so short of the example which Jesus has set for us cannot claim the same level of being which he has?
What does it mean to be human? It means to be physical – with all of the hurts and pleasures that come with it. It means to be spiritual, with all of the hurts and pleasures that come with it. It means to be eternal – with all of the rewards and punishments that come with it.
What does it mean to be human?
