How to be Human

In the first part of this series, we talked about how we shy away from asking tough questions.

Questions like:

“Why am I here?”

“What is the purpose of this life?”

“Am I doing this right?”

“Who am I, really?”

Be it fear or pride (or both), there is something that keeps us from dealing with ourselves.

We’re cowards.

We need courage.

It takes time, but once we’re able to break down the barriers that keep us from looking inward (and dealing with what we find), we’ve taken the first steps toward becoming truly human.

We can be as we are, and be human because there’s no other way to be, or we can be human in the rightful sense; we can be Human as we were meant to be.

We have a Creator. A Designer. A God who, in creating us, put a little bit of His own likeness in us.

He makes us in His image, and we choose to make ourselves into another.

In doing so, we twist and pervert and stain His image in us.

We want life—our humanity—on our own terms. But only He knows the terms that give us Life.

We are meant to run on gasoline, but we insist on filling our tanks with water.

We were made for Life, but pursue just about anything else. And anything else leads—inevitably—to death.

To be truly human is to reject the “anything else”—our vices, our idols, our lives on our own terms—and choose Life instead.

This involves, of course, a total surrender of ourselves.

We can’t have Life, real Humanity, if we insist on keeping any part of it for our own.

To be Truly Human is to die.

Real Life means undergoing death.

Jesus did it first. Not because He had to, or because there was anything in Him that needed killing off, but because His death “broke the seal.”

His death opened the curtain.

We can be crucified—and then resurrected—because He paved the way.

His death gives us life, but also shows us what kind of life we ought to live.

I’ve heard it called “cruciformity.”

In this way, we live “through Christ,” who loved us and gave Himself for us.

As we walk that path of a crucified life, we learn to look more like Him.

We become Truly Human.

We carry our cross.

We crucify ourselves daily.

We are pruned, and broken in, and carved out into a new image that resembles something like Christ.

An image of Christ.

As we were meant to be.

Don’t forget to tip your drivers.