Why Ask What it Means to be Human?

Instead, Start with God

Lately, it seems that everyone is talking about “what it means to be human.” Admittedly, “everyone” includes a bookish crowd of academics and theologians, plus a few “keynote speaker” types; nonetheless, it seems a rather strange question to ask if you’ve been fully human for, say, 30-50 years. I’m certain that a decade ago, I never heard this question asked, although the groundwork for this inquiry was certainly laid. Going further back to the 1980’s, this question would have earned some well-deserved stupid looks in my home. For all the supposed ignorance of our Tupperware-encased era, most of us rubes instinctively understood what it meant to be human.

Once a topic interesting only to over-thinkers and philosophical types, it has now been mainstreamed for everyone else, with a variety of podcasts, books, lectures, and sermons aiming to engage this trending topic. In some ways, this is the textbook case of overcomplicating something that, for most of us, seems quite simple. Yet, the question was also forced upon us through the anti-human influences of artificial intelligence and gender fluidity. Like biological females, it seems that humanity itself now needs a hearty defense—a truthful taxonomy of our body, mind and spirit.

How have we arrived at this creepy juncture of biology, existentialism and technology? In all our supposed progress, we are now sadly confused on the elementary stuff. As the mother of six humans and owner of two Labrador retrievers, I now consider myself a lay-expert on some of our basic distinctions—imagination, speech, and laundry beings important ones; yet if all the experts are correct, there’s apparently more to it than that. If I may put away my cynicism towards this topic, I’ll offer a simpler explanation—a theory of humanity for non-philosophers like me.

Without covering the long backstory of civilizational decline, I would argue that the identity cult and its Silicon Valley allies, having brought us to the precipice of total destruction, have necessitated the trendy crash courses in Homo sapiens. All their boastful claims of god-like power have left us starved, bereft of meaning. We cannot define women, and we also cannot define human—and Dr. Google’s grim office is lost in the meta, quite unable to help us out.

Let’s start at the beginning then, at the first things, as they say. In the beginning, the eternal God created the heavens and the earth by the power of his word. By the close of the sixth day, having formed the natural environment and flying creatures, he created Adam and Eve in his own image. According to the biblical record, he didn’t discuss what it meant to be human. Instead, he tasked them with cultivating and taking dominion over the world of animal and plant life as well as reproducing and multiplying the human population.

God’s vocational duties for Adam and Eve weren’t his only communication, though. He defined some limits through a covenant of works. He gave them permission to eat from every tree in the garden, but with one prohibition: they must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in so doing they would immediately introduce death to creation. In other words, they would ultimately die—a reversal of their Edenic life, and a departure from “what it means to be human”. Thus, long before lecturers and Ted-talkers tackled the topic, God anticipated our questions by confirming his authority and defining our purpose and limits—the very things rejected by those who now worship at the throne of identity.

Stunningly, even in that tragic rebellion, God pursued Adam and Eve. Reading the story as a child, I remember wondering why they though they could hide themselves to escape his garden presence. Even more, I wondered at God’s words when he encountered the guilty pair. He posed pointed questions that would summarize humanity’s tragic departure—where they were, who had advised them, and what they had done. Notably absent was any question about “what it means to be human.”

What has inspired our wholesale rejection of the divine mandate? In our shameful chaos, why would we run from the God who still pursues us? As he did in the garden, so the enemy convinces humans of every subsequent generation that God’s stuffy old admonitions aren’t exactly true, and they certainly aren’t fair. The old argument is still compelling if you stare at the forbidden fruit long enough. We therefore enjoy an advanced form of the decay our first parents introduced when they, craving independence and power, rejected God’s authority—along with his implicit definition of what it means to be human.

Many millennia later, the logic approaches its endpoint. Our decadent culture asserts that not only are God’s directives offensive, but that they are products of fables, making our entire existence a frightening Darwinian happenstance. With no ultimate authority, no divine design, and no purpose, human life’s very definition is up for grabs, too; and true to God’s warning in Eden, death has gripped us all. Escaping that unhappy reality has inspired everything from Epicureanism to transgenderism, with none of these positions managing to hold all things together—and especially not our fragile hearts.

Back to the trending question, though; our conundrum is not then solved by dissecting a three-dimensional Homo sapiens, although we may thereby incidentally discover God’s image in us. In starting with what it means to be human, we ask the wrong question altogether. We are so curious about ourselves and so little curious about the One who made us. To know ourselves and our confounding nature fully, we must first undertake a proper study of God.

Who is God, and what does he think and demand of us? We know a bit of him from his handiwork; galaxies of fiery stars, perfect circles, bittersweet tears, a baby’s laughter. However, what he thinks and demands of us is known only by reading his word. It is only in scripture that we understand how an infinite God sees us—his own image imprinted upon an estranged humanity, and the object of his glorious plan for redemption.

When we read his word, then, the big question is answered; we discover who God is, which then reveals the truth about us, too. His identity makes our own less interesting; similarly, his power destroys our self-exalting fantasies. By encountering his shocking holiness—a concept so foreign to moderns—we learn the reality of humanity’s desperate situation: We are broken, rotten, and separated from a holy God, but he provides the repair. In theological terms, his beautiful remedy destroys Eden’s old covenant, with its deadly punishment, through his covenant of grace. Christ’s redemptive work resurrects life from death, and his transformed humanity no longer wonders at itself, but reflects instead the happier glory of God.

In gazing at him and the word that reveals his heart, we finally learn just what it means to be human. Starting with our creator God—our king, redeemer, counselor and judge—renders needless those trending theories for rediscovering man. We are creature not creator, facing wrath and needing rescue, yet lovingly pursued by the King who governs time; and despite the world’s rebellious boasts and clever attempts to avoid his judgment, we’re still coram Deo—living before the face of God.