In order to understand or reveal God’s nature, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of human nature. Take a moment and ask yourself what you think it means to be human. What is humanity, and what is our purpose? Most Christians will come right out and say that humans are more than simple animals who flourished through an evolutionary process as many claim. But as we look around and watch our world kill each other it’s hard to think of ourselves as any better than them. Is our purpose really to be born, live a hateful, violent life and die? Is that all there is to our humanity? If it is, then we most certainly have no right to call ourselves anything greater than animals.
Our world is captivated by money, power and sex. Our whole lives are wasted as we chase these things frivolously. If you have ever used a laser pointer to play with a cat or dog, you know how amusing it is to watch them run everywhere trying to catch the light. They are so determined to catch something of so little value. It’s impossible to catch the light, but that does’t stop them from trying. How are we any different in relation to our sexual desires, our greed for money and power, or our pride and self-righteous way of living? The real difference is in the severity of the situation. We waste our lives away chasing these things expecting to be satisfied in them one day. We live by our natural instinct with no desire to look outside the cage we are living in. We are animals. We are completely dead to our true being.
When are you going to wake up and realize that there is someone holding the laser? When are you going to realize that our ignorance towards what it means to live and be human is the reason we are on this road to disaster? When are you going to realize that humanity was created with a higher intent than merely living off instinctual desires like animals? Just take one look at the people we idolize. Our world sexualizes everything. Our world praises narcissism. We worship money and power to an extent that we are willing to lower the human value of others in order to get more of it.
I think that now more than ever, people are starting to realize that our moral capability is remarkably higher than we demonstrate as a whole. The one thing holding us back is our pride. We lack lives of humility. We would rather lower our moral responsibility for the sake of human evolutionary pride, than strive after our divine moral calling and acknowledge that there is a divine authority. There is a reason why we are burdened in our hearts to seek goodness and virtue. There is a reason outside our physicality that causes us to yearn for moral refinement. An evolutionary mishap is not capable of producing a divine, absolute, non-subjective morality. Our biology is not all we are. We are spiritual beings manifested in physical form. Biologically we are no different than the animals that kill for food and dominance. But our morality and goodness which we so often reject are fragments of the perfect image of God originally woven into our humanity. We were created with a divine spirituality that transcended us above the instinctual world and gave us authority over it, to nurture and care for it. But that image is broken and distorted. God no longer sees himself when he looks into the mirror. He sees war, pride, greed, lust and death. He sees a morally primitive humanity accepting what seems to them as an inevitable brokenness. Humans lack the desire to find hope beyond the physical reality they see.
We only choose to see the dark cloud looming overhead. We taste a life that is bitter to swallow. Everything that lives must die. Sin has clenched life in its unyielding grasp until its very last breath is squeezed out helplessly. The very life that God created out of love is now a curse that reaps pain and death. Humanity is bound to a law that they are incapable to abide by. Our moral anarchy lowers our sense of purpose and meaning. We are left blind and hopeless, susceptible to any shallow depiction of beauty and truth. Anything to numb the reality we face every day as death creeps closer and closer.
We have gotten too comfortable with the dirt and grime on our skin. We continue to live our lives without giving it any attention. Our filth infects every laceration in life we receive. It has seeped into the pores of our being. We do our best to medicate, but don’t take the time to look for the cure. We are an infected creation. Sin is our deficiency, and we have chosen to embrace it. It’s the dirt and grime we are smothered in. Rolling around in the dirt is not going to do us any good. We are not designed to cleanse ourselves. There is no power in ourselves to change our function. You can’t clean a dirty world with a dirty towel. Only something formed with the specific intent to wash away our stains can give hope to our moral filth.
The Son
The Word of God is the projection of God’s voice. It is the form of God that vibrates the mirror of creation and directly interacts with creation. Jesus the Son is the Word manifested in physical form. That same Word that so intensely shook our world into existence became a man to deeply cleanse it. He came with one purpose, to Redeem the brokenness of mankind. Jesus’ name means savior, specifically in accordance to his function. Jesus came with full understanding of who we are and what we were meant to be. We are created in the God’s likeness. John 1:1 says,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The translated term “Word” is logos, which in simpler words means “the expression of thought”, or the “voice” of God. Its the way in which God projects his full message to mankind, or his function to man. Jesus is the Word of God. He was the physical embodiment of this full message of God. John 1:14 says,
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Our biology is the physical embodiment of our being. Our “being” or “spirit” is the essence of who we are. If our spirit is truly created in God’s image and likeness, then it has an eternal value beyond our biological world. But along with our physical world, it too is deformed, creating a gap between us and God. We have shattered the mirror God created in us, but Jesus offers to fill in the gaps and restore the image we once were.
I have so much more that I want to add but I really don’t want this to turn into a novel, yet! It is crucial to understand what we are in order to understand who God is and why the Son is so crucial to our being. If humanity is truly as shallow as the world tries to convince us of, then its no wonder our gruesome history keeps repeating itself. If humanity is only a biological hierarchy resulting from the circle of life, then we have no choice but to accept the pattern of immorality circling back around as well. Its in our physical nature to lust, to hate, to be selfish, prideful, and to wage war with each other. Don’t limit who we truly are. You have a burning desire in your heart to rise above that. Keep following that high moral calling because before you know it, you will see the cross of Jesus in the horizon.
Softly Spoken Truth 