More than human, less than human
It’s an ancient wisdom teaching that the human existence is one of constant tension: always being pulled in opposite directions—to be more than human and to be less than human. Alcoholics Anonymous uses their own terminology to paint a picture of this—they describe that to be human is to be both beast and angel. This is the plight of humanity—always maintaining our itch towards the eternal, transcendent, and divine, while living a fleshly, earthly life full of limitations, weaknesses, and disappointments.
We know we are meant for more than a simply animalistic existence—that’s why we have spiritual and religious practices—they create spaces and avenues for us to develop that part of us that feels eternal. This tension, as beautiful and amazing as it is, leads us to a strained existence if we resist it. If I can’t embrace the seemingly at-odds aspects of being both limited and transcendent, I have to eventually choose just one.
These opposite aspects of the human experience may seem to be at odds or contradictory to each other, but the reality is that they aren’t at all. In fact, they are an avenue, one to the other.
If I decide I to transcend my human experience, in order to do so, I wind up thinking only of myself in order to make my own way to God, and my self-absorption actually roots me deeper into my limitations. Blaise Pascal observed this paradox hundreds of years ago as he described: “He who would be an angel becomes a beast.” When a person insists on being more than human, she actually becomes less than human.
You see this is the story of the Bible. When humans attempt to overcome their limitations as humans, it becomes the very thing that kills them. On a broader scale, technology and transportation can be obvious examples of this—we’re much more efficient and entertained by our smart phones, but our addiction to screens is killing our relationships and changing the way we think. Our developments as a species in transportation and electricity have transformed the way we see the world and interact within it, and the products of pollution rob our lungs and our planet of the very breath we need to survive. The wisdom of the world says it is ours and we should conquer it, and when we live by that wisdom, we sacrifice our humanity.
The attempt to be more than human makes us less than human.
But there is a flip side—there is a life-giving truth that Paul writes over and over again in all his letters, that Jesus teaches his disciples and the crowds and the pharisees and every single person he touches—and that’s this: the way up is down. In embracing our humanity, in owning our weaknesses, in seeing the fragility of the human condition, and in identifying ourselves with it, we are made more divine. In humbling ourselves to the fact that we will fail ourselves, we will hurt the ones we love, we will trip sometimes and we will fall—when we embrace our weaknesses, we are freed in them. Not only that, but we are freed to embrace the weaknesses of others.
This is the gospel! This is the backwards way of Christ! This is the healing Love that came to undo all of the selfish ambition that creates division and war and death and pride. We all want to be great, but our true greatness is found when we surrender that need, and choose Love instead.
Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. God is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”