Our New Blog Series, The Joy of Being Human
“Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” Genesis 1:31. Is there joy to be had in embracing our humanness? God calls His creation “very good” and we are created in His image. (Genesis 1:27). Join the blog team every week as each member brings you their unique perspective on the often simple joys to be had in being made human.
With jobs in education and four kids in school, our family very much looks forward to summer break. Our first family outing of the summer was picking strawberries at a local farm. To me, it is one of the most wonderful and joyous experiences to stand in a field of green and savor the sweetness of that first fresh-picked strawberry of the season. With each bite, I am full of thankfulness and joy and awe that I am able to enjoy such a simple pleasure in life.
I believe that being fully present in my enjoyment, appreciation, and gratitude for a moment like this is a sincere act of worship that pleases the heart of God. Unfortunately, it is a fairly new idea for me that such an experience could be as much an act of worship as reading my Bible or praying or listening to a sermon. For much of my life, I thought of my spirituality and connection with God as having to do with more “churchy” activities while my day-to-day activities as a human were just things to do in between the more important spiritual things. It’s been a long journey for me to realize that the whole gamut of human experience ought to be entered into as an act of loving worship directed to the God who created it all.
Jesus said that one of the two most important commands or rules that we can focus on in life is to love our neighbor as our self. One way of looking at the “as our self” part of this command is that a proper love of our neighbor is inherently connected to a proper love of ourselves. I think that loving ourselves properly (as God has created us) must include embracing and celebrating our humanity. The first pronouncement that God speaks over humanity in the Bible is that they are good. Very good (Genesis 1:31)! That means, from God’s vantage point, there is deep goodness and beauty to be celebrated in the reality of our humanness, and that goodness surely extends to the most elemental aspects of our existence as human beings.
No doubt, there is much sin and brokenness present in the world, and human beings often reflect and participate in these realities. In many ways, human beings have a tendency to work against the very goodness that God has created in the world and in them, but this does not negate the essential goodness of human life as God has designed it to function.
I think it is fascinating to read the creation stories in the Bible and think about all the aspects of human life that are present before there is any mention of sin or “the fall.”
There was sex to be enjoyed. (Genesis 1:28)
There were amazing smells to savor. (Genesis 2:12)
There were all kinds of yummy food to eat. (Genesis 1:29-30, 2:9)
There was beauty to behold. (Genesis 2:9)
There were rhythms of work and rest to observe. (Genesis 2:2, 15)
There was relational partnership and intimacy to experience. (Genesis 2:20, 24)
There was open-ended creativity to perform. (Genesis 2:19-20)
Each of these parts of our humanity can be avenues of great joy and pleasure. It has been a good exercise for me to reflect on each one of these aspects of our common humanity and what it means that God designed human life in this way. Our faith in God, the creator and designer of it all, should draw us more deeply and authentically into these joyful and pleasurable experiences of human life.
For Christians, God’s salvation is not a salvation or deliverance from our humanity, but a salvation that we enter into and experience in and through our humanity. In fact, early Christians went to great and costly lengths to defend this truth. Jesus provides a path for us not to escape our bodies into some spiritual disembodied existence, but a path to become integrated, whole, and flourishing in our humanity. That is one of the main points of the incarnation of Christ.
The Jesus we read about in the Gospels didn’t just pray prayers, preach sermons, heal people, and cast out demons. In fact, most of his thirty-three or so years on earth were spent doing other things. He fully participated in the most common and basic joys and struggles of human life. In the background of the wonderous miracles and teachings of Jesus that we read about in the Bible are simple, unpretentious, down to earth human activities. God embraced humanity by becoming one. Jesus embraced his own humanity by entering fully into the human experience with all its joys and sorrows, capacities and limitations:
Jesus washed feet. (John 13:5)
Jesus cooked breakfast. (John 20:9)
Jesus started fires (John 20:9).
Jesus sung songs. (Mark 14:26)
Jesus went to parties. (John 2:1-3)
Jesus slept on the ground. (Matthew 8:20)
Jesus hiked up mountains (Matthew 17:1)
Jesus worked with wood. (Mark 6:3)
In all these activities, Jesus was fully experiencing life as a human being and God was demonstrating to us all what it looks like to live joyfully and freely as a human being in the world that God created.
Although it is easy to focus on the negative side of all the limitations that we experience as human beings, these limitations also provide the context for great art and creativity to emerge. Pastor Erwin McManus writes about the fact that art always comes into existence through a medium that has certain limitations and boundaries. He then applies this principle to humanity: “We are a work of art, and the limitations that often lead us to conclude that we’re only human should move us to celebrate that we are in fact incredibly human… You are God’s preferred medium to express himself and reveal himself.”(1)
So, with that in mind, go enjoy a piece of shortcake with fresh picked strawberries and whipped cream on top knowing that you are somehow expressing and sharing in the goodness and joy of God the master artist.
Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 161.
About the Author
Aaron is a passionate seeker of God and truth, and he enjoys encouraging others in their own pursuits of the same. He especially likes to think about how God is at work in the most ordinary and mundane aspects of our existence. He loves going on adventures to new places with his wife, Heather, and four kids and his perfect day would involve an excellent cup of coffee (or two!), a hike to somewhere beautiful and serene, and some good conversation over a pint at a warm pub. He currently serves as an adjunct instructor at Portland Seminary and co-leads the CitySalt Kids’ Ministry along with his wife, Heather.