Becoming Human
Jocelyn shares how God uses one of the books read during the traineeship to reveal to her what it means to be human.
I started the traineeship with fairly simple intentions – I was already planning to leave my job which would give me time on my hands, and had been thinking about what ingredients go into building a healthy church. So I thought, why not? I looked forward to a time of diving into thoughts, conversations and books that I would not have otherwise had the time and presence of mind to read while I was in full time employment, curious as I might have been about them.
Little did I expect the deep existential journey the Lord would have me be on these past five months.
Growing up in the Singapore system, I lived my life as a constant stream of activity. Stepping off the “train” of my career meant that most of the activity that occupied my time and conversations got stripped away. As the waters of my life stilled, the bubbles brewing in the background found a space to breathe and rise to the surface. Who am I without my work? Who am I in relation to God, to others, to the church? What am I motivated by? What gives meaning to the days, the months, the years that will come ahead? These questions were no longer conceptual – questions to be thought about sometimes but quickly put aside in the light of ever more pressing Things To Do. These are questions that I now live.
The final reading in our five-month journey of the traineeship was Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hand by Paul Tripp. I must confess that by this point, I was heavy with reading fatigue. The questions I was carrying and the readings sometimes felt like they were on different planes, and I thought, “Ok, let’s just get through this last one.” But God had something to show me.
In his third chapter “Do We Really Need Help?”, Tripp explores this question from the perspective of humans before the Fall. Even before sin entered the world, humans were created to be creatures who were (a) dependent (requiring help from God and others), and (b) interpretive (needing frameworks to make meaning of the world). This means that existential questions like “Who am I in this world?” and “What is the meaning and purpose of my life?” are not the result of a fallen world, but fundamentally human questions as God designed us to have.
Humans were made to need help and to find meaning outside of themselves.
Humans were made to need help and to find meaning outside of themselves. By design, Adam and Eve were created to grow in their knowledge, understanding and love for God, and for each other. They were created “weak” so that they could participate in growth and receive provision and love in an interdependent relationship. In this light, I thought, perhaps my existential “lostness” was not such a bad thing after all.
After all, to be human is to be weak, and to need help finding my place in the world.
Sin on the other hand, was characterised by Adam and Eve’s refusal to embrace their humanity. Instead, driven by their desire to be as God, they disobeyed God’s command and ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.
It is in our sin that we refuse our humanity and crave to be gods.
Somehow, I had always assumed our human “lacks” were a product of the Fall. As I grow towards perfection in Christ, my subconscious assumption was that I must become stronger and less and less needy, and more able to support others. My image of perfection was one of no lack, no weakness. But isn’t that the warped pursuit of perfection that characterised the Fall? In this vision of perfection, we see dependence on God and one another as the thing which signals our being “not there yet”. We reject the weakness of our human condition for the idea that we could be as wise, as self-sufficient as God, and complete without Him. It is in our sin that we refuse our humanity and crave to be gods.
This week marks the first week of Advent.
In Advent, I remember this Jesus who came to inhabit the fullness of humanity in all of its weakness. This Jesus who embodied the full weakness of His humanity so that He could perfectly display the power of God made perfect through Him. The Son of God came, shedding His divinity. This, is the image of perfection we are confronted with, not our own visions of it.
The Son of God came to show me what it truly means to be human.
So in this season of existential ponderings, I am giving up playing God. I am shedding every pretense of having answers that I do not. I am embracing the weakness, the wonderings and wanderings of my humanity, trusting it will lead me to my Lord. Instead of turning my face away from His frail form and hurrying toward heavenly glories, I will stay with this journey while I’m here on earth – to know the Word became Flesh in His full glory, His glory as a man.
This Advent, I am preparing to receive this Son of Man, from whom I learn and re-learn, what it means to become human.