- Humans
are physically weak
God specifically made humanity physically weak, at least
compared to the spirit world. In the
Bible, “spirit” doesn’t mean ethereal, but supernaturally strong. An angel is some kind of superman who can
turn invisible and transport to another place instantly. Humans, individually, are weak—easy to kill,
quick to get sick, weak when young and weak when old. Humanity is just a weak species. Which is why it is amazing what humanity has
done. They have created mountains out of
steel and glass. They have changed the
surface of the world in ways only God has done.
Individually, humans are weak, but collectively, humanity is a
god—creative and powerful. For this
reason the God says, “Nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible to
them,” and then He limits human capacity for community (Genesis 11:6-7). Humans are made to be weak so that only
through God’s strength can they accomplish great things.
- Humans
are mentally weak
The human brain is an amazingly adaptive creation. If a person is blind, the brain takes the
cells used for sight and uses them for other tasks, strengthening other senses. However, our minds are somewhat too adaptive,
able to adapt to imaginary structures, thus becoming maladaptive to real
situations. It requires a strong mind to
respond appropriately to the unbelievably complex physical, social, and
intellectual environment we find ourselves in.
Society is more complex than ever—and our brains adapt, somewhat. But more often than not, our minds confuse
reality with a lie, confuse what is with what we’ve been told, confuse our
thinking with what is real. More and more
people are mentally and socially incapable of functioning in our society. But even the functional will make grave
mental mistakes. We trust that which we ought not and distrust that which we
can rely on. And in the simplest of
tasks, we find ourselves in error.
- Humans
are self-oriented
In the womb, every human being is alone. For nine months, there is no one else in the
universe. Then we are born and we have
the stark reality of others thrust upon us as a stark reality. However, in our minds, the Other does not
exist. There is simply those who provide
for our needs. Eventually, we recognize
other human beings who might even be equal to us. But the habit of thinking of ourselves as the
only individual in the universe is hard to break. Perhaps in general we see others as equal to
ourselves, at least philosophically, but when it comes down to it, when
stressed or in severe crisis, we take care of ourselves first, or only.
This does
not mean that humans cannot be altruistic.
They can, although it is rare, and requires a severe form of
discipline. But the same firefighter who
was willing to sacrifice himself for a victim of a fire might also beat his
wife. The philanthropist could ignore
her children for her work, and then excuse her wrong as “necessity.” In the end, we put energy into that which we
feel compelled to focus on, not because it is right or because it helps the
most people, but because we have some innate drive to do so.
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| Humans wear strange clothes |
It is
fascinating to hear people talk about “love”, meaning erotic or romantic
attachment. This love more than any
other is driven by inner need, yet it is spoken of at times as altruistic, as
focus on the Other. Another person is involved
in erotic love almost by default, but erotic love does not in any way necessitate
the benefit of the other. Rather, erotic
love is driven exclusively by inner desire, and when that desire acts in
opposition to the other’s need, then the other is sacrificed on the altar of
Love. Romeo and Juliet were perfect
examples of the inner selfish drive ignoring the needs of the Other. Yes, they loved the object of their desire,
but ignored the needs of everyone else and allowed their families to be
destroyed for the sake of their desire.
Another
kind of love is often confused with selflessness, which is parental love. Again, this is a love that is based on an
inner drive, not necessarily focused on the needs of the other. We can see this in the abuses of parental
love. How often does fatherly love—the
love of provision and discipline—turn into the narrow-focused selfishness of a
workaholic or an abuser? And motherly
love—the love of empathy and benevolence—can easily turn into co-dependence or
depression, if the love is driven by inner need instead of the need of the
other.
All too often do we call our
selfishness “love” and then excuse all the wrongs we do because they were done
out of “love”. “Love” is only a benefit
when it is done out of knowledge and true concern for the Other, not due to
single-minded adherence to our inner drives.
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| It's all about the meat |
- Humans
are survival-oriented
Human beings are wired to be survivalists. This doesn’t mean that we can necessarily be
dropped in the middle of any wilderness and figure out how to live in harsh
conditions. I know that I would die, and
quickly, if stuck in that kind of a situation.
Rather, we are wired to focus on the things that pertain to our own
needs, and to help us attain those needs.
I am not
just talking about food, clothing and shelter, although this is part of
it. But most of us live in a society in
which these foundational needs are provided for, even to those who are unable
to obtain them on their own. Once the
basic survival needs are taken care of, then we focus on other aspects of survival. We focus on security, so we are protected
from harm, whether that be from wild dogs or from the threat of
terrorists. We focus on social
connection, because we know that there is strength in numbers. We focus on inner peace, because we know that
excessive stress can kill us (or others if we tend to be an angry type).
And there
is nothing wrong with trying to survive in these ways. The problem is, even when we have our needs
met in these areas, we tend to do more than our survival necessitates, and when
we overcompensate, our ability to survive actually goes down, not up. Our need for security easily becomes anxiety,
which causes excessive stress and we tend to overreact to others—causing
destruction to both ourselves and others.
We can eat to survive, or we can eat to self-medicate our mental
instabilities which causes us physical problems. We can work to maintain enough money to live
on, but if money becomes a matter of societal honor, we can horde money for
ourselves—money we don’t need or use—until we become dependent on an obscenely
high salary, and that becomes our level for survival. And society can become obese as well until
they make it a legal necessity for others to live according to their high level
of normalcy, where they end up punishing those who do not live with electricity
or a certain kind of housing.
Because of
our tendency to focus on survival, humans tend to over-survive. We see certain levels of lifestyles as the
“basics”, but we very much overcompensate for what we actually need. Paul said, “With food and clothing we shall
be content”, yet try to find a single follower of Paul who agrees with this
statement.
- Humans
are oppressed
If we take as a basic definition of freedom “the ability to
do what is right without punishment”, then there is not a single human being
that is free.
We are controlled by our fears,
which force us to do actions to alleviate that fear. We fear losing our jobs, which give us the
money to live our lifestyles, so we do whatever the jobs necessitate, even if
we know it’s wrong. We fear
confrontation, so we stay away from relationships that would cause us to grow
to avoid that which we find unpleasing.
We fear those who are unlike ourselves, so we avoid all those who are in
greater need than ourselves, and make up stories about why we shouldn’t connect
to them. We fear punishment from the
government, so we keep ourselves from doing good things that would get us
punished. We fear being shamed, so we try
to fit into our society, even when our society is wrong. We fear death and pain, so we don’t do the
good things that cause these things. And
because we do not want to face our fears, we make excuses for why following our
fears is the right thing to do.
But we do
not live by our fears absolutely—we not mice, scurrying away from every hint
of monsters. We also have drives. We are driven by our addictions—that which we
know harms us but makes us feel better or normal. We are not afraid of our addictions, but we
know that they should be feared. They
are too close to who we are to allow us to be fearful. We are driven by our pleasures—our need for
excitement or relaxation or to forget our normal life. We are driven by need for family and
community, and we will face our fears of meeting the opposite sex, of having a
baby, of going to a new meeting full of strangers, just so that we can find or
create that community that meets our drive.
But we are
forced to do these things, either by ourselves, or by others. Some of these things are good, some are
not. But the ethics or spirituality of
the situation is almost never what drives us.
Rather we are like magnets, either pulled toward or driven away by this
or that force. We may claim
independence, but rarely do we make a decision based on our own free will, on
what is good. We are led by others, by
the context we live in. This is
oppression. We are not free.
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| "I wear my sunglasses at night... so what?" |
- Humans
focus on the wrong solutions
We recognize our oppressions, our tendency to
over-compensate, and the fact that we tend to do things that are not helpful to
ourselves or others. And so we try to
find solutions. “If only I lived
somewhere else,” we say to ourselves, not realizing that the next place will be
just as full of oppressions as this place.
“If only I met the right person,” we say, not realizing that the next
person is just as imperfect as we are, and just as much in need, driven by
their own desires. “If only I had more
money,” we say, not realizing that money doesn’t change who we are, it only
magnifies who we are, causing our problems to increase, not decrease. “If only I had the right job,” we say, not
realizing that jobs are not about the needs of the employees, but the needs of
the owners or customers, so employees always get the short shrift, no matter
what the context (this isn’t always the case for professionals—the only workers
who are treated as full human beings).
“If only I had more pleasure,” we say, but pleasure only requires more
pleasure, creating a cycle of oppression.
What we
really want is an easy solution that will meet all of our needs. Of course, part of the problem is that we
don’t actually want what we need. We
need to work hard to become the best of who we are. We need to face our fears to be free of
them. We need to refuse our desires at
times in order to obtain our true desire.
The most amazing thing is that at times we need to be still and do
nothing, allowing others to provide for us completely, just as if we were a
baby, in full trust. Of course, none of
us are wise enough to know when is the time to do one or the other.
- Humans
are sinful
Sin is the destruction of relationship, disloyalty, the harm
of the Other. Sin is disloyalty to God
who created us, who loves us and provides all good things for us to meet our
needs. We tend to think much more of
ourselves than God. And even though our
relationship with God is much less complex than our relationship to government
or family, and much more central to our needs, we gravitate toward the latter
relationships rather than the former.
Sin is harming other people, who were made in God’s image, because
of our own fears and desires. It is
acting out destruction against others because it is better for us. It is not acting for the benefit of others,
even though it is in our power to do so, because of our own fears and drives. It is listening to that which oppress us
rather than God’s Spirit who leads us to do what is good for all.
We do not sin because of Adam’s sin. Rather, each and every one of us enacts
Adam’s sin ourselves. We believe in our
independence more than we believe in our relationship with God. We rely more on our sense of fear and our
sense of need rather than our more obvious factual knowledge of another’s
need.
Why are we sinful?
Because we are weak. Even our
displays of strength—our technology, our ability to travel in space, our
ability to fly around the earth in hours, our communication with each other no
matter where we live, our growth of amazing amounts of food, our ability to
control the atom, our ability to crush diseases—are paired directly with our
weaknesses—the multiplication of diseases, the ability to destroy innocents at
the push of a button, two billion people starving, a thriving porn industry and
slavery associated with that, an epidemic of homelessness, diseases that ravage
a continent although they can be stopped, millions of people drinking
contaminated water. The internet is used
to gossip and dishonor much more than uphold the good. Television is used to encourage fear instead
of provide social benefit. Knowledge of
the Bible is used to destroy people’s morality instead of building up people’s
love of God and others.
But I can’t really blame anyone. I do the same things, although I try not
to. I am weak. I am human.
Lord, let me dive into You so Your love drowns my desires and
fears. Let me come out a new creature of
purity and new hope.
