[7 min read—client resource]
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at how what we believe about the character of God shapes our experiences of and responses to whatever we may be struggling with or suffering from. Let’s now look at his good design for us as human beings.
Who am I?
What we believe about our own humanity and identity will impact what we value and prioritize as well as our expectations of ourselves and other people.
For this discussion of identity and humanity, I am drawing predominantly from Kelly Kapic’s excellent book, You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News, which pushes back against notions in the Western world especially—and often in the church—that our limitations are shameful obstacles to be overcome and that dependence on others is bad (or at least weak). While I’m tempted to round out this post with, “Go read this book for yourself,” and leave it at that, I’ll summarize a few key takeaways (and quotations) that have been paradigm-shifting for me personally and with which I’ve already been blessed to encourage clients.
1. Finitude is not sin, but rejecting our God-given limits is: As Kapic asserts, “This impulse to reject our creaturely limits is as old as sin itself” (Kapic 12). He describes the Fall within the framework of distrusting God and rejecting his good design: “Subtly insinuating doubt and uncertainty, the serpent introduces distrust into the divine-human relationship. With these indirect tactics the serpent encourages his hearers to imagine they can and should know more. They should be more. He implies that divinely given limits are a fault to be overcome rather than a beneficial gift to be honored” (Kapic 12-13). Ever since then, there has been “a turning from the original good ordering of creation to a disordering: shalom is disrupted. And now we all live in this disordered relationship to our limits” (Kapic 13).
2. Your body is not bad: Are we ashamed of our bodies and their imperfections and limitations? Should we instead be more intentional about giving thanks for them and caring for them? Do we need to spend more time meditating on the incarnation and all that it means that God chose to take on human flesh?
Fundamental to what God loves and likes about you is your body, which he joyfully created. Too often we treat our bodies as insignificant or even bad, but when we do that we risk undervaluing what is central to the good news: in Christ ‘the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily’ (Col. 2:9). Part of being human is being limited by having a body. The incarnation—the Son of God taking on human flesh—is God’s great yes to his creation in general, and to finite human creatures in particular. Only when we fully appreciate this reality can we learn to live more comfortably in our own skin (Kapic 36).
3. Stating that “our identity is in Christ,” while true, may be a bit too simplistic to be truly helpful: While it is true that your life is in Christ and Christ is your life (Col. 3:1-4), it is also true that you were born into a certain family, place, time, and culture and we are deeply impacted by genetic makeup, experiences, and relationships. Kapic explains it this way:
Simplistic assumptions in our Christian culture also get in the way: for example, calls to find one’s ‘identity in Christ’ apart from a robust doctrine of creation can produce problems. When we spiritualize in a non-creation-affirming way, we often universalize and abstract, failing to appreciate how human creatures are shaped in real time and space. The fact that my identity must be in Christ doesn’t change the fact that I am this person and not that one, that I am from here and not there, and that I have this history and these relationships and not those (73).
So who am I? I am a Christian. I am a saint. I am a child of God whom he has called to good and meaningful work. As a finite creature, I am from a particular place and people; I don’t ignore my ethnicity, native language, socioeconomic setting, or the relationships that surround me. As God’s child, I am called not to deny my context or past but to see all of these relationships changed in and through God’s holy love. Here my identity is shaped and reshaped. Secure in Christ and aware of my dependence on others, I know that the Spirit works in me against the distorting effects of sin that harm the relationships God created us for. With gratitude I have been set free to engage in acts of love and reconciliation that now foster mutual life-giving communion. In this way, my identity can be properly found in Christ, in the community, and in relationship to God’s whole creation (Kapic 94).
4. Our distorted relationship to time is destructive: Have you ever felt like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done? Have you ever felt, as Bilbo Baggins expressed, “like butter scraped over too much bread”? Have you ever felt ruled by the clock and defined by your own productivity and efficiency? Have you ever wondered if it has to be this way? I dog-eared pretty much every page of Kapic’s chapter entitled “Do I have enough time?” as it speaks so powerfully about how our culturally-shaped relationship to time is running us ragged and causing us to feel like we are never measuring up. Here are a few particularly poignant paragraphs:
Embodiment in the material world molded our relation to time: what we saw, experienced, and felt governed this sense of moving through each day. In this way all time was what is called ‘contextual’: time was always understood in reference to the material world. Consequently, some days are ‘longer’ than others; some seasons are more appropriate for harvest, or festivals and feasts; and some hours are more fitting for napping than labor. Childbirth brings a period of expectations that differ from those associated with a time of war. Time was not an abstract idea or detached aspect of the world: it necessarily related to one’s physical environment and community dynamics. Not all seasons, days, or hours, therefore, are the same: these rhythms of the created world shaped how humans understood and responded to time. As we will see, the arrival of mechanized clocks and then electricity moved us from contextual to non contextual time, which deeply reshapes our expectations and experiences of time. But that took many thousands of years (Kapic 122).
Rather than allowing you to be honest about your finitude, your anxiety tells you that not only should you be able to do everything you imagine needs to be done, but you should do it perfectly. Anxiety whispers in your ear not that you are a good creature made by God but that you are insignificant, a disappointment, even a failure. Anxiety confuses limitations with sin, thus convincing us that we are letting God down. It pushes us into self-accusations and unrealistic views of ourselves (e.g., a strange mix of overconfidence and insecurity) and into bitterness and anger (Kapic 132).
Amid the growing sense of feeling incessantly busy, always flirting with distraction, and rarely honoring the rhythms of the earth, our bodies, and our relationships, I would identify the underlying challenge with one word: presence. Being present, in the sense of being fully engaged with God and others in our immediate circumstances, does not fit our world of hurry and its demands to do more, better, constantly. We struggle to be present, and I think this makes us all the more susceptible to anxiety. Whether we are at work in a factory, eating dinner with family, praying in church, or talking to our neighbor, being truly present, living in just this moment, requires a huge shift from our current habits. We constantly think about the next thing; we worry about unfinished projects; we wonder what is happening in the news, or on social media, or at someone else’s house. To attend to the here and now with your whole heart and mind, right where you are inhabiting time and space, goes against most of our training (Kapic 133).
5. God is patient and values process: While we tend to value efficiency and productivity, God values relationship and process. As Kapic asserts, “God’s highest value is not efficiency, especially considered in any simple or mechanistic sense—it is love. He is more interested in beauty than speed of process; he is more concerned to lift our gaze, to provoke song, to stimulate our imaginations than he is to just get things done” (Kapic 148). There are certain things in life we know cannot be obtained instantaneously—things we know must happen in a slow cooker rather than a microwave: an artist spending hours and hours and layers and layers of paint on a masterpiece…a baby learning to walk…even this blog post, as much as it would have better suited my schedule to be able to smash a button to produce it, took hours of reading, planning, articulating, typing, and editing. What would it look like to value more of what God values? How would our perspective on the frustrations of life—so often having to do with things that are taking more time than we wish were true—change if we sought to align our desires and expectations with the ways in which God wills to grow and develop and sanctify us?
Love, community, and growth of character are often—though not always—at odds with efficiency. This is something God has always known and been comfortable with. One of the most inefficient things you can ever do is love another person. Or even a puppy. Loving another creature requires engagement, response, and patience. Loads of patience. Similarly, the artist or author knows all too well that efficiency is often the enemy rather than the friend of creativity and progress. The almighty Creator, however, has always been comfortable prioritizing love and growth over efficiency and checkmarks (Kapic 150).
6. We are not alone/we cannot do it alone; we need the other members of the body of Christ: From the very foundation of the world, God said “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). So why do we tend to value self-sufficiency, independence, and individualism so very much? Do we struggle to ask for help? Do we often feel false guilt over all we think we should be able to do (maybe especially in the name of the Lord)? Do we burn ourselves out trying to please everyone and meet everyone’s “needs”? Do we have a bit of a savior complex? Could it be that we have allowed the current of culture to carry us away from aspects of our God-given design? What is actually true/right/realistic/biblical? How would life look different if we admitted that we needed one another, asked for (and offered) help, and celebrated the giftings of others in the ways God has called them to serve (which may look different than the ways he’s equipped you)?
Accepting our finitude and affirming our interdependence as the people of God moves us from guilt to liberty, from being overwhelmed to being energized, from passivity to activity. God never expected each of us to do everything—he is the one who gave us our limits, after all. He also has uniquely gifted and called each of us to some form of service and love. This is not reserved simply for the ‘spiritual’ people in full-time ministry. God also understands our limits and our complex webs of obligations. He is the one who gave you children to feed, crops to be harvested, a body to nourish and clothe, and relationships to dwell within. We can value our respective vocations, recognize different gifts and skills, honor different personalities, and foster the arts even as we give attention to social injustices. But such a full vision can be honored only if we take more seriously the whole body of Christ. We are not rugged individuals; we are an interconnected body” (Kapic 180).
Now, I don’t know about you, but even just thinking about all of these things has been extremely freeing and perspective-shifting for me. In Part 3, we’ll continue with some habits that can be further transformative as we draw near to God and experience the evidence of him drawing near to us (James 4:8).
References:
Kapic, Kelly. You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News, 2022.