What does it mean to be a Human Being?

Throughout the myriad of opinions and righteous indignation from all sides, of the past few weeks, I've been left with many various thoughts, but at their essence is this; a lack of hope in the human spirit.  At the extremes, both left and right, both "black and white," both spiritual and terrestrial world views, are displaying the same deficiency.  What has happened to fertilize the growth of hopelessness in our culture?

In the past, I've asked the question, "What does it mean to be a human being?"  The answer to that question is interesting to me because it exposes, I believe, what the individual believes about, not only, themselves specifically, but others in general.  In my experience, how we see human beings, and what we think it means to be a human being are integral to how we react to each other.

All the "Isms" of today, feminism, humanism, socialism, capitalism, spiritualism, racism, conservatism, liberalism, gay or straight, you name it, have, at their core, a basic understanding of what it means to be a human being; some for better, others for worse.  All of these are focused on the pursuit of getting the same out of life that others have while traveling down a different path that may contain more twists and turns, bumps and falls.  Without going down the rabbit hole of whether or not each path should be equally easy, let us stay focused on our responses to that general question of what it means to be a human being.

Where are we in our development as a species when we do not view issues from multiple perspectives before deciding on a course of action.  Not to say that there aren't those among us that can and do, but we, the average public, are swayed by challenges to our perceived ideals, a challenge to our particular "ism."  We tend to stand our ground over the slightest offense, ready to die on "that hill," both figuratively and literally.

So what does it mean to be a human being?  How can the answer to that question lead us to coexisting on this planet in harmony?  The hopelessness in the human spirit that I mentioned above is, I believe, a byproduct of this quest for the meaning.  I think, because we don't come to similar answers, we loose faith in each other, and give up on understanding each other and seeing each in a better light.

Whoever proposes an answer must also know the means to reach that answer. If the means are immoral, then the answer is compromised and discredited. If the sense of existence and the end of history are understood in a communistic way (the creation of a paradise on earth), or in a utilitarian manner (the highest level of happiness for the greatest number of people), or as in social Darwinism (the realization of the survival of the fittest), or imperialism (the dominion of a nation over other peoples), or unbridled capitalism (the law of the exploitation of the resources of the world and of the dignity of the worker for the sake of wealth), then the means used will violate the dignity of man and impede integral human development.

We cannot conceptualize the Kingdom of God or produce it with our hands, by our own strength. The Kingdom of God is grace, and grace brings the Holy Spirit into the world, the Spirit of charity that sanctifies and assists, the Spirit of understanding and of love, that changes our hearts and introduces in all human relations a movement of freedom.

Christianity cannot be reduced to a bourgeois adaptation of Christ’s message consisting merely of love of neighbor, and individual philanthropy. The Kingdom of God is not merely above and outside of this world, nor is salvation for this world alone, in the sense of a social and purely humanitarian exercise.

Reverence toward God and responsibility for the world are inseparably connected.  God did not come into this world to free us from it, but to lead man and the world to their authentic destiny of oneness and thereby seeing the creator in each other. 

What does it mean to be a human being?  It means to not see each other in a different light, but to be each other in all circumstances; to understand that a person's actions are not entirely derivative of a holy being, but of the external influences of their existence as well. Or as the rapper, Jay-Z put it, "...So now we fighting over scraps [like]Crabs in a barrel, but crabs don’t belong in the barrel..."

Focusing on the outcomes of our programs and not on the people that are affected by those programs has led us to a culture that seeks pragmatism over truth.  What does it mean to be a human being?  It means to honor God in every encounter we have with His creation.

Mike Roberts