Being Human — Table of Contents

The typical function of the Blogging medium is to promote a sort of recency bias, ordering things chronologically rather than logically. This is ok. I guess. But, the nature of, say, a sermon series presented in ‘chapters’ is that each chapter builds upon the previous. So. For completeness, here is a Table of Contents. There was a logic shaping the movement from chapter to chapter — it developed along the lines of Genesis 1 to 3, unpacking things we learn about our humanity in its ‘ideal’ setting and how that all fell apart, and Genesis to Revelation, while also exploring ways the ‘disintegrating’ forces of our world and ‘integrating’ practices grounded in church traditions aligned with these bits of the story. Each talk also explored the way Jesus is presented as a new Adam and a solution or fulfilment of our ‘origin story’ (the series also drew on the work I’d done in Genesis, Matthew, and Revelation that I’ve previously posted as articles here — although I didn’t finish posting up the Matthew series as I stopped posting things for a bit).

I’m also about to start posting up the next ‘book’ — think of this as a sort of trilogy I guess, where each integrates. The next series (preached a couple of years after Being Human) was an exploration of a different way of viewing and participating in reality called Before The Throne, and the third installment was a series called Inhabiting which was about cultivating practices to live life as those simultaneously located on earth, and united by the Spirit, to Jesus so that we live before the throne of God. I had planned to write some other things about church and life and formation — and I still will, but recent events online have made me want to build out a system of thinking that is reflective and contemplative and principled — cold takes ultimately — from which I can then process other phenomenon more carefully.

Being Human was an attempt to sketch out an anthropology grounded in the story of the Bible — incorporating creation, fall, our redemption and re-creation in Jesus and union with God’s life by the Spirit, and our telos — towards new creation. It was an attempt to recognise tensions and paradoxes — the relationship between our hearts and what we point our hearts to in worship and the external systems (and beings) who might work to shape our hearts in ways that disintegrate us.

I believe that any truly theological anthropology begins with the nature of God, not our own nature. So that’s where we began. Anyway. Here we go.

1. Chapter One — The Trinity — The universe is created by a God who makes himself known in relationship. Modern conceptions of humanity that do not start with a God who is love end with a limited picture of human existence.
2. Chapter Two — Connected Individuals — We are individuals, and, exist in relationships and community with one another — while being created for communion with God.
3. Chapter Three — Made to be Makers — To be made in God’s image is to be made with imaginations; as those who make tools and shape the world and tell stories; this capacity to make can see us ‘cultivate’ life in the world, or create idols that bring death.
4. Chapter Four — Life in the Cloud (Is Transhumanism the Answer) — We are made not just with bodies, but as bodies — life as humans, forever, involves our bodies — visions of the future that involve harp playing cloudy Spirits, or digitised consciousness pull us away from what it means to be human.
5. Chapter Five — Sense and Sensuality — We are made with bodies that have desires and emotions wired in to our reaction to beauty and goodness. This desire — sexual or otherwise — is created for us as image bearers who are made for intimate relationship with God and one another, but can also go haywire when we dehumanise or objectify others or ourselves.
6. Chapter Six — A world of (im)pure imagey-nations — We are made with eyes that recognise beauty, and the capacity to picture realities in our head and work towards those. Where we set our eyes and hearts and imaginations will shape the way we use our bodies. Where we look for life matters.
7. Chapter Seven — The Jig is up. Habitats shape habits — As embodied humans we are placed in spaces. We shape our spaces (or they are built by others) and our habitats shape our habits, which shape our hearts. Many spaces (and tools) in our world have been created to make us consumers and addicts using techniques of ‘scripted disorientation’.
8. Chapter Eight — Being true-ly human in an age of deception — There are forces — algorithms, agendas, and propagandists, at work doing the work of the deceiving serpent who said ‘did God truly say’, in order to lead us to destruction. Being truely human means learning to recognise and speak and live by truth.
9. Chapter Nine — What’s the story: mourning glory? — Life this side of Eden involves longing to get back, but living in a world of violence and destruction as people try to carve out Edens for ourselves. In the modern west, much like in Babylon, this looks like the ‘myth of redemptive violence’ in the presence of a system some call the ‘Military Industrial Complex’. We need a better story to guide us back towards Eden.
10. Chapter Ten — On mean(ing)s and end(ing)s — We can work out how we should live now by knowing how the story ends; the purpose or ‘telos’ of our humanity is connected not just to our beginnings, but to the end of the world (and the beginning of a new world through Jesus). Just as Jesus is the ‘telos’ of the story of the Bible — and is the ‘telos’ of history, becoming like Jesus as those united to him is the ‘telos’ of our humanity.