#reHumanize Project: Reimagining Humanity by Dr. Darren Reed

This blog post is part of a recurring series called the #reHumanize Project, an initiative by Nazarenes United for Peace that seeks to help us rediscover our shared, divine humanity.

When approached to write for the #reHumanize Project, I was asked for my thoughts on the project title: What people, places, things, or relationships need to be rehumanized? As I contemplated this, another question presented itself: What does it mean to rehumanize? Every process has a starting point and an endpoint. If in this project of rehumanizing our starting point is the dehumanized state in which we find ourselves and our relationships, our endpoint must be some true humanity from which we have been dehumanized.

Only when we understand what it means to be human can we begin the process of rehumanizing. A small directional error at the beginning of a journey will end that journey miles off course. Without a clear goal in mind, moving ourselves and our relationships from their current state may prove fruitless or indeed harmful. Our #reHumanize project, therefore, must properly begin with a clear idea of what it means to be human.

Christian anthropology⁠—the church’s answer to the question, “What does it mean to be human?”⁠—is rooted in the creation order and in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. We find both biblical and historical witness to this anthropology.

Genesis 1:27 states that in the beginning humankind was made “according to the image of God.”¹ The language is the same used in Exodus 25:40, when God instructs Moses to build the tabernacle “according to the pattern”² shown him on Mt. Sinai. This semantic link is not accidental. It carries with it the implication that humankind, and indeed every individual human being, was modeled after a pattern⁠—some particular image of God.  Paul writes in Colossians 1:15, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,” and Hebrews 1:3 identifies the Son as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”³ (NIV) Further, the church affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon that in his humanity Jesus is “like us in all respects, apart from sin.”⁴ 

The image of God is not abstract, but is found “exact” in Christ, therefore our humanity is created according to the full humanity found in Christ. To be truly human, then, is to be like Christ⁠—to think, to will, and to act as Christ. When we first deny our true humanity found in Christ, we lose the vision of the image of God in others. We rediscover our humanity and are able to rehumanize our relationships only as we conform ourselves to our pattern, the image of God found in Jesus. 

The ancient church called the process of conforming to the pattern of Christ theosis. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote concerning the incarnation and theosis: “God became man so that man might become god.”⁵ Expanding on Athanasius’s writing, Orthodox priest, author, and podcaster Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick writes, “He is present in us, but we remain ourselves, and He remains Himself. But His presence in us changes us. We become not just better versions of ourselves, but like Him.”⁶ 

In language more familiar to Nazarenes, the process of becoming like God is entire sanctification. “It is love excluding sin;” John Wesley preached, “love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul. It is love ‘rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, in everything giving thanks.’”⁷ Sanctified living sees us reclaim and restore the image of God in us and allows us to envision and cultivate the image of God in others.

Each and every human being with whom we interact has been made according to the image of God.

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Each and every human being with whom we interact has been made according to the image of God. C.S. Lewis paints a profound picture in The Weight of Glory:

“It is a serious thing…to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities…that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”⁸ 

Our responsibility begins with searching out the true humanity found in Christ and conforming our lives to that humanity by seeking union with Christ. Then we must seek to see Christ in the humanity of all those around us. With Christ as our sure foundation, we are able to build our #reHumanize edifice—reclaiming our own humanity and reenvisioning the humanity of those around us.

To return to Lewis:

“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”⁹ 

In Lewis’s Eucharistic language we find the destination of our #reHumanize project: to have Christ truly hidden in us and to recognize Christ truly hidden in others. As the bread and wine of the Eucharist are transformed by the Spirit to be the body and blood of Christ, so we are transformed by the Spirit to “be for the world the Body of Christ, redeemed by His blood.”¹⁰ Eucharistic humanity is the true humanity we have lost and which we must reclaim—incarnational, sacrificial, resurrected, and ascended humanity.

As the bread and wine of the Eucharist are transformed by the Spirit to be the body and blood of Christ, so we are transformed by the Spirit to “be for the world the Body of Christ, redeemed by His blood.”

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Let us then live sanctified lives in view of the sacramental nature of our everyday relations. Seek to begin each day with a fresh vision from God, asking that we may see the full humanity of Christ in every individual we encounter. In this way may we fulfill our own human potential, being “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”¹¹

The words of Charles Wesley serve as a wonderful prayer for the #reHumanize project:

 Finish, then, thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be:
let us see thy great salvation
perfectly restored in thee;
changed from glory into glory,
'til in heav'n we take our place,
'til we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.12 

May God perfectly restore in us the image of Christ, that we may recognize the image of Christ in others, living each day in light of his glory. Amen.

“It is a serious thing…to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities…that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”⁸ 

C.S. Lewis

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Footnotes:

1. Brenton, The Septuagint version of the Old Testament
2. Ibid.
3. New International Version
4. Book of Common Prayer, p. 864
5. On the Incarnation 54:3, emphasis mine
6. That Man Might Become God, January 22, 2015
7. The Scripture Way of Salvation, Section I, Paragraph 9
8. The Weight of Glory, p. 9, emphasis original
9. Ibid.
10. Manual 2017, p. 261
11. Ephesians 3:19b, NIV
12. Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, v. 4

Darren Reed serves as a lay leader in Lenexa Central Church of the Nazarene in Kansas.