Faithful Presence & The Gift of Humanity
by Michael Langer
What is humanity?
As Christians, we believe humanity is simply the state in which God created us. It places us as creatures and another as Creator. Scripture makes this distinction clear from the start of our story.
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26-28).
Scripture’s picture of humanity is wonderful and beautiful. We are created in the image of our Creator. We are given dominion over creation. We are given a purpose – to fill the earth with the glory of God. But as we all come to know, our creaturely reality presents limits that are not only unwelcome and frustrating; they are widely considered an obstacle to overcome.
German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, had little time for the construct or confines of the Christian definition of humanity. In his classic work, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” Nietzsche introduces us to his protagonist, one who has moved beyond humanity to become an “Übermensch” (e.g., ruling or super-man). After ten years of isolation and reflection, Zarathustra comes down from the solitude of his mountain and, knowing that “God is dead!” speaks his first public words of wisdom to the people of a town on the edge of a forest, “I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?” (9)
Rather than seeing humanity as a created and fixed reality, let alone a gift, Nietzsche directs the readers to devote themselves to becoming something wholly other and superior and offers Zarathustra as our guide. One appealing aspect of the Übermensch is the ability to create and live by your own set of values and morals. Specifically, ones that are in the Übermensch’s best interest. However, in offering Übermensch, Nietzsche is not cutting new ground. As the author of Ecclesiastes reminds us, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The appeal to cross the abyss and move beyond creature to creator was the very approach used by the Serpent in the Garden.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, three but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Genesis 3:1-7)
It’s hard to imagine what confines and constraints the first humans were experiencing. Nonetheless, the appeal to move beyond humanity-as-creation to something closer to God is clearly appealing. But our attempts to “break the bonds” of humanity are not just counter to God’s intention for us; it’s ultimately dehumanizing. Rather than presenting humanity as confining and constraining, Scripture declares humanity as both conducive and, in fact, critical to our flourishing.
How Humanity Plays in Washington
In an October 11, 2022, Wall Street Journal article, “The Two Words That Terrify Junior Employees,” Lindsay Ellis reveals that the push to function as an Übermensch starts in the earliest days of employment for many new staff.
“Until you’ve gotten that 10 p.m. ‘pls fix,’ you just don’t get it,” says Amelia Noël, a former consultant and investment banker turned career coach.
“Pls fix” is shorthand for a curt note from someone up the chain—and is a phrase that has become a phenomenon among corporate stiffs in certain high-pressure fields. The buzzword has spawned “pls fix” merchandise, and made it into the Urban Dictionary, which defines “pls fix” as a frequent email reply from a boss in consulting or finance that “more accurately translates: ‘fix this ASAP and don’t F$%^& up again.’
The ‘pls fix’ exchange is indicative of a dehumanizing movement on both sides of the relationship. The boss, on the high end of the power differential, is imposing a set of morals on the junior staff. Morals that come through the set of implied actions to dissolve the line between work and rest, “You shall have no gods before me or your career goals,” and perhaps, “You exist to make me look good.” Likewise, the junior staffer, albeit on the low end of the power differential, accepts this directive as either normative or the cost of their chosen career. Ultimately, both sides embrace the notion that humanity, as defined by God at creation, is a constraint to their flourishing.
Confrontations with the ‘pls fix’ phenomenon occur on the Hill, in Cabinet and sub-Cabinet agencies, in the lobby firms on K Street, and at every think-tank and policy shop in Washington. And, of course, it happens everywhere, all the time. But it’s only a small facet of our striving to move beyond our humanity and its limits.
In late March of 2020, the coronavirus had shut down the country. Many businesses were shuttered, others tried to move to virtual formats where possible, downtowns emptied, emergency rooms and ICUs were maxed beyond capacity, and thousands of people were dying. The unemployment rate would move from 4.4% to 14.7% during the next four weeks. Someone had to do something, or we were all heading for an economic collapse that would make the “Great Depression” look like a stock market correction.
In the middle of March, senior staff on the Hill and multiple levels of staff from numerous Cabinet agencies, including Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, HUD, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Transportation, were working around the clock to develop the first bailout package.
Their mission was to design a bailout package for an economy that has been shut down by a virus we do not yet understand, for an unknown period of time, that will kill an unknown number of people, and have an unpredictable economic outcome. Also, do it by Friday!
It was the ultimate “pls fix” memo and it came with dire consequences if it didn’t work.
After painstaking but frantic negotiations and the necessary political theater, the $2,000,000,000,000 bill passed both chambers of Congress and was signed by the President on March 30th.
One individual who played an active role in those negotiations and the crafting of language was not able to watch the signing. While certainly deserving a socially-distanced spot in view of this historic and educated shot-in-the-dark, this individual spent the night in the hospital suffering from extreme exhaustion.
When I later had an opportunity to talk and pray with the person, they said, “I had five phones going simultaneously to various individuals trying to work out the language. But as we got closer, I was filled with the fear that if I made a mistake, not only might the world economy collapse, but people I loved could lose their jobs, homes, and savings.”
“Honestly,” I said, “you’re not wrong.”
That was true. This work required around-the-clock work, demanded attention to every detail, and called upon knowledge of markets, currency, infrastructure bandwidth, and cause-and-effect scenarios well beyond almost anyone’s expertise. Thankfully, Washington is home to some of the most talented humans on the planet - many of them are Christians.
“But what you’re missing,” I added, “is that you are only human. God placed you in this unique position in order for you to have an opportunity to serve as a blessing to your colleagues and this country. He gifted you with a 'Liam Neeson-like' set of special skills and called on you to use them. But he never expected you to save the country or the world. Only to bless it.”
After we prayed, I ended our Zoom call, thankful that this individual called Christ “Savior” and was serving and leading in Washington. Then I considered the spiritual, emotional, relational, and vocational implications of a truncated theology of humanity. Any path forward calls for an examination of our chosen prophet.
What Would Jesus Do?
In 1989, a youth pastor in Michigan had a few hundred “WWJD?” friendship bracelets printed up for her students, their friends, and family. The bracelets caught on, and soon every Christian and non-Christian bookstore had a variety of “WWJD?” wristbands and other memorabilia. While I was no longer in high school then, I was close enough to have purchased one or two.
The bracelets, while well-meaning, posed an interesting and unseen question. What would Jesus actually do? On the one hand, it was a call to an ethical or moral decision in a moment of importance. Stand up for someone being bullied, apologize to someone, move out of the spotlight, shine the spotlight on someone else, tell the truth even when it’s going to make you look bad, or even say no to doing more and just rest.
Given that many of those questions could just as easily be answered with the question, “WWMD?” (What Would Mohammed Do?”), or “WWGD?” (“What Would Gandhi Do?”) or even, “WWMRD?” (What Would Mr. Rogers Do?), the bracelet prompts us to make virtuous decisions. However, this runs counter to our friend Zarathustra’s imperative to move beyond the constraints and confines of humanity and become instead the Übermensch of your own making. Here the bracelets call us to recenter ourselves in the virtues that our created-humanity intended as we fill the earth with his glory.
But another aspect of this question moves beyond the ethical and moral to the physical. That makes sense because most ethical and moral decisions call for action. To get a better perspective, perhaps we should ask a different question: “What Could Jesus Do?”
At the heart of orthodox Christian doctrine is the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Son of God. He was the promised son of David (2 Sam 7:16) and every other Old Testament prophesy, including words spoken by Isaiah in promising a redeemer who would rescue his people from slavery,
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; (Is 61:1–2)
Christ makes it clear that this is his mission during one of his first public addresses to those living under Roman occupation,
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
"And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16–21)
After Jesus leaves the synagogue, he does exactly what he said he came to do. He heals the sick, lame, blind and raises the dead. He casts out demons to reclaim people’s lives, demonstrates power over nature to calm people’s fears, and multiplies fish and bread to satisfy people’s hunger. He moves beggars to participants in the economy, ends tax collectors’ tenure of overcharging, and upsets oppressive religious and social structures. All of this is possible because Jesus is God in the flesh.
Paul describes Jesus this way,
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:15–20)
Jesus is something far beyond anything Nietzsche can conceive of, which is probably why he invites us to follow Zarathustra. But, the most striking aspects of Jesus dwelling with humanity are not his super-human miracles performed to announce his divinity and offer a foretaste of a kingdom where everything bad is untrue, but his full embrace of created humanity.
After his greatest miracles and sermons, Jesus did something fully human - he rested.
Luke records that after Jesus claims the words of Isaiah for himself, he goes immediately to Simon Peter’s house and spends the night healing the sick and casting out demons. But after hours of acting out of his divinity, the Son of God “42 …departed and went into a desolate place.”
Jesus was fully divine and fully human. Theologians call this - hypostatic union: an impossible reality as challenging to grasp as the Trinity, which brings us back to those bracelets. They may need an asterisk.
There was nothing Jesus could not do. But he did not do everything. He did not heal everyone. He did not lift everyone out of poverty. He did not end all suffering or oppression. He did not end all hunger. There were plenty of times that Jesus could have been doing more, but instead, he withdrew to a quiet place to pray. In doing so, he shows us what it means to be fully human.
Jesus spent his life testifying to the nature of God but also the nature of man. Unlike Jesus, who Colossians refers to as Creator, we cannot do everything. Our created-humanity limits us. We cannot speak healing to sickness or direct nature to obey us. While Jesus declares after his resurrection, “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you,” there are inherent limits to that direction.
Over-functioning and the Gift of Humanity
Jesus does not call us to super-human functioning. God does not expect us to heal sickness with only our touch, to raise the dead with a command, or to direct nature with our words. However, we are called to offer foretastes of the coming kingdom to those we come in contact with and through our vocations. It is good and right for Christians to work to alleviate poverty, heal the sick through providing medical treatment and healthy living conditions, undo systems of oppression brought on by abusive power differentials, and to ensure equality of opportunity for all.
But we are called to do all this within the bounds of our God-created humanity. We cannot do all things all the time. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” is a statement of endurance, not one of function.
Some of my earliest memories are of my biological father abusing my mother and myself. At age five, I remember trying to get out of my bedroom to stop my father from hitting my mom, but the door handle had been tied from the outside, so I could not open it enough to get out.
During a counseling session a couple of years ago, my therapist asked me if I thought it was the job of a five-year-old to stop their mother from being beaten. “Of course it is,” I replied without hesitation. I followed that up with pointed questions about how any Christian counselor could suggest otherwise. “When something evil is happening, you intervene, no matter what! Somebody has to do something.”
Over many months, we worked through various aspects of the trauma of my youth. One day, while recounting a time when I was trying to locate my mother, who was homeless and had been injured in a grease fire, my counselor said, “Why do you always have to be the one to fix everything? It sounds like you have spent most of your life in combat mode. Aren’t you exhausted?”
Those words pushed me to a place I was unfamiliar with, a place of embracing my gift of humanity. He continued,
Counselor: “How divine was Jesus?”
Me: “Fully.”
Counselor: “Right. How divine are you?”
Me: “Not at all.”
Counselor: “Right, again. How human was Jesus?”
Me: “Fully.”
Counselor: “Right. How human are you?”
Me: “Fully.”
Counselor: “Wrong!”
Me: “What?”
Counselor: “There have only been three fully-human people in history. Adam and Eve, who quickly decided they were unhappy with their humanity and sinned against God in an attempt to move beyond God’s created definition. The other is Jesus, who lived life as fully human as it has ever been lived.”
Then he hit me with a two-by-four.
Counselor: “Do you think you should do more or less than Jesus?”
Me: Blank stare.
Counselor: “Do you think you should rest more or less than Jesus?”
Me: Blank stair with tears welling up in my eyes.
Counselor: “You, Michael, are less human than Jesus because you are marred by sin. You are fragile and finite. You are not super-human. Yet, out of that brokenness you have devoted much of your life over-functioning and hoping to fix or control everything. That’s understandable based on your childhood, but it is also destroying your spiritual, emotional, and relational life. And it’s a sin. How about you try embracing your humanity instead and realizing that you are not only incapable of fixing and controlling everything? God is not asking you to do that. He is not expecting you to do that. He asks you to be okay with being human - which is how he created you!”
That was one of the most life-recalibrating 50 minutes I have ever experienced.
When Marx Infects Mission
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The Point is, however, to change it.” Karl Marx wrote that in the 1840s, and these words would shape the foundation and direction of his works and end up engraved on his headstone. These words would also come into the hands of Fredrich Engles, and together they would give birth to communism. Nearly a century later, Douglas Hyde, the head of the communist party in England, would write,
“Individual members of the Communist Party are brought to believe that they and others like them can change the world. In their lifetime. They are convinced that this is not just a dream, for they have techniques and a Marxist science of change-making which provide them with the means by which this can be done.” (Dedication and Leadership, 31)
However, these words do not appear in a tract promoting communism but Christianity. Hyde converted to Christianity in 1948 and joined the Catholic Church. He wrote a best-selling book detailing his conversation experience, entitled “I Believed,” and followed that up with “Dedication and Leadership.”
In this second work, Hyde set forth a guide for applying Marxism to Christianity. Hyde believed that if Christians in England and around the world would commit to changing the world. This primer was formative in my thoughts about how Christians should lean into the world. Hyde says,
“If you never say a word on behalf of your beliefs, if you never do anything, you are never going to be guilty of heresy - except that the total failure to do anything about your beliefs seems to constitute a heresy in itself. Perhaps it is one of the greatest and most deadly heresies of our time.” (113)
Those are the kind of words that inspire someone committed to fixing and controlling their world - albeit on behalf of Christ. And, while accurate, taken alone and apart from understanding our role as creatures, they alluringly call us to embrace the Übermensch of Nietzsche. Hyde never grasped the gospel, but only a works-based version of faith. As a result, when the time came to issue a second edition reprint of “I Believed,” Hyde had left the faith and blocked its reissue. Recently, the call to change the world has reappeared in evangelical Christianity.
After I graduated from seminary, I moved to my hometown of Iowa City to plant a church called One Ancient Hope. In 2010, the second year of that church plant, I read James Davidson Hunter’s “To Change The World.” In it, Hunter lays out how Christian critiques of modern culture are hypocritical, given that most Christians felt “called to come out of culture” and, therefore, no longer are in a position to exert substantial influence.
Hunter is explicit in his belief that it is not individuals who are called to change the world, “Against this great-man view of history and culture, I would argue (along with many others) that the key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks.” (38)
As Abe Cho and Greg Perry aptly point out in their article in this journal, there is much to commend in Hunter’s work. But there are also many appropriate places where reframing is essential. Included in those places where reframing is beneficial is noted that many who read this book took upon themselves a mission beyond their calling. Yet, even as the Church, we are not called to change the world but to offer foretastes of Christ’s coming kingdom manifested in the New Heavens and the New Earth. Jesus himself testifies that the role of “changing the world” is his alone when he declares in a vision to the Apostle John (using the words of the Prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 43:19, “Behold! I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)
The Faithful Presence Alternative
To be sure, Christians, and especially those serving and leading in Washington, are called to participate in Christ’s mission of making all things new. When we wonder how to do that, we should ask, “What would Jesus do?” But we must understand that we are the creature, not the Creator. We have God-given (read: created) limits and are intended to operate within them. As creatures, we do not know when everything will happen or how everything will happen. We are not given control over all the variables. We should reframe the question around the agency of Jesus into the desire of Jesus for us. The four questions of Faithful Presence, which we believe can guide us in our participation in what Christ is doing, are helpful.
What is good that needs encouragement?
What is broken that requires restoration?
What is missing that longs for creation?
What is evil that demands opposition?
In order to answer these question we need to embrace our created-humanity. Only through that are we able to determine what is good, what is broken, what is missing, and what is evil. The answers to those questions must be true not just for us but for everyone. That is the only path to true flourishing.
Rather than moving beyond our created-humanity as Nietzsche’s Zarathustra encourages us, in an every man for themselves posture, we are called to embrace the humanity of Jesus. This humanity joins Christ in his mission of making all things new without the drive to exhaustion, believing it’s all up to us. When Christ says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” this is what he means.
The call of Christ is the call to live in a posture of faithful presence (a term coined by Hunter) or as Miroslav Volf prefers "soft difference." Faithful Presence moves us from Peter with a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane to one who was asked three times by Jesus, "Feed my sheep." Further, he places us in fellowship with others living in the same posture of faithful presence and reminding us of the blessing found in embracing our created-humanity. Our limits are not constraints or confines to our flourishing; they are both critical and conducive to it. God created us to participate in his mission through our words and our actions and by embracing a truth that is on the wall of most recovering alcoholics and addicts,
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Rev. Michael Langer is the Founder and President of Faithful Presence. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Boston.
(c) Faithful Presence, 2023