Christian spirituality: Why be humanist, not just human?
Humanism is yet another attempt to claim, grab and protect what is already ours
The greatest marvel of evolution is, undoubtedly, the human being. Something happened along the way that brought about an unexpected, unhoped for and, perhaps, unplanned phenomenon – humanity!
The first surprise was the emergence of life from the original ‘chaos’. The second surprise was becoming aware of one’s own life. The third surprise was the freedom to decide what to make of one’s own life. But, hold your breath... there is a fourth surprise: the ability to find and give meaning to one’s own life.
No, life is not just a fact. It is much less a project. It is the joyful discovery of a gift. It is this third characteristic that defines humanity and distinguishes us from all other forms of life. What makes us humans is neither our intelligence, nor our skilfulness, nor our strength or power. Many non-human creatures have these! What makes us truly human is the freedom of giftedness.
In our fragility and insignificance we humans have the ability to receive, to give and to be a gift. It is this that gives meaning to our existence. A gift is a gift only where there is a real freedom to give and to receive meaning to our day-to-day life. There is only one word that expresses the full beauty and purpose of this meaningfulness of our existence. That word is love!
No, this is not being romantic. Neither is it escaping into some hazy, dreamlike, airy-fairy sweetness. Love is not a panacea or sweet softening of the harsh day-to-day survival in real life.
Love is the source and meaningfulness of life when it is a rock-solid, free and committed decision to belong to someone and to everyone. Love is born out of a deep, inner thirst to be with another, with others. Love is the only way to discover how precious you are when you experience and embrace the unique preciousness of fellow human beings.
This is what makes me me and you you. Love makes your joys and your pains become truly mine and my joy and pains truly yours. Only then can I say that I am fully myself... This is meaningfulness, togetherness, giftedness. This is bliss, passion – dying to start living.
Why clip the wings of love to fit it into some kind of absolutised credo that locks us up in a suffocating, self-centred comfort zone or dogmatic intolerance?
How sad it is when we humans forget all this wonder and beauty of who we are and lock ourselves up in the watertight boxes of our credos, self-centredness, self-righteousness and suicidal narrow-mindedness. These boxes too often correspond to misleading categories that can easily become short-circuited fanaticism! Beware of all ‘isms’ – racism, nationalism, religious fanaticism, political tribalism and myriads of other ‘...isms’.
Why limit goodness and humanity to one absolute category or other? Why clip the wings of love to fit it into some kind of absolutised credo that locks us up in a suffocating, self-centred comfort zone or dogmatic intolerance? Love cannot be contained, possessed, codified or certified. It can only be freely given and freely received.
Humanism is yet another attempt to claim, grab and protect what is already ours. Being simply human is opening our hearts to gratefully enjoy the greatest gift: our ability to become ourselves the gift. This is what makes us human. This is what makes us divine.
So why define myself as humanist when I can simply be just human?