The New Humanity
April 24, 2022
“People aren’t convinced that we have better answers than the world.” Dr. Harold Redd is an African-American minister in Memphis. He’s kind of the African-American minister in Memphis. He’s been involved in leading churches for decades in a city that has a lot of history on the race-relations front, and he says that, as far as racial issues goes, “people aren’t convinced that we have better answers than the world.”
How often does the church look at an issue and say, “Crime, man, I don’t know…” How often do we look at a messy situation and ask, “Where’s the social worker?” It makes sense—the government has resources we don’t have; social workers have training we don’t. At the same time, is that how it should be?
I heard recently that God’s work is to make us people that can have eternal life. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve grasp at godhood. They want wisdom and knowledge of God, and they want it now. God sees the new situation and says, “Yikes! If people like this live forever, there’s no end to the destruction they will wreck among themselves and creation!” So God took them away from the tree of life, so that death could save us from ourselves.
But surely God’s not content with that! God wants us to be people who can eat from the tree of life! What is God to do? He can’t just force us to be good people. He didn’t create us to be robots, doing his will by rote. He wants us to be in relationship with him, reconciled to him. That requires us coming along of our own free will. But when we have free will, we choose to grasp at godhood.
From where I’m standing, it looks like the only option left to God, given the situation and his own nature, is to get us to be the people he wants us to be of our own free will. But it’s not like we’re the only problem—there are powers and principalities, rulers and elemental spirits of the world that indoctrinate and socialize us in ungodly ways. The issues are personal, but also cosmic.
Luckily for us, God is not faint of heart! He takes the task upon himself, coming in flesh and blood, subjecting himself to the powers and principalities, rulers and elemental spirits of the world. Jesus shows us how to resist and overcome those powers, living in ways that reflect the rule of God rather than those measly powers. Jesus dies on the cross, making a mockery of those powers. And God raised Jesus from the dead, opening up the way for us to live freed from those powers.
By the grace of God (and more often than not, as a result of people reflecting on the nature of God), the world has been fumbling toward answers to the problems we face. But we are the people who have been empowered to live reconciled lives. We have been empowered to have the answers, made in the image of the Son of God, made into a new humanity.
—John Coffey
