One day a spiritual teacher asked his disciples why God made humans. One of them answered almost immediately, “That, teacher, is easy. So we can pray.” After a brief silence, the teacher asked another question: “Why, then did God make angels?” The same young man tried again, “Perhaps so that they also could pray.” The teacher answered: “Angels are perfectly capable of offering prayer to God, but there is one thing that only humans can do.” “What is that?” the eager disciple asked. “What God wants from humans is that they become fully human.”

St. Irenaeus, the second century Bishop of Lyons, understood this well. His famous declaration – Gloria Dei vivens homo – proclaimed that the glory of God is women and men who are fully alive, deeply human. This was a high point in the Christian understanding of the importance of being human, a point so removed from the center of contemporary Christianity that it might almost sound heretical.

Could it possibly be true that being human is a good thing, neither a sign of failure or weakness, nor a lack of spirituality? Is it possible that human wholeness honors the Transcendent One? Is it even conceivable that there could be an alternative to living carefully so as to avoid sin while pursuing the elusive goal of perfection? And could that alternative really be as simple as being and becoming deeply human and fully alive? I realize that this may sound too good to be true. It might even make you wonder how Irenaeus was ever declared a saint after making these assertions so central to his teaching.

Religious Humanism?

It is a bit ironic to hear this affirmation of humanity from the mouth of a Christian saint, since the church has so often made spirituality an exercise in the mortification of humanity. Sadly, it is clear that being religious does not automatically make you more whole, vital, and deeply human. In fact, examples of malignant religiosity are easier to find than those of healthy religiosity. Religion has a huge shadow, and a failure to acknowledge this darkness leaves it vulnerable to the evil that lurks within it.

But religion has unique potential to facilitate our awakening and wholeness At its best, religion puts us in touch with the mystery of our being in relation to that which transcended our small egoic self. It provides a framework that allows us to be in contact with the power of the transcendent without blowing the circuits of the self. Spirituality that is housed within the womb of deep religion involves a transformational process that touches and can potentially transform us in the deepest dimensions of our being. It represents, therefore, an extremely potent resource for healing our brokenness and making us more fully and deeply human. As noted by William James in the concluding chapter of The Varieties of Religious Experience, it offers us a way of living that is beyond our egoic self, zest for living that comes from a lyrical enchantment with the world, and an abiding sense of trust and peace. This is deep religion at its best.

Spirituality does not have to be religious to do this. I believe that any healthy spirituality can and should lead to all these things. In fact, I am convinced that becoming fully human and deeply alive is what spirituality of any sort is all about. The point of this is not simply our fulfillment but that Life can then flow through us to others. Any religion or spirituality that seeks to make us less than, more than, or other than human is dangerous. Spirituality can and should be in the service of becoming more deeply human. Sadly, some people think that the more spiritual they become, the less human they will be. They view being human as a sign of spiritual failure, and use being human as an excuse for failures in their best self.

Humanity is not a disease that needs to be cured or a state of deficiency from which we need to escape. The spiritual journey is not intended to make us into angels, gods, or some other form of spiritual beings. It is intended to help us become all that we, as humans, can be. If any religion holds the potential for supporting this journey, Christianity should be at the top of that list, as it not only presents humans as created in the Divine image but also reveals a God who becomes human.

Full-Orbed Humanity

So, what would it look like to be fully human? How do we know if we are headed in the right direction?

I have written much of love in recent blogs, so I won’t say more about it here other than to note that love is the clearest and most important sign of human maturity. Love flows freely through us when ego is decentered and we move into the realm of fullness of our humanity and our essential self.

Another closely related expression of this decentring of ego to make way for love is humility. Those most fully characterized by love hold their beliefs and opinions with humility since these things are simply the bandages we wrap around our fragile egos to make them more substantial. Both love and humility reflect a lightness of being that characterizes our essential self – a lightness of being that we see in Hildegard of Bingen when she described herself as a feather on the breath of God.

As we move ever deeper into the mystery of our humanity, we move into realms of spaciousness that can be both terrifying and awesome. But if we are attentive, we will always sense a call to move from our circumference toward our center and our depths. This is the call to embrace reality and to fully engage our experience – particularly the valleys and dark parts of those experiences.

To fully engage our experience demands that we be grounded in our bodies. The human self will never have any real coherence unless we recognize that its roots are visceral. The self is an embodied self. It is incarnate – or in caro, which is Latin for flesh. This word caro is a very un-Platonic word. There is nothing spiritual about it. It reminds us that we are creatures of flesh. We will never be more at home anywhere than we are in that flesh.

Full-orbed humanity also demands a full embrace of our passions and desires. When understood superficially, our desires appear to point to our personal gratification. But our deepest desires prove that the universe is not centered on us. They direct us toward that which is beyond our self. Our desires urge us to not settle for the small, cramped places where we so often live. They pull us toward creative self-expression, expansiveness, and self-actualization. They call us to deeper and more genuine intimacy. They point us toward release from the prison of isolated individuality. They invite us to a place of connection, fulfillment, aliveness, and wholeness.

To be fully human is to be fully awake – all cylinders of our being firing in synchronous harmony. It is being fully in touch with our senses, not just our thoughts and emotions. It is richly engaging our mental faculties but also trusting the subtle trans-rational wisdom of the heart that is accessible through things like intuition and imagination. It is cultivating reflection on experience and holding the tensions that are part of life. It is being in touch and deeply aligned with our unconscious depths — and with both our soul and the soul of the world.

Don’t settle for anything less.