Only Human

The scripture referred to is Nehemiah 8-10 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a.

When I was in college I was part of a Skid Row ministry. Every Sunday we were bussed to a part of Chicago that looked like it had been bombed and we went to the people there whose lives had been devastated by alcohol. Some were homeless, some lived in a flop house. It was an old hotel, where they had knocked out the walls and replaced them with flimsy partitions that did not go up to the ceiling but were topped with chicken wire to keep occupants from climbing over into neighboring “rooms.” The resulting cubicles were narrower than jail cells, having only room for a single bed and a small dresser. It was more like a kennel than a place fit for human beings. It was called the Legion Hotel and its name reminded me of the man possessed by demons who, when Jesus asked his name, replied, “My name is Legion for we are many.” (Mark 5:9) And in this place we met many men who were no longer in control of their lives but were slaves to spirits; in this case, distilled spirits.

I really didn't know then what I do now about addiction but I accepted the idea that the first step to helping someone was to get them to admit they had a problem. We thought step one was to get these men to say that they were alcoholics. So we were surprised to discover that they readily did so, often without being asked. But rather than this admission being a painful realization of their predicament it was a rationalization of their condition. To them, saying “I am an alcoholic” was essentially saying “I can't help it,” and therefore “Why try?” It was a shrug, an excuse to give up and give in to the disease that was slowly stripping them of their mental and physical health.

When someone attempts to do something very hard and fails to do it perfectly, we often console the person by saying, “You're only human.” We mean, “You did your best and only failed because you came up against your limitations.” We would be appalled if the person responded, “You're right, so I'm going to give up and never try anything difficult ever again.” We didn't mean to give up on all their goals or dreams. A person who did not make it as a big Hollywood star could still be an actor, perhaps doing character roles in films or doing the lead roles in regional theater. A scientist who didn't win the Nobel prize can still teach others and perhaps become a mentor to the next generation of scientists. Just because I was never going to be the next Florence Nightingale or Billy Graham didn't mean that I was going to give up nursing or preaching. You may have to modify your wildest dreams or loftiest goals but you don't have to give up on them completely.

Yet it seems that more and more I hear people saying that because we can't achieve our ideals, we should get rid of our expectations of things ever getting better. Revelations that very accomplished people like Neil Gaiman, Albert Einstein, Joss Whedon, Charles Dickens, Bill Clinton, Louis CK, and many others turned out to be sexual predators or terrible spouses, fathers, or bosses have led some people to say, “Well, as long as they do good work as artists, scientists, writers, directors, politicians, or comedians, we shouldn't expect them to be morally good as well.” In other words, they are only human. We can't expect them to be good at everything. But it's not a zero-sum game. Being a terrible person is not a prerequisite for being great in some other area of human endeavor. Benedict Arnold was a great general but that doesn't mean we can excuse his going over to the other side and betraying the American Revolution. There is a difference between trying to do something good and failing to do it perfectly and simply deciding to do what you know is wrong and harmful to others.

In Autocracy, Inc, historian Anne Applebaum tells us that what triggered Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's famous outburst at the United Nations where he took off his shoe and pounded it on the podium was an accusation that the USSR violated human rights. He denied it. Today's dictators don't bother because they don't care to be seen as role models. Instead they point to egregious human rights violations committed by the US and other democratic nations and say, in effect, “We are no worse than anyone else.” They want people to accept that such things will happen and reconcile themselves to it. They're essentially saying, “It's only human.” But like the guys I ministered to on Skid Row, what they mean but aren't saying is, “Nobody can do any better. So why try?”

Apparently this was part of the problem the people are having in our reading from Nehemiah. In 597 BC the Babylonian empire defeated the tiny nation of Judah and took the upper classes of Jews into exile. 10 years later Nebuchadnezzar II came back and destroyed Jerusalem, its walls and the temple. In 538 BC Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, conquered Babylon and let the Jews return. The lower classes of Jews who were not taken into exile had lived for nearly 70 years without a temple or priests or much knowledge of the Torah, the law of Moses. Nehemiah returns from exile to organize the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the scribe Ezra comes with a mission to rebuild the faith of the people. It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. As a teacher of the law Ezra reads from the Torah and with the help of the Levites translates it from the written Hebrew into the Aramaic which the people spoke. Remember, this crowd has never read or heard these scriptures before. And when the people hear it, they weep. They recognize that they have not been doing what God wants them to do and they probably won't do it perfectly. Ezra sees this and says, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep....Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

When a child starts walking somewhere around their first birthday, they fall a lot, often on their butt. Then they tend to look at their parents. If the parents look upset, the infant cries. But if the parents smile encouragingly, the toddler gets back up and takes a few more steps. As a child improves his ability to walk, he stumbles and falls less. Just so, God wants us to try to walk with him even when we stumble at times. And just as reaching maturity doesn't mean we will never stumble or fall but that we will instead get up and start again, so should we do in our walk with God. Like a good parent, God doesn't give up on us and we shouldn't give up on us or him either.

As C.S. Lewis said, God is easy to please but hard to satisfy. He is pleased by any progress we make but he expects us to keep going. The worst thing for a child or a Christian to do after a fall is to give up on ever getting to their feet again and walking. Human beings only progress when they balance the recognition and acknowledgment of their flaws and limitations with a determination to try to do better. We should never let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Another thing that helps us overcome our limitations is helping one another. In the US we have this ideal of the self-sufficient person, who can handle anything that is thrown at them. But nobody is self-sufficient. You'll see that if you ever watch a few episodes of Naked and Afraid, the so-called reality show in which people are dropped off in the wilderness without any clothing or anything to help them survive except one item. There is nothing sexy about the show, not only because parts of the body are blurred out, but because the people really do have to work from scratch to make shelter, gather food and stay healthy. A lot of the contestants are survivalists, sometimes even ex-military and survival instructors. And yet when they have to use their skills in the real world, they often find it is much more difficult than they realized. Many get sick or are hobbled by injuries that would be easily treated back home. The weather makes life very hard and the animals they need for food are not easily caught, especially in the quantities they need to stay healthy. It seems that the couples that do best do so, not merely because of their individual skills, but because they cooperate well. They see themselves not as competitors but as a team, each being realistic about both their individual strengths and weaknesses as well as their need for each other's help. Their goal is to travel to a point at which they will be flown out to civilization, where the things we need to survive are provided by construction workers, grocery stores, doctors and others working together.

Civilization, like any group of people, depends on the cooperation of human beings. Paul recognized this in a church that was sometimes a contentious mix of Jews and Gentiles, of rich and poor, slaves and free, males and females. Instead of trying to make everyone uniform, Paul saw that God was using their differences to create a new kind of humanity. And he was inspired to compare Christians to a body. Even if you never studied anatomy, you know that the body is made of many different parts which have many different functions. To do almost anything, the parts have to work together in harmony. After my accident, I learned in physical therapy that the act of walking involves 9 major muscle groups. What children work out on their own, I needed a lot of physical help and instruction to relearn. I became very aware of how my body worked and how it didn't work. It was hard and painful but I never gave up. At one point, I used my left leg, which was slightly less damaged, to hook my right leg and help it bend more fully.

Members of the body help one another. And all of the members have important functions. It used to be that doctors thought the appendix was useless except to burst and cause a very serious medical emergency. Now they realize it is part of the immune system and stores good bacteria that help us digest food. Scientists found that our DNA contained sequences that didn't appear to have any functions and called them “junk DNA.” Now they realize that they do have important functions, like regulating gene expression and helping chromosomes stay together which is vital for cell survival. And as Paul points out, all the members of the body of Christ also have important functions and it is vital that we be united.

If you stub your toe or get something in your eye, your whole body is immediately aware and tries to help. If you get a splinter in one finger, your other hand tries to pull it out. Or you use your mouth to ask your friend or spouse or parent to pull it out. That's what your body parts or other members of the body of Christ are for: to help each other.

In the beginning God said “It is not good for man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) We are social animals. No one human being ever hunted down a wooly mammoth, killed it and brought it back to the tribe alone. It took a hunting party. The only way humans managed to survive was by cooperating. The only way we will have a functional country is by cooperating, which includes accepting the contributions of immigrants. (Leviticus 19:33-34; Matthew 25:34-46) Miguel Ondetti, an Argentine-American, synthesized the first ACE inhibitor, which treats heart disease. The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, who came to the US from Scotland. Steve Jobs was born to a Syrian immigrant. Jobs was a co-founder of Apple and was responsible for the development of the smartphone on which we depend so much these days.

Yes, we are only human and we are sinners and we have limitations. Problems arise not only when we deny these things but when we use them as an excuse not to try to improve. When we fail, we can go into an emotional tailspin, or we can say, “I can do that a little better.” And we can seek the help of others. That way we can overcome some of our limitations. Jesus calls us together to become his body on earth and take up his mission of bringing the good news of God's love and forgiveness and healing to the world and of bringing more people into the body of Christ with their strengths and skills.

And let us not forget that we have an even greater source of help, the Holy Spirit, who indwells every member of the body of Christ and enables us to do more than we can ask or imagine. Jesus called him the Parakletos, a Greek word which means “advocate, counselor, encourager, and helper.” (John 14:15-17) We may only be human but with his help we are more than conquerors. (Romans 8:37) The Spirit enabled a handful of human beings to proclaim the good news which conquered the Roman Empire and spread to every nation of the world. The church has not been perfect but through its influence most cultures accept the idea of helping the weak, the poor, the hungry, and the helpless as well as the ideals of justice and equality. If we are to do better, we must not give up on our ideals just because we have failed to live up to them perfectly. We must commit ourselves to do what is right, however difficult, and to say, as we do in our baptismal vows, “I will, with God's help.”