briannakocka

“The glory of God is a human being, fully alive.” Irenaeus of Lyons

That is a quote that one of my instructors, Dan Wilt says often here at school. I had quite a hard time with that, thinking to myself, “How is this the glory of God? We are fallen people so that doesn’t make sense to me.”

I started to look for the biblical perspective of our humanness and how God’s glory is revealed in that. Bernard of Clairvaux, a French abbot who lived from 1090 to 1153 tells us of four degrees of love. First, love of self for self sake. Second is love of God for self’s sake; thirdly there is love of God for God’s sake and lastly love of self for God’s sake.

While the first three make a lot of sense for us, the last or fourth degree of love is hard to understand. How does one love their self for the sake of God? Is that biblical? Is that selfish? Aren’t we supposed to “die to ourselves”? After discussing it in my spiritual formation group, and thinking of the quote I stated from Irenaeus of Lyons I found that we do in fact have to love ourselves for the sake of God. While yes, we are supposed to die to ourselves and allow God to breath the breath of lives in us again, he then established a sense of identity–in Him.

We were not made to be cookie cutters, cream walls, everyone exactly the same. If you look into the account in Genesis about Adam and Eve being in the garden you have to understand that they weren’t just there, hanging out, drinking water, eating fruit and sitting on their butt. No no, God made man and woman to work. He made us to be individual, to be brought into the fullness of Him, giving over the things that make us tick for his sake–but not giving up those things. God is a creator, and we are made in his image, meaning we are also creators.

Creation is beautiful. We, human beings are full of beauty. If we weren’t then God wouldn’t have sent His son to die for us. He could have whipped us out but instead He gave us a more excellent way.  God comes and inhabits our humanity. The human touch can be both beautiful and deadly, and we must remember to discern God in our lives as we move in creativity otherwise we can become too liberal. However when we are living in the fullness of God his creativity in us is lived out in our lives.

God loves us in our humanity; creator to created.