The Incarnation and the Value of Humanity

Today’s thoughts spring from Mere Humanity by Donald T. Williams, a compilation of statements on the human condition collected from G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. I’m giving them the Christmas spin.

Here is my thought: man will only value the incarnation of Jesus Christ in direct proportion to which he values his own human worth. If this is true, and I believe it is, we can attribute the devaluing of the incarnation to a low view of humanity. Yet we view humanity through the wonder of the incarnation. Amazingly, God added humanity to himself in order to rescue humanity from its fallen plight!

I submit three thoughts to elevate our view of humanity, and therefore our view of the incarnation:

1) Our motives are distinct from those of the animal world. Our fuzzy cohabitant friends “choose” based on preservation and survival of the fittest, yet humanity structures multiple levels and sublevels of motives to wrangle the mind during the decision making process based on good and evil, failure and redemption, or conflict and peace. At the shallowest point we are contemplative people. Our reservoir of emotions cannot be overlooked. Shakespeare’s Hamlet captures humanity’s struggle with motive:

What is Man

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

2) Humanity’s creativity is the only creativity, except for God. I appeal to Chesterton:

“But suppose our abstract onlooker saw one of the birds begin to build as men build. Suppose in an incredibly short space of time there were seven styles of architecture for one style of nest. Suppose the bird carefully selected forked twigs and pointed leaves to express the piercing piety of Gothic, but turned to broad foliage and black mud when he sought in a darker mood to call up the heavy columns of Bel and Ashtaroth; making his nest indeed one of the hanging gardens of Babylon. Suppose the bird made little clay statues of birds celebrated in letters or politics and stuck them up in front of the nest. Suppose that one bird out of a thousand birds began to do one of the thousand things that man had already done even in the morning of the world; and we can be quite certain that the onlooker would not regard such a bird as a mere evolutionary variety of the other birds; he would regard it as a very fearful wild-fowl indeed.” (Williams, Mere Humanity, page 17).

3) Humanity’s story is written unlike that of the animal world. As Williams emphasizes, “The fact that we tell stories is significant because it flows from the fact that we are a story. We might call this the Narrative Argument for Theism: as a contingent universe needs a Creator, a dynamic universe needs an unmoved Mover, an intelligent and orderly universe needs a Designer, and a moral universe needs a Lawgiver, so a universe containing a creature whose life is utterly inexplicable except as a story demands a Storyteller.” (Williams, Mere Humanity, page 23).

I do not believe that man has worth in his own creative or redemptive acts. In these two areas all of man’s effort has resulted in worthless trash or hold-your-breath machines that will eventually self-destruct. I do believe humanity is of infinite worth and eternal value because of what Jesus has done in the creation and cross. We are valuable because he has treated our souls as valuable. In this sense, God has given a high appraisal because of his actions towards us through his Son, Jesus. So I look in the mirror and see the high value of humanity in the reflection, yet I look in the manger and see the high value of humanity in the incarnation.