Being here and not there
Stephen Curkpatrick

What does it mean to be human? In the context of biological life within which we are dependent, are we unique as humans? Are we unique in terms of our particular circumstances? What does it mean to be here and not elsewhere, in this time and not another? Why do we value a sense of our uniqueness?

Against subtle reductions of human uniqueness, affirmation of particular human life is a distinctive testimony of Christian gospel.

v

The idea that humans are no more significant than the profusion of biological life that surrounds them is promoted within expressions of spirituality that seek to establish an indispensible connection between ourselves and the earth. Yet to level our existence to the organic intricacies of nature is to cut people off from the personal, the volitional, truth and righteousness.

The grandeur of nature that evokes awe might also be the terror of a blind juggernaut ploughing through millennia of natural recurrence. Nature’s minute intricacies evoke wonder but these also harbour numerous and ingenious ruses by which nature can kill what it generates. Nature does this to perpetuate the cycle of life through the death and decay of every particular expression of life, ensuring space and nutrition for the next generation.

Within purely biological life, a plague of locusts or an endemic virus is no less an expression of abundance than a tree laden with fruit or a river teeming with fish. Without a source of excess expressed as intentional generosity, we have no reason to attribute goodness to abundance in one thing while abundance in another form is regarded as malevolent. Is there generosity given from a volitional and relational source beyond biological life? This is a question that the gospel poses and answers contrary to paganism.

We are often reminded that this earth is “all there is.” People are caught in a cleft between nurturing the earth and an anxious quest to secure a piece of it, threatening the very existence of “all there is.” This tension is manipulated to negate distinctive human status within life. Human status is further negated when “all there is” is deemed a divine entity, giving such negation additional gravitas.

If “all there is” is sanctified as divine, so too is survival of the fittest and cannibalisation of other life in which death not life is the end possibility of every particular expression of biological life. In this scenario, nothing could be given more value than anything else—diversity, whether expressed as eagle, rat or malignancy, is an expression of the earth’s divine spirituality. Within a closed organic system, only arbitrary selectiveness could deny this.

If gentleness and violence, birth and death are all legitimate expressions of the earth’s natural recurrence, no action could be deemed higher than any other. Yet biblical affirmation that the earth is created means that there is always an otherwise to existence.

If creation is a gift, there is a giver as creator and source of life beyond any that upsurges organically from the earth. By contrast, if distinctive personal existence is dissolved in divine consciousness as it merges with a singular soul of the earth, this contributes nothing more than atheism contributes to personal uniqueness. Pantheism is atheism cast in a baroque frame.

Atheists ask us to imagine our future non-existence by imagining our past non-existence—we should not be alarmed by our future non-existence anymore than we are concerned about our past non-existence. It will be the same night in which nothing is known. Yet one thing will be different—we will have existed as unique in time.

To claim that our future will be the same unknown night that preceded our birth, ignores a singular event by which human life will always be different, even if fractionally. In life we make decisions that affect others; we are influenced by others, adding credibility to their influence for good or ill.

If the singular event of life is not significant as unique but merely a brief expression of biological flux amid the earth’s endless repetitions, our experiences and decisions have no more significance than the existence of a dog or a daisy. Any distinctive influence on other people will disappear with their return too, to silent nothingness. Nature’s circle of life strips away any unique identity in its reduction of particular life to the elements.

The uniqueness of human life is preserved in a greater reality of which the gospel speaks. By contrast to nature’s inescapable end for every singular expression of life, the gospel calls us to distinctive life that has already surpassed death.

v

Why was I born in one time and place and not another? Why these abilities, temperament, opportunities and privileges? To attribute these to chance might account for disparities among humans. Yet if the time and place of any life is merely by chance, so too is all existence, for any one life would only be an expression of chance pervading everything.

Alternatively, if I am in a particular time and place by design, I may find difficulty explaining another’s contrary circumstances and diminished opportunities for human wholeness. In the absence of any design however, difference can generate either envy of those more privileged as better equipped by chance or defensiveness against those less privileged. Yet if everything is determined by design, we would easily become indifferent to those less privileged.

Being here and not there—chance or design? What if our particular existence is always a paradox? Life begun biologically in the seeming chance of conception is unique as personal; as unique before God, particular life is accepted as always being so (Ps. 139). As biological, we are never without time and place, yet in faith, our personal sense of life as unique exceeds any biological possibilities.

If being in one place and not another has varying degrees of natural advantage and disadvantage, these are addressed by the gospel’s word of grace and truth, through and with a unique community within creation. This word calls each to another dimension of existence—to dignity in a self-giving community with others in which human distinctiveness is valued.

As called to a unique community, each is engaged as personal, transcending in Christ, circumstances of time and place, even as the difficulties and beatitudes of each are intrinsic to particular identity, testimony, vocation and receipt of generosity within Christian faith.

The gospel and unique human identity are inseparable.

Every person gives expression to a unique existence that is as if arbitrarily given—in a specific time, context and always surrounded by particular people. As personal, engaged by and engaging others, life is specific within a unique web of relationships. Every person in this web evokes distinctive responses and responsibilities, even as these are constantly modified by each. People perceive these things, yet they can find no durable and definitive foundation or source to anchor their inklings of uniqueness, which are ultimately only sustained in the word of God and the gospel.

The word of God concerning human uniqueness and the gospel’s grace and truth affirm inklings of distinctive reality beyond any possible affirmation in biological life by anthropological ideals.

As Christians, we are exceeded by the call to faith and specific vocation before God that cannot be accounted for by any law of context much less demonstrations of organic dependence. This was a radical recognition in the face of ancient paganism; contemporary paganism is also confronted by the same affirmation of distinction.

Our experience of excess in uniqueness that surpasses any explanation of our time and place is finally given its grace and truth in Jesus Christ. Tangible transformation can occur because we are here and not there, unique in time and place that also in faith, becomes our gift given in gratitude—to the glory of God.