What does it mean to be human?

For most of us, subjectively, the everyday experience of being human probably hasn’t changed very much, but we may be aware of a storm of questions blowing furiously outside the house, rattling the windows and loosening tiles. What does it mean to be male and female? What is a “normal” state of mental health? Are ethnicity and nationality essential to our humanity? Are we anything more than compliant consumers of goods and services? Is AI making the human mind redundant? And as we enter the Anthropocene, are we—paradoxically—losing control of our destiny?

To be human is not just to be one thing. It is to be part of a story with a past, a present, and an imagined future.

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New creation, Spirit, blessing and kingdom: a clarification of terminology
I have been rather bothered recently by the way in which the emerging church - though not only the emerging church - makes use of the concept of the ‘kingdom of God’ to define its mission, the idea being that the task of the church is to extend or build the kingdom of God on earth. Very often there… ( | 1 comment)
Being a disciple of Jesus is not enough
I have voiced some reservations in a couple of recent posts about the appropriateness of modelling the life and mission of the church on the form of discipleship found in the Gospels (see ‘Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, and the future of the church in Europe’ and ‘We have to go back, but not to… ()
We have to go back, but not to square one
I suggested in my review of Alan Hirsch’s book The Forgotten Ways that, in our search for a new paradigm to replace the now more or less defunct Christendom worldview, the historical moment which we should revisit for inspiration is not the beginning of the narrow path of… ()
I am the way and the truth and the life
Jesus’ exclusivist statement about the salvation of Israel needs to be read, at least in the first place, in the context of the story that is being told. We do violence to Jesus’ intent if we cut it from that narrative and make it a universal, context-free, self-interpreting dogma meaning something… ()
Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, and the future of the church in Europe
The ebullient Alan Hirsch was in Portugal recently with the Christian Associates leadership community, talking about what makes a missional church-planting movement, in his words, go ‘Kaboom!’ In his book The Forgotten Ways he faces squarely the fact that the church in the West is… ()
New creation and the kingdom of God
This is an attempt to clarify, in response to some perceptive comments on the post ‘NT Wright and the confusion of kingdom and new creation’ (the link is to a copy of the article in this site: the original with comments can be found here), how I understand the relation between ‘kingdom of God’ and… ( | 13 comments)
Judging the twelve tribes of Israel
The assertion here (and in Lk. 22:28-30) that the disciples will sit on thrones with Christ may have a quite specific reference to the eschatological narrative. In the regeneration, which refers not to the final new creation but to God’s people restored following judgment (cf. Is. 65:17; 66:… ()