"Human Doings" vs. "Human Beings"

Success: the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence (http://www.webster.com/). This is our culture-defined view of success—of achieving—of becoming. But where does it really get us? We end up with a lot of stuff, a lot of stress, and weary souls. The sad part is that this workaholic mentality that has saturated our society has also saturated the Church. We profess to be free, yet live in a self-made prison. We do and do and do—for God—and often still end up missing the point. We think t hat if we do more, we earn more of God’s favor. If we do more, He’ll love us more, like us more, delight in us more, bless us more. We strive to be honored by those around us—to be seen as someone great—someone that has it all together—a “successful Christian.” We cease to be a “human being” and get sucked into an empty existence of a “human doing.”

When Moses asked God’s name, He replied with a resounding, “I AM.” If we look at that grammatically, “I AM” is a form of the verb “to be.” In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the OT, the word chosen to translate “I AM” was emui, meaning “I am, exist, live, am present.” God was saying that He simply IS…that He exists…that He is Being. It’s something that is so deep it’s hard to wrap our minds around. However, we were created in the image and likeness of this God who is Being, and therefore we are called “human beings.” Our identity is rooted in our “being,” yet our culture wants to continually judge our lives as a success or a failure based upon what we do. Scripture continually points us back to good works, yet those works should be a result of our being—an overflow of our abiding in Christ—not the standard by which we find our worth. As children of the Creator, let us abide in the values and standards that hold to God’s heart, and may our “doing” continue to flow from the core of our “being.”