CREEDE HINSHAW: Joy, mystery of Christmas is a wonderful paradox

I have been bothered lately by the phrase “I’m all too human.” Words are what columnists (and preachers) trade in, and words make a difference.

How can a person be too human? Aren’t all of us completely, inescapably, irrevocably human? No more and no less? What additional value is added to being a human by adding the modifiers all and too?

God has made us 100 percent human. Period. There is no possibility of being too much or too little human. You are not 85 percent human on some days or 135 percent human on others. Behavior, good or bad, does not make you all too human.

While I’m at it, we might as well toss out other expressions that tend to either exalt or demean what God has made. Except in the interest of hyperbole, let’s banish words such as superhuman, subhuman or inhumane for the same reason.

I’ve never heard a person offer that they’re all too human when they’re trying to explain why they engaged in a good deed or act of kindness/heroism, etc. Rather the opposite is true. They usually are offering a rationale for why they blew it, engaged in some disgusting sin or were caught in some compromising situation. The phrase seems to be a mixture of apology, justification and excuse.

Sorry, but it does not impress me for a person to explain themselves by telling me they are human. I already knew that.

What prompted this column in the first place is that I began playing around with this phrase in relationship to Jesus and his birth of a virgin. What might it mean if — in an entirely different context — we described Jesus as “all too human?”

This is the scandal and hope of Christmas. Jesus, Son of God, the one who according to John’s Gospel has been one with the Father from eternity, is also the one born of a woman, laid in a manger, swaddled, cared for, tended to. He is both infant holy and infant lowly.

Jesus’ full humanity is the stuff that has led to argument from the earliest days of Christianity. He is the New Adam, the Second Adam, Paul says. But the gospel accounts make clear that this new creation is also fully one of us, enfleshed, incarnate.

Many fights in the church were once initiated either between those so taken with Jesus’ divinity they were scandalized by his humanity or between those so taken with his humanity they were scandalized by his divinity. Depending on where you find yourself on this issue will influence how you approach Christmas.

The church has always tried its best to keep Jesus’ divinity and his humanity simultaneously in balance. Although I have never heard Jesus described this way, I think it might be fair to say that He is all too divine.

At the same time, I would suggest that the One born to Mary and laid in a manger may be correctly described as all too human. The joy and mystery of Christmas is contained in this wonderful paradox.

Email Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].