Many of us, when receiving the amazing gift of salvation, believe the Lord saved us in order that we might become Gods. We see our newfound "creature in Christ-ness" (2 Corinthians 5:17) as the restoration from what we once were in the Garden to a new, enlightened state of Godhood. "Through our belief in Christ's death and resurrection," we say. "We have returned to the fullness of the Garden."
While it is true that through belief in the death and resurrection of Christ we do return to the fullness of the Garden we must be immediately reminded that we were not broken Gods in the Garden. We were broken humans. So, when we speak of redemption, we are speaking of God's Saving Grace reaching in to the subterranean world of our human sinfulness and lifting us up from its mire and clay that we might become fully human - the way we were initially created - not fully God.
Fully Human: being able to laugh from the heart, being able to cry for the brokenness of our neighbor and not for the desperation of our own depressive state. Fully Human: being able to enjoy this present moment - the gift that it is - without wanting to download it, or clutch onto it, fearing we may never pass this way again. Fully Human: being able to choose, to make decisions, out of a human will that is restored to a place wherein it wills to will only what the Father wills - and that, in all things. Fully Human: being restored from the brokenness which causes us to lust in selfish pleasure to a sincerely selfless honoring of God's beauty in the life of another.
You are a human being. Over there is an animal being; over there an angel being - no more, and no less. They are the way God fashioned has fashioned them. I wonder where we would be if we fully embrace the God-given gift "to be" and dwell solely in the radius of the human creation.
As we rise into the depths of sanctification, the heights of ecstatic visions and mystical milestones, it is tempting for us to perceive it all as another step into the destination of Almighty Godhood. "One day," we imagine. "One day I will rise above this menial human life and Jesus will then become my All in All." This is dangerous thought, my brother. In so doing, we are overriding the sensitive beauty – the crafted precision - wherein we are made. Our restoration in Christ isn't gifted in order that we might be mystically injected into the Veins of the One Who sits on the Throne. He is God. We will never be God. Rather, it is the accumulative gathering all our original uniqueness that gives us cause to rejoice. Only then, when we get the boundaries straight, will we realize that the so-called ecstatic visions, mystical milestones, prophetic utterances, and other "spiritual experiences" are not steps into becoming God; they are a part of the awe and wonder of what it means to become fully alive, as in “fully human”, in Christ.
God's desire is that we live into his perfect plans. Part of those plans include being human. It is only when we become fully human (no more and no less) when everything settles. God is God, the human is human, the angels are angels, the animals are animals, and so on down the line - so that all creation "fits" in the way it was imagined and, therefore, all creation can live and move in a glorious rhythm where all the notes are played, just as they were written, in the symphony which is heard from Age to Age.
