Personal Blogs

What It Means to Be Human

I was on the train this week. Nearby sat a group of six people. All of them were talking, but no one was listening. Each voice climbed over the others, rising in volume and insistence. What struck me wasn’t just the noise—but the absence of communion. It wasn’t conversation. It was a kind of performative disconnection, a chorus of monologues in search of an audience.

And yet, is that not the world we live in?

We’re increasingly surrounded by sound but starved of meaning. We inhabit a culture that values expression over reflection, talking over listening, presence over essence. The moment reminded me of Blaise Pascal’s sharp insight:

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
— Pensées

Pascal understood that our flight from silence is a flight from ourselves. We fear what we might find in the quiet. We fear the vast questions that rise when all the distractions fall away—questions like: Who am I? Why am I here? What does it mean to be human?

We’ve made impressive progress understanding the mechanics of life. We know about the spin of electrons and the sweep of galaxies, the helix of DNA and the geometry of black holes. But ask a child, a professor, or a family member what it means to be human, and the answers blur. We can decode genes but not purpose.

And that tells us something vital.

Our knowledge is expanding, but our meaning is collapsing. The more we explain the how, the more we lose sight of the why.

So let me begin with a premise—one many try to ignore in their rush to explain the world without wonder:

There is a Grand Designer.

This is not blind faith. It is, in many ways, the most rational response to the evidence before us. From the elegant structure of the double helix to the flight of a bird; from the fine-tuning of universal constants to the moral intuition that kindness is better than cruelty—we are surrounded by what C.S. Lewis called “signposts” pointing beyond themselves.

Design suggests a Designer. Beauty implies a source. Order reflects a Mind.

More than that, this Designer cannot be simply within the universe, subject to its laws and limits. He must be outside of time and space—uncaused, eternal, and personal. For impersonal forces do not craft poetry or conscience or consciousness. Only a person can create persons.

And if this Designer shaped human beings, then it stands to reason He had a purpose in doing so.

Existential philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard wrote of the despair that arises when humans live without a sense of purpose. He saw the “sickness unto death” as not physical but spiritual—a loss of self through disconnection from the eternal. When we deny transcendence, we don’t gain freedom; we lose orientation.

If we are the products of a loving and benevolent Creator, then our nature must in some way reflect His nature.

The fruits of that nature are not hard to imagine. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.

These are not mere social constructs. They are echoes of a moral original. We sense their goodness because we are designed to flourish by them.

And if you sit quietly in a room—really quietly—you will begin to feel the ache of that design. A longing for meaning, for reconciliation, for permanence. As Lewis observed, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Try thinking of an alternative. Can a chemical accident produce the longing for eternal love? Can chance explain the moral outrage we feel at injustice? Can meaning itself arise from a meaningless source? No one on their right mind would say this is a happy world. But what about living in a world where the qualities above would flourish.

If not, then this—this is what it means to be human:
To be a created being, conscious and free, moral and mortal, made in the image of a Creator who intended us for something more than survival—for something eternal. A future eternal life for those found worthy by groping and finding the creator, something we must do away from the noise.

And only in silence can we begin to hear that truth.

 His purpose in all this was that people of every culture and religion would search for this ultimate God, grope for Him in the darkness, as it were, hoping to find Him. Yet, in truth, God is not far from any of us. Acts 17:27 (TV).

Scripture quotations marked (TV) are taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2008 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Image by Copilot

"Any extra-terrestrial life would be less disappointed by our technology

 than by our failure to live up to our humanity."

Jim McCrory

Image by https://unsplash.com/@nasa

NASA, the North American Space Administration, has invested billions of dollars developing technology to detect extra-terrestrial life. But to what end, I wonder? Is it merely a quest for knowledge, or are we yearning for validation from other worlds? If there is indeed life beyond Earth, what would these beings think of us, of our planet, and how we treat it?

Consider this: Earth, a planet abundant in resources, produces food in quantities that could feed all its inhabitants. Yet, we are bombarded with heart-wrenching images of emaciated children, flies buzzing around their eyes, in regions stricken by poverty and famine. How do we justify such stark contrasts? People die from ailments that could easily be cured with a simple course of antibiotics, while others live in unimaginable luxury. In our cities, the streets are filled with the homeless, despite an abundance of land that could provide shelter. Drugs tear at the fabric of society, and our leaders—entrusted with the responsibility to guide and protect—seem unable to agree on even the most basic issues. It’s like trying to herd fish in a stormy sea.

And yet, we imagine we are ready to meet other life forms.

What would these extra-terrestrials make of us? Perhaps they would be astonished by our achievements—technology that stretches beyond our atmosphere, art that speaks to the soul, and scientific discoveries that unravel the mysteries of the universe. But what of our failings? Would they be baffled by the contradictions in our nature, the way we hoard resources, while others starve? Would they wonder how we can be so divided on issues of justice, fairness, and human dignity, even while standing on a planet designed to sustain us all?

 And perhaps more thought-provoking still: What would we make of them? Imagine if these visitors from another world didn’t come with superior weapons or advanced technologies, but instead came with a message of morality—asking us to live by principles that, deep down, we already know.

What if they asked us to love our neighbours as ourselves, not just in theory but in practice? To truly commit to being loyal, never casting a glance in envy or desire toward another? What if they encouraged us to speak the truth in all matters, to be transparent in our dealings? What if they reminded us to consider the poor, the widow, the aged, and the fatherless with the same concern we have for our own families? How would we react if they implored us to respect all forms of life, including animals, and to treat them humanely?

Imagine if they instructed us to lend without interest, to refuse exploitation of the hired worker, to resist the temptations of jealousy, greed, gossip, and slander. To simply be human—compassionate, honest, and humble. Would we embrace that? Would we even recognize the wisdom in it? Or would we dismiss them, much as we often dismiss the moral teachings that have been passed down to us through millennia?

It’s sobering to think that the values we might expect from enlightened beings beyond our world are the same principles we’ve been given for centuries—principles we often fail to uphold. Could it be that the answers we seek in the stars are already within us?

What if these extra-terrestrial visitors are already watching us, not in curiosity but in judgment? They may not need to land ships on our lawns to assess the state of humanity. Perhaps their eyes are already upon us, evaluating how we handle the gifts we’ve been given. In this regard, they might resemble the God who, as it says in 2 Chronicles 16:9, “For the eyes of the LORD roam to and fro over all the earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him. "

The apostle Paul, in his speech to the people of Athens, touched on a similar theme: “that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:27). Perhaps, in our quest to reach beyond the stars, we are missing the profound truth that the divine—the eternal—has always been close, waiting for us to recognize it.

So, as we search for extra-terrestrial life, we might do well to pause and reflect on the life we already know—the life we share with one another here on Earth. For if we cannot live in harmony with those around us, what hope do we have of understanding life beyond our world? What if, before looking outward, we first learned to look inward, to search not for life among the stars, but for humanity within ourselves?

Bible verses from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB)