My Bible study group is beginning a new book. As we were looking over it together, I found myself becoming more aware of my human-ness. It’s one thing to know that we are human; it’s something else entirely when you feel it, accept it, and allow yourself to live in it.

I’ve always struggled with perfectionism. This desire to be perfect stems from a part of myself that refuses to accept my humanity, a part of myself that desires to possess a quality that only God will ever have. We all innately desire to have something God has, and this can vary from person to person.

Humans sin. We all know this is true. Jen Wilkin makes the claim that sin, all sin, results from a desire to have something God has. This is actually true even when you go all the way back to mankind’s original sin.

We love godlike qualities. This is what leads us to sin. When we make the choice to stop trying to be God and instead, love God and turn from our sin, we can live a much more fruitful and enriching life. We will never be God, and it takes the burden off of us when we can let that go.

We want someone we can turn to, rely on, someone that will never let us down. The problem is, so often in this world, we see people trying to find someone to be that person for them, or they’ll try to become that person themselves. This may work for a while, but we all need someone perfect, sovereign, self-sufficient, eternal, and incomprehensible, someone not human.

We need someone not human, but on the other side of the spectrum, we also need someone human, someone we can relate to. We see people, especially nowadays, turning to impersonal concepts such as “love”. They will claim “love is God”, taking out the humanity of God. God is love, but love is not God. We have to get this part right. God is both human (Christ) and nonhuman. This is what we need.

When we are being honest with ourselves, we all have something in common. We as humans need someone who is like us, yet greater than all of us as well, someone (not something) we can relate to as a human yet also rely on. Many will ask how Christianity differs from any other religion; this is how—in fulfilling these very basic, intrinsic, and universal needs and desires.