The Christian answer to our identity crisis

I find myself saying the phrase “what it means to be human” so much that I’m starting to annoy myself. But it seems to be the defining question of our age; finding its way into secular podcasts, space missions and political debate. It is the question that lies at the heart of moral and ethical discussions on technological advancement, birth rates, the climate crisis, the economy, work, social cohesion and family. 

It is not a question that’s confined to theology and policy geeks but is one I’m finding people on my Instagram feed are asking. The world feels like it’s accelerating faster and faster, and with the speed of technological progress in particular, we risk losing sight of who we are, what we’re here for and in whose image we are made. 

The world is desperate for the answers to these questions. The strange fact is that the pope’s latest encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (which literally means ‘glorious humanity’) has – yes, believe it – gone viral. Never before has a theological paper from the Vatican attracted this much mainstream media attention. 

Whether or not people have found the answers, it seems there is a rising dissatisfaction with the dominant narratives in our society about what it means to be human. We saw it in the backlash to the comments made recently by Diary of a CEO podcast host Steven Bartlett, who claimed that having a couple of glasses of wine ruined three days of his life. Tracking every activity with his expensive tech, he found he slept poorly, didn’t go to the gym and – shockingly – “podcasted worse”. In Bartlett’s relentless self-optimising, people felt an ickiness. There was an instinctive feeling that perhaps we were made for more than this; that to be human is not about constant improvement and control, but about love, dignity, community and agency. 

Each of us is made in the image of God and our humanity is found through loving relationships with others

Into this moment, we are seeing a re-emergence of Christian humanism. Before you think I’ve lost all my evangelical credentials, hear me out. 

At its core, Christian humanism holds that the answer to the question: “What does it mean to be human?” is found in Jesus; that human flourishing is found not through autonomy, power or self-optimisation but in recognising that each of us is made in the image of God and that our humanity is found through loving relationships with others.

Far too often, the dominant narratives we hear in our society suggest that humankind has no need of God or each other; that we are without limits, purely material beings, data points caught up in algorithms that dehumanise us. 

In this political and cultural moment, in which people feel at the mercy of the machine and are facing institutional and economic pressures, Christianity offers something more radical than simply self-care. It offers a profound vision of each of us as agents, neighbours and image-bearers. This is what it means to be human. 

In the words of Professor Luke Bretherton: “Ultimately, Christian humanism is not just an idea. It is an invitation: to become more fully human – by learning to see, love, and live like Christ.”