What Does It Mean To Be Human?
A Conversation with Pastor and World Religions Expert Jeremy Jenkins
I had the privilege of sitting down with my friend Pastor Jeremy Jenkins recently, and let me tell you, I love the way Jeremy thinks about life, culture, religion and theology. Jeremy leads Element Church in Forest City, NC, and serves as Executive Director of All Things All People, taking the gospel into what he calls “the darkest places.” But what struck me most wasn’t his impressive ministry resume; it was his refreshing honesty about the mess of humanity and the beauty of God’s grace in the midst of it all.
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Getting Your Hands Dirty
Jeremy’s approach to ministry reminds me of something I’ve been chewing on lately: the incarnation wasn’t just a theological event. It was a significant act of Humility. One may even say, it’s God getting His hands dirty. When Jesus took on flesh he experienced the fullness of humanity. He experienced hunger, exhaustion, rejection, and ultimately, the brutal reality of the cross.
This has profound implications for how we approach life today. Often, we want our lives to be neat, organized, and we want to tie up loose ends in a nice neat bow. Yet, this is far from the reality of our lives. We experience exhaustion, rejection, we are misunderstood, and we feel pain and even cause pain. In other words, when we think about humanity, there is an innate mess that we have to deal with.
When we shy away from the messy, complicated, broken parts of human experience, we will inevitably miss the beauty of Jesus in the midst of the mess. I mean, how else could we describe the original horror of the cross and the hope we now have when we see that image? And what is the cross? The cross is the path for us to regain out true humanity.
So, what does it mean to be human? Jeremy starts with the Image of God.
The Foundation: Made in God’s Image
Jeremy’s answer cut right to the heart: humans are made in the image of God, made up of both spirit and body. But here’s where it gets interesting: most Christians, he argues, fall into the same trap that humans throughout history have fallen into: we pick or choose. We either become mostly spirit and try to rid ourselves of the body, or we fall into hedonism and just satisfy the flesh.
“The Christian answer,” Jeremy said, “is that the constitution of humanity is in some combination physical and spiritual, and both are important.” This balanced view, he believes, is missing from many pulpits and seminaries today.
This hit me hard because I think we get our anthropology functionally wrong. Most of our understanding of humanity starts with Genesis 3, the fall. But shouldn’t our anthropology start with Genesis 1 and 2? We need to understand the ideal of humanity first, then we can make sense of the tragedy of the fall.
The Eastern Escape
Our conversation took us through world religions, and what struck me was how many Eastern faiths view the physical world as something to be purged. In Hinduism, the cycle of samsara traps you in physical existence until you can rejoin Brahman—the unknowable, transcendent deity. Your truest self is non-physical.
Buddhism takes this further. There’s no self at all. Just karma trapped in ignorance. Nirvana is literally the extinguishing of self, the cessation of existence. When a Buddhist says the problem is desire, they don’t just mean wanting material things. They mean the desire for permanence, for control, for things to stay the same.
Jeremy told me about Jainism, where some monks practice salakana, literally fasting themselves to death. It’s the ultimate denial of the physical, the complete purging of bodily existence in pursuit of spiritual purity.
The Western Extreme
But then there’s the opposite extreme. Latter-day Saints believe humans are pre-existent spiritual beings, that God himself was once human like us, and that faithful followers can become gods themselves. It’s an over-exaltation of humanity rather than a denial of it.
As Jeremy put it, if a Jain and a Latter-day Saint were in the same room, it would be almost impossible for them to have a conversation. They’re running on completely different operating systems.
The Christian Corrective
This is where the Christian worldview becomes revolutionary. We don’t pick polar opposites.
The incarnation changes everything. Christ was resurrected and ate meals with his disciples. He’s interceding for us in the flesh. The flesh will be restored and perfected at the end of days. This isn’t about purging who we are it’s about progressive sanctification, being conformed to the image of Jesus, who is what it means to be truly human.
I shared with Jeremy something I’d been thinking about: “You can get the people out of Egypt, but you can’t get Egypt out of the people of Israel.” But before there was ever Egypt, there was Eden. Long before we had Egypt, we had Eden, and echoes of Eden have been embedded in the hearts of humanity from the very beginning.
That’s why we’re still looking for something. Like that U2 song—“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” We’re looking for Eden. We’re looking for Jesus. To be human is to return to walking in the presence of God, to flourish, to be submitted to Jesus.
The question “What does it mean to be human?” isn’t just academic. It’s the foundation for how we understand ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we live out the gospel in a world desperate for answers. And in Christ, we find not the destruction of our humanity, but its ultimate fulfillment.
Watch the Full Interview!
Thompson, Frank Charles. Thompson Chain Reference Bible: Photo Library. Thompson Chain Reference Bible. Kirkbride Bible and Technology, 1997.