What Makes a Human Being Human?
What makes a human being human?
That is not an abstract question anymore once life puts it in front of you.
For Micha, it came into focus when she learned during pregnancy that her son Ace would likely be born with Down syndrome. She described the experience honestly. The news forced her to confront not only fear, but the hidden assumptions our culture carries about value, ability, and worth.
And that is where the conversation became bigger than one family’s story.
Because the truth is, most of us are living inside a cultural lie.
We live in a world that assigns value based on productivity, performance, independence, appearance, and visible competence. We may not say it out loud. We may even deny it. But it shows up everywhere: in the way we measure success, in the way we compare children, in the way we reward image over substance, and in the way we quietly panic when life does not fit the script.
Micha put it powerfully. As she wrestled with what it would mean to welcome Ace into the world, she found herself stripping away one definition after another. Being human could not simply mean having a certain kind of body. It could not mean speaking a certain way. It could not mean performing at a certain level. It could not mean independence.
So what was left?
Her answer was simple and profound:
We are human because we can love and receive love.
That is not sentimental. It is foundational.
In my own work, I keep returning to the same basic truth: we lose our way when we mistake the outer signs for the inner reality. We do this in religion. We do it in society. We do it in our families. We do it in the mirror.
We confuse signals with substance.
We think the gifted, the successful, the articulate, the strong, the self-sufficient, or the admired must somehow be “more fully” human than the weak, the dependent, the struggling, or the overlooked. But that is not wisdom. That is hardness of heart.
It is the old error in modern form.
It is the same blindness that asks, explicitly or implicitly, “What is this person worth?” when the better question is, “Can I still see the image of God here?”
Micha shared that after Ace’s diagnosis, some people actually asked why she decided to have him. That question reveals far more about our civilization than most of us want to admit. A society that can ask that question with a straight face has already surrendered something essential.
Because once dignity is tied to function, no one is safe.
Not the disabled.
Not the elderly.
Not the sick.
Not the poor.
Not the unborn.
Not even the high achiever, whose value is only secure until he fails.
A culture built on performance will eventually devour everyone.
That is why this conversation matters.
Ace did not simply enlarge Micha’s compassion. He exposed the false theology underneath the culture of achievement. He revealed the poverty of a worldview that treats ability as identity and independence as the measure of maturity.
And that brings me to the second truth that stood out in our conversation:
Dependence is not the opposite of maturity.
Our culture treats dependence like a defect. From childhood on, we are taught to admire self-sufficiency. Need is embarrassing. Vulnerability is weakness. Receiving help is failure. Maturity, we are told, means needing less and less from other people.
But that is not how life actually works.
And it is certainly not how love works.
The whole human story is one of dependence. We enter the world dependent. We survive by dependence. We flourish through bonds of trust, sacrifice, and care. And if we are honest, even our highest achievements are built on gifts we did not create, relationships we did not sustain alone, and grace we did not earn.
The fantasy of independence is one of the great deceptions of modern life.
Micha spoke about how Ace has taught her that dependence, shared need, and vulnerability are not signs of immaturity but part of what makes life meaningful. I think she is right. More than that, I think this insight goes straight to the center of both the human condition and the Christian story.
What is prayer if not dependence?
What is community if not mutual dependence?
What is love if not the willingness to need and be needed?
What is the Incarnation if not God entering fully into the vulnerability of embodied life?
We talk a lot about strength, but very often what we call strength is just defended isolation. We talk about freedom, but often what we mean is the ability to avoid inconvenience, obligation, and surrender. We talk about success, but often what we are praising is a polished refusal to admit need.
That is not maturity.
That is fear with good branding.
Real maturity does not mean transcending need. It means learning how to carry need truthfully, humbly, and in relationship with others. It means becoming the kind of person who can both give love and receive it. That was Micha’s definition of what makes us human, and I believe it is also one of the clearest definitions of spiritual adulthood.
This is one reason disability can become such a profound teacher. Not because disabled people exist to teach lessons to others, but because their lives often expose the lies the rest of us have learned to call normal.
They reveal that “normal” is frequently just socially rewarded illusion.
And once that illusion starts to crack, other things come into view too.
That is where Micha’s spiritual journey also becomes important.
One of the things I appreciated most in our conversation was the way she described growing beyond fear-based religion without abandoning God. That distinction matters.
There are many people who outgrow a narrow, suffocating version of faith and assume the only options are total rejection or silent compliance. But Micha described something more honest and more difficult. She shed teachings about women, hell, exclusion, and certainty that had become burdensome and harmful. Yet she did not discard the deep spiritual experiences that first rooted her in God.
That, to me, is a sign of maturity too.
Faith that cannot survive honest questions is not deep faith. It is fragile control.
Faith that depends on fear, shame, and rigidity may produce conformity for a time, but it will not produce love. And if, as I have argued for years, love is the true sign, then any theology that consistently diminishes love has lost contact with its own source.
What struck me was that Micha did not describe faith becoming thinner. She described it becoming more spacious, more rooted, more ancient, and more alive. She found nourishment in liturgy, mystery, ritual, scripture, and the deeper currents of the Christian tradition. In other words, her faith outgrew fear, but kept its roots.
That is a needed word right now.
Too many people are trapped between brittle fundamentalism on one side and spiritual drift on the other. But there is another way. There is a way to keep walking toward truth without pretending certainty where certainty does not exist. There is a way to remain anchored in God while letting hardness of heart be broken open. There is a way to grow beyond what was false without throwing away what was holy.
That is not compromise.
That is refinement.
And perhaps that is one of the deepest threads connecting everything Micha and I discussed: personhood, dependence, and faith all become clearer when fear loosens its grip.
When fear rules, we sort people by usefulness.
When fear rules, we cling to control.
When fear rules, we confuse independence with strength.
When fear rules, we weaponize religion.
But when love comes back to the center, something changes.
We begin to see the human being before us not as a problem to solve, a category to judge, or a function to evaluate, but as a bearer of divine image.
That is the heart of Created in the Image of God.
Not as a slogan. As a way of seeing.
If we really believed that every human being bears the image of God, our politics would change. Our theology would change. Our family life would change. The way we speak, the way we measure, the way we welcome, the way we grieve, and the way we love would all change.
Micha Boyett helped bring that truth into sharper focus.
Her son Ace did not diminish the meaning of humanity. He helped reveal it.
And maybe that is what the rest of us need most: not another theory of human value, but a recovery of the truth that dignity does not come from output, maturity does not come from autonomy, and faith does not become stronger by clinging to fear.
We are human because we can love and receive love.
That is not the whole of theology.
But it is close to the center.
And if we miss that, we will miss almost everything.
Sneak Peek
Next on Created in the Image of God, the conversation continues in two directions that connect naturally with the questions Micha raised about delight, compassion, and the deeper life of the soul.
On Sunday, October 18 at 7:00 a.m. US Central time, I’ll be speaking with Stephanie Rousselle—Bible teacher, author, and host of the Gospel Spice podcast—about moving beyond a duty-driven faith and discovering deeper joy and delight in our relationship with God. From engaging scripture with fresh eyes to satisfying the soul’s deeper longing for God, it promises to be a rich conversation.
Then on Tuesday, October 20 at 8:00 p.m. Central time, I’ll be joined by David Gushee—Christian ethicist, author, and distinguished university professor at Mercer University—to explore how Christian faith speaks to some of the most challenging moral and social questions of our time, and what it means to bring conviction and compassion into public life. From Christian ethics and moral responsibility to navigating faith, society, and the difficult questions facing the church today, this should be a timely and important exchange.
