"from the human point of view"

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (esp. v.16)

"From a human point of view" is literally "according to the flesh," and must be understood in Paul's usage as that which is opposed to God. I'm not sure if the human point of view opposes God so much as distracts from God, or distracts from adopting God's point of view. (Sort of like contemporary advertising, where one doesn't convince a person to buy a product, one convinces a person that they have a need, a need that can be met by *surprise* your product. Sleight of hand is so much more successful, oftentimes, than brute opposition.)

We no longer know people from this 'human point of view,' "because we knew Jesus that way and look how wrong we were on that account," Paul seems to be saying. "And once we start seeing things 'from God's point of view,' we can't stop at just Jesus, and we see everyone as God sees them."

What is so distracting about "the human point of view?"

Using "the flesh" is such an easier question, with visions of swimsuit-clad ladies, luxury, and doting attentions from others. My "flesh" obviously enjoys being gratified, and it is "easy" to imagine how it could be, and how that gratification would be distracting. I remember when I first started dating my wife and being occasionally distracted by a passing attractive lady, how embarrassing that was and the discipline I had to exert over myself to focus on our conversation sometimes. At times like this I am willing to give in to Augustine and see myself as just a ball of concupiscence, a huddled mass of sinning, that it's not my fault, that it's my nature. "The flesh" is so hard to resist.

But is that the whole story? Is that the most honest answer I could give? There are surely some times (and some people for whom this is even more so the case) where I sin compulsively, I don't have a choice. But just as obviously, at some level, I am choosing to act one way rather than another - most of the time, if not all the time. (And I accept the difficulty of using the word "choose" here, considering cultural, linguistic, physical and imaginative limitations on our range of "choices.") At some level, it is my responsibility (even at the same time that it isn't entirely my fault). What makes me choose to see "according to the flesh?"

One reason may be because most of the rest of the world works in that order - things make more sense (in the World) if I abide by the World's logic and economy (oikonomia: [GK] how one orders the household/life). It's just easier to participate in the conversation if you speak the same language everyone else is speaking - and everyone wants to belong, to feel included and participatory. And we live our lives so much in "the World" and "according to the flesh" and "from a human point of view" that even to us the logic of God's point of view seems nonsensical, contradictory, impossible. And, indeed, when we hold God's logic up to human evaluation, it often comes up profoundly lacking - you can't make money like that! You won't win a fight that way; you'll lose! Those people can't change, that they way they are! And so on.

(And all this while we repeat over and over the narrative(s) of Jesus' life - which was a clear indictment of just that kind of thinking: Jesus did win that way.)

Why do I keep coming back to living and seeing "from a human point of view?" Perhaps it is because I have not yet given myself wholly over to living from God's point of view (and accepting the Worldly consequences of such a lifestyle, likely including poverty, homelessness, public derision, hunger, discomfort, harassment, imprisonment, and so on... prices for full-fledged discipleship I cannot afford while still stradling the line between the two worlds). While I have even a toe in the human point of view, God's point of view will seem terribly risky, costly, nonsensical. (Even now, trying to convince myself of the ultimate sensibility of a God-view-lifestyle, I know that my marriage would likely fall apart under the stress, and that my group of friends would drift from me, and these are things I can't believe would be good or right - surely that isn't supposed to happen in God's view of the world!)

Will there be a time when the world as one can take that step, make that leap, all at once and together, so the new logic makes sense, so the new reasoning "works," so we're all working off the same definitions of success and winning? Am I wrong and weak to hope for such a time so that my discipleship would be easier? (Is it possible to be a disciple if discipleship were easy?)

It is an enormous task, to see people from God's point of view, not "according to the flesh" - not to see in them how my own desires or ambitions could be gratified. To see in them God's desire for them - to wish them success in losing money or position; to hope with them for public scorn and violence; to smile as you join each other in prison, or under torture, or being executed. To see people as agents of a subversive counter-culture, a colony of heaven in a foreign land. To not see in their eyes the reflection of your own wishes for yourself (prestige, power, influence, comfort, and so on).

But we changed our minds about Jesus - he was "just a man," too. But in him we saw a glimpse of God's point of view, and feel all of humanity reconciled to this foreign way of thinking. What was so desperately strange and contrary, in Jesus becomes our very own. Perhaps Paul is advocating that we see everyone as little Jesuses - each of them carrying within them the potential reconciliation of humanity to God, each of them helping to shift our points of view away from Worldly notions of winning and losing and toward God's (totally different) priorities. Or perhaps, to see everyone as a mystery to be respected, even revered.

At any rate, we're challenged to not see them as they are - rich or poor, powerful or outcast, sick or healthy, loving or vengeful. And that might be the toughest demand of discipleship of all.