'Godliness' and 'Humanness'

Where do we get the idea that ‘godliness’ and ‘humanness’are at opposite ends of a spectrum?  We seem to have a common misconception that to be a 'Christian', or to be 'godly', we must strip away anything 'worldly' about us.  And so we go to church and leave our sense of humour at home; we leave our anger and our resentment and our bitterness behind (for an hour or two).  We talk to each other and we are all "Fine, thanks!"  We put on masks of joy and peace and love and hope no one peaks beneath the surface.  When we are 'godly' we don't swear, we don't drink and we certainly don't talk about s-e-x.

 And so we divide our lives into sections: the 'godly' and the 'human'.  The golden and the grey.

But Jesus went to parties and drank wine.  He hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors.  In fact, the only people that he criticised were those who thought themselves to be too 'godly' to mix with 'regular' humans.

It is in Jesus that we see the fullness of who we were made to be:

“He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.”

[Romans 8:29-30, The Message]

In these verses, we see Jesus as the forerunner of who we were made to be: a full human, who didn't hide or disguise Himself, but embraced and integrated His 'godliness' and 'humanness'. 

Rather than seeing our 'godliness' and our 'humanness' as opposite points on a spectrum, we need to see these two aspects of our lives as overlapping circles on a Venn Diagram: they are unavoidably and intrinsically linked. 

And our aim as we grow in faith and become more like Jesus will be for the two circles to grow closer together.  Our aim will be to live in the overlap, to be like Him.