Why do humans not have superpowers?

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I don't know.

Dr. Krista McCurlin, thank you so much for joining me today.

All right, let's hear our question for today.

Why don't humans have superpowers?

Same thing. That's a good thing. But we are creatures of need in a context of scarcity and lack, where there's actually, it's harder to be in relationship with God. It's harder to be in relationship with other people and with creation.

So when I think about why don't we have superpowers, it's such a good question. And I do at some point want to talk about, I actually do think we have some superpowers if we think about who humans are, in light of God's desires for the world and our role within creation. So I actually do want to circle back to more of a positive take on that. But the superpowers we don't have, like laser vision and x-ray vision, or flying or being able to be super strong, I think a lot of it is because we need to feel our need. So if I was Superwoman right now, you know, and I could fly and I couldn't be hurt by anything, and I had laser eyes and x-ray vision, I wonder how aware I would be of my actual need for God or for other humans, like that language of self-sufficiency.

So it's all about me and what I can provide for myself. But what I love about being human and that we're not the creator, so we think of God as the creator and we're the creature. Like a lot of other creatures, we need rest. We need water. We need food.

And I think humans also have a special kind of need for a relationship with God and they are meant to live out of that need in a particular way. So I just wonder, because even now, without superpowers, I think we can lack awareness of our need for God and for others and to be in relationship, good relationship, with the creation. So if we had superpowers, I think we'd be even less aware and less sensitive to our need for dependence, for weakness, for vulnerability, the things that I actually think are some of the most beautiful aspects of being human.

I've even heard Andy Crouch talk about technology and wealth and the ways in which I don't need someone to take me to the airport because I have Uber, or I don't need someone to help me cook dinner because I can pay a service to bring me dinner. We create conditions under which we have less need of other people. Can you talk a little bit more about why that matters theologically? Because I think some people, they have an innate sense that maybe trying to overcome our sense of human dependence might not be great. Even the examples I just gave, you could see ways in which trying to overcome that dependence means I don't have community, means that maybe I'm not living the same kind of life.

that would be really beautiful. We might have a romantic idea of a former agrarian life. that would have been very nice. But why does it matter theologically that we both are dependent creatures? and the word that you use that's just so important, that we have needs and that those needs, there are, needs that are specific to being human.

Why is that important theologically?

He doesn't come from anywhere else. If you think about this too much, it will make your brain hurt.

And that's why, throughout the great traditions of Christian thinking, we talked about God as love, but we need threeness in God, or more than oneness. And there's lots of debates on why we stopped at three. That's a whole other conversation.

Like God could have conceivably have made us quite self-sufficient. Also, human persons could have been asexual in how we reproduce, right? Like we don't, we didn't, it didn't have to be this way. But for some reason, and I think it's because of the goodness of God, that God calls the creation good. And then what's that crazy bit, right?

Like Sabbath, we're just talking with our kids this past Sunday, right? I asked them, I said, so today's Sunday. And we often talk about that as Sabbath, which is where we rest. And I said, do you know why we do that? And Rhea, my eight-year-old, goes, well, because God rested.

I said, well, that's exactly right. I didn't even know you knew that. But can you tell me, why do you think God rested? And she thought for a second and she goes, well, he must have been tired. I said, well, that's what's so crazy, is like, God wasn't tired.

God was satisfied with the goodness of this work and then invites all of creation into God's rest. This beautiful picture of God inviting us into what God didn't need. We might call that divine pedagogy, God teaching us something that is an invitation to the flourishing life. And so this idea, first of all, that God doesn't need creation. God wants creation.

God wanted the world as it is and wants you and wants me and wants to be in relationship with this beautiful child that asked this question and gave us these markers. I think Tom Wright talks about these as kind of these signposts in our current state of being, that point to who we are meant to be. And now those are broken signposts. So we've got to do a little bit more work to kind of recover what that need and even our desires are pointing to. But initially, I would see before there was sin, before we tried to be self-sufficient and apart from God, it was just this beautiful relation where God wanted us to flourish in relationship with God, with one another and creation.

So I actually think it's wrapped up in the whole story about how we are, who we are and how God is who God is. It's a major way we would distinguish between our ways of being.

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And thank you to Brazos Press for sponsoring this episode. Yeah. And how does this relate? I've heard you talk before about the image of God and how we think about what that means to be made in the image of God. And it seems like sometimes we throw this phrase around a lot.

I mean, we sometimes use it in a positive way to say, oh, because people are made in the image of God, that means they're valuable and important. But we don't often pause and say, okay, what do we mean when we use that term? But sometimes I've heard people use it almost in a way of, you know, human creatures are described in this creation account in Genesis as different than other creatures. And almost in a way of, because they are different than other creatures, they might have less need or they might be more self-sufficient. Or, because they are made in the image of God, they're closer to God in the sense of, as you've just described, God not needing anything, God having everything that God needs.

How do we think about that really important theological language that humans are made in the image of God in a way that helps us understand what you're also saying about need as something that is central to what it means to be human?

So it's this, really, I think it's a tightrope that we're watching, that we're walking when we come to the Genesis account. On the one hand, we are the only creature that God says is made in our image, according to our likeness. Only creature that's like that. And only creature that's also given a particular vocation of ruling the world. Now, again, how do we mean ruling?

We're reading that often as people who are on east of Eden, right? We're after a sinful context. And so it's very hard for us to conceive of rulership that is not power over, but is instead giving power to. And I think that's actually what we see going on in that Genesis text is God gives, actually gives, power to humans. And humans are meant to use that power to care for the creation and to care for each other.

So there is this specialness, if you will. And that's some of the superpower that I'd want to say that actually do think we have as human persons. We are literally meant to represent the creator, the God of the universe, in the created world. We are meant to extend God's peace-giving, life-giving, flourishing presence in the world around us. And that is unique to what humans are called to.

And at the same time, we are also a creature. We are what we talk about having that nephesh, this breath of life. It's the same breath that's given in chapter six to the rest of the creaturely kind. We're made out of earth. And these other creatures, they proceed from the earth.

The earth actually brings them forth, which is a whole other unique thing, where it's not just humans that are bringing things forth, that are given a vocation. Actually, the earth is told to do something, and it does something. The moon and the sun, they are told to govern the night and the day. And so we've got to be really careful, especially in the history of interpretation, where we have been what's called anthropocentric, human-centered, where we can read those texts and make it all about humans being the center of the world. No, we aren't.

God is. And that's what I think these texts are at pains to communicate, is God is creator. We are not. God shares power and agency with the created order. Within that created order, humankind is given a unique kind of agency to steward God's divine presence in the world.

But the rest of creation is also given vocation, according to its own nature, to press into. So we want to dignify both the rest of the creation, because if we're going to talk about. what are we most like, it's going to be the other created things. That likeness, language that we're talking about with God, we've often overread what that likeness is. And then what we tend to do is we take whatever attribute or whatever quality we think is most important in that period of human history, and we say that's what the likeness must be.

We all bring things with us to the text when we read, and we cannot avoid having biases and prejudices impact our interpretation. But we can listen carefully to the witness of the church throughout history and around the world to help us see what we wrongfully bring to the text. Ideas like the ones Dr. McCurlin is talking about, ideas about what it means to be human that are very different from the way God describes humans in Scripture.

But when we turn to chapter 5, we see that same image and likeness language used about how Adam has Seth. Adam and Eve have Seth, and that he is in their image and likeness. So, from that language, we can also kind of reason backward, again, strengthening that relational understanding that just how the man and the woman are having offspring, that's part of their kind, so humans have been really called part of the kind of God,

which is different from the rest of the creatures. So, the other creatures, they are created according to their kinds. We don't get that repetition for human beings. So, it begs the question for the reader, well, then, who's the kind of humans? Well, Catherine McDowell would say, well, the kind is God.

that was quite underdetermined. There was enough content for people to understand what it meant in terms of being an image of the divine, but also not being divine. They had enough content to say that, but then Jesus in the New Testament is literally called the image of God. And if we want to talk about superpowers for just a second, I think we can think about Jesus as, oh, well, he has these superpowers because he's God. Actually, I think, and I know this is a bit controversial, but I think his superpower is he lives wholeheartedly into his need for a relationship with his dad.

I think what we see in Jesus, it's the first human being who ever has, and probably ever will, because of sin, actually believed that he was beloved. So we see his baptism, right? God says, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. And then, immediately from that statement, that public declaration of Jesus' identity, of the beloved son, then he goes into the desert and is tempted. And those temptations are all about his self-understanding.

If you're really the son of God, dot, dot, dot. And so what I think we see in Jesus is one who, he, just, he, loves his dad so much. And he relies on the spirit that is on him in fullness, without measure, in a way that shows us what a truly wholehearted, flourishing human being can look like. Not because they're God, though he is fully affirmed that, but because he's truly human and he is showing us what does a human person who lives in utter dependence upon God look like. And I think that's his superpower.

He shows us, and Paul riffs on this, right? Like, well, then, we get strength and weakness. We get power through weakness. It doesn't mean non-power. It actually means it's turned on its head.

I mean, it's the upside down kingdom. That's what we see. So that's, I think, it's the superpower that we do have. So anyway, sorry, that was a long answer to your question.

Like, we have this idea of what a perfect human is. And then we read it into these stories, which is why we need Jesus. Like, if we don't have this example of, okay, what is a really fully human life? We are easily tempted to say, it's what I already thought a good life was, or a valuable human looked like. Bringing it into the Jesus part, I wouldn't be surprised if we told this child, you know, all of your answers.

And then she said, okay, sure, maybe. But what about in eternity? What about in the new heavens and new earth, when there isn't sin, is part of the effect of sin that I can't fly? Is part of the effect of sin that I don't have. these features, these superpowers that I would like to have?

And maybe I might imagine, I mean, I remember as a kid thinking, especially reading, like the story of Jesus walking through walls, going, okay, well, maybe in eternity, I will be freed in some sense from the limitations of my body and however I imagine those to be. What would you say to the kid who was like, okay, maybe now we don't fly, but could we, maybe later?

So I think, so, right, this is going to be in the realm of speculation, right? So I'm going to anchor it in a few kind of, I think, theological data points that then we can speculate out from. So first we're going to look at Jesus's resurrection body. It actually seems to have some interesting features, right? Like the disciples are in a locked room and he appears, is what it says in the gospels.

So how does he appear? And Carmen Imes, I appreciate, she says something about like, maybe it's actually that Jesus's body is so much more solid than those walls.

It is, God called creation good. And once the humans were formed, it was called very good. And because God is good and the ground of all goodness, I don't think that then gets undone. So I would want to go back to that language of, we are creatures of need. We were in a context of abundance.

Now we're in a context of scarcity. But again, we will be in a context of abundance, and now also with transformed bodies. I don't think the man and the woman actually had the kind of physical constitution of this resurrected body prior to Jesus. I actually think that was one of the things, this progression. And sometimes I think we need to be careful how we can think about going back to Eden.

I actually think we need to think forward from that. Because you think Eden is a garden. I think it's a temple-like garden. But in Revelation, when we get to the garden image again, there's a city. And there's not just the one language of the man and the woman.

There's multiple languages. Human cultures are celebrated in all their goodness as the bad of those human cultures have been eradicated. And so there's a progression if you compare the gardens. Because we can think about perfection as this static state. And often we don't think about how our finitude and our need is good.

And actually, we would have kept developing. Adam and Eve, however, we understand that story, they would have kept growing and maturing. But we often think of perfect, as nothing can change. Well, no, change is not a bad thing. And in fact, I think in the Eschaton, I'm going to learn more about you, Caitlin.

We're going to grow in our relationship. I'm going to grow in my relationship with Jesus. I'm going to grow in my relationship with the Father and Spirit. However, all that's going to work out.

For eternity. For the new heavens and new earth. For the beginning of how the story ends. You might have also heard the word eschatology before. The study of the end.

It might! It might mean we fly! But I think it's the grounding criterion of what doesn't undermine human need and creatureliness. If flying would somehow affect our ability to rely on the presence of the Lamb, I don't think we're going to fly. But why not?

I think it's unfathomable how it's going to be. But I do think we have some of these grounding criteria about what is actually good in being a creature. And in being a human creature in particular. That, I think, can inform how we think about life. The next life.

But also our relationships and our community. We don't know what that looks like exactly. But we have some good indications to help us think creatively about it. So thank you, Krista, for that. Last question.

Imagine that the sweet girl who asked me this question, I got to be face-to-face with her. Imagine, you are face-to-face with her, and she asks the initial question that she asked, why don't humans have superpowers? I would like to fly. What is your shortest, succinct answer that you would give her?

God wanted birds to glory.

And it's great that birds get to do that. And they do it to the praise and glory of me. Humans, you get to give glory to me in other ways, especially loving me and loving your neighbor. And loving that bird that flies.

So let's let the bird fly. And maybe one day you will, too. And the birds will show you how to do that. And that's good time. But for now, I have given you superpowers I want you to live into.

And I've empowered you to live into them.

So that might be the best way I would go forward. I love that.

So thank you, Krista, for your wisdom and for taking this important question really seriously.

But we don't come up with good answers until we ask questions. Today's question could sound like the quintessential kid question that grown-ups in Sunday school laugh and shake their heads at. But look how it opened up so many important theological ideas. This is how the Church has always done theology. In response to new questions, addressing new problems, trying to figure out how to hold intention to things we know are true, but don't understand how they work together.

Jesus said we are supposed to have faith like a child. And many of us were taught that that meant accepting everything without question. But anyone who's spent any time around children knows that that's ridiculous. Because kids ask all kinds of questions. I think part of what Jesus meant by faith like a child was a questioning faith.

A faith free to be curious, because we know that any question we ask will only lead us back to the good and merciful God, who is always telling us a better story than we could dare to hope for.

Curiously, Caitlyn is a production of Holy Post Media. Produced by Mike Strelow. Editing by Seth Gourvet. Theme song by Phil Vischer. Be sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review so more people can discover thoughtful Christian commentary, plus cute kids, and never any butt news.