You're Only Human - A Review
Billions of advertising dollars are spent each year to tell us which products can help us break through our own limits or the limits of human existence. They tell us that we can be all things at all times. The world is open to us with unending possibilities.
It is a powerful message. When we see the ads it seems empowering, because we all want to feel like heroes––like superhumans––as if there is no end to what we can do.
But what if it’s all a lie? What if we are really limited as human beings and as individuals with specific gifts, responsibilities, and experiences? What if the result of trying to live as if all boundaries are fake, all limits are self-imposed, and all desires for more are good is not a good thing? What if wanting to be more than what we were created to be is not a secret to a fulfilled, happy life but the recipe for a life of constant angst and stress?
Kelly Kapic explains the goodness of the limits that God has designed into our humanity in his book, You’re Only Human. This is a theologically rich and pastoral book that can serve people in every stage of life. This is a book for the pastor trying to do it all. It’s a book for the teen heading out to take over the world. It’s a book for the middle-aged church member lamenting the things they didn’t accomplish in their life and wishing that so many windows had not already closed.
The epigram at the beginning of the first chapter sums up the book: “Many of us fail to understand that our limitations are a gift from God, and therefore good. This produces in us the burden of trying to be something we are not and cannot be.”
Kapic is right. We are all tired as a result of our unnecessary burden.
Summary
The book is divided into two basically even parts. Part One has five chapters and wrestles with the fact that we have each been given by God a particular location, situation, and calling as well as limits that are unique to us. He shows how the gospel changes us and sets us free from sin, but it does not make us superhuman. He reflects on the goodness of the limited body, the importance of physical touch––an important reminder in light of our recent isolation––and the ways that our identify is formed by our community, not just by an act of the will.
Part Two also has five chapters that explore the nature of a healthy dependence. All five chapters help remind readers that God put us in community for a reason and that we were not meant to be self-contained dynamos for everything that God desires to do in this world. He explores the way that humility is sometimes misunderstood as simply being willing to admit mistakes, showing that humility also means acknowledging our own inability to know or do everything. Kapic outlines the way our time-driven world increases our anxiety and saps us from the joy of now-absorbed existence. We are always late or waiting for something, it seems. This section also delves into reasons God may have for taking time to perfect us and grow us, rather than just zapping us to holiness. Kapic also explains why being part of the church (and not having to do everything within the church) is very important. The book concludes with a chapter on learning to live within our finitude, which is, in part, a reminder of our need to rest.
Discussion
The “always on” nature of our world is inhumane. Kapic recognizes this and he is hoping to help you recognize it, too. Historians like to point out that there is no era that is totally unlike others. They are certainly correct. Political polarizations, violence, abusive systems, and weird and ungodly social fads have existed throughout history. Each age may have its own favorite perversion, but there really is nothing new under the sun. And yet, we all have the sense that we are in a video game with tense music and someone turned the difficulty level to expert. I think that is because we really are trying to do too much that is too hard. That reality helps explain why You’re Only Human is so powerful.
Many people are struggling from burnout. Every moment of a child’s life is often filled with some sort of stimulus: television, playdates, school, quality time with the family. There is no time to sit and be bored. It’s a joke among middle aged parents to say that life is really just saying “maybe next week things will slow down” until you die. This sort of grim humor reveals the truth that we are all tired and stretched thin.
This is bad for us and it is not a good way to grow in godliness. Sanctification takes time. It can’t be programmed into a 20-minute morning blog of prayer and Bible reading, the verse of the day calendar, with a sermon playing during the commute home. Boredom is an important ingredient to sanctification, because it allows us to stop focusing on the things we have to do, or trying to get sufficiently recovered to chase our next challenge, and really consider what it makes to be holy. The problem is we never get bored.
You’re Only Human is a gentle reminder who we are. It is an encouragement that we are not enough for everything, and that is ok. It is a helpful book that points readers toward real solutions. They may be challenging to implement, but they may change the way we live as Christians in the world in a meaningful way.
This book would be a great gift to pastors during the month of October to let them know that it is okay not to be able to do everything. This book would be a powerful help to a recent graduate who is anxious about what is to come and worried about not being enough to rise to the top. This a book that is a balm to the aging saint who realizes what they didn’t do in life and wonders if what they accomplished is really enough. Take up this book and read it. It is good for what ails us in this over-scheduled century.
The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.