More Human than a Human

The title of this article comes from a White Zombie song, however I doubt Rob Zombie was thinking of it the same way I am.

What does it mean for Jesus to be truly human? Or the perfect human? It is rare today to find someone who denies the existence of Jesus as human, they might argue over his divinity, but rarely debate his humanity. At the same time it is pretty easy to find people who believe in the divinity of Jesus, but have little idea what it meant for him to be human.

The first answer usually given about Jesus' perfection as a human is that he is sinless. Okay, I agree with that, but what does that mean?

Next answer, is something to the point of how he didn't break any rules or laws, or he loves everybody. That sounds good, but what rules didn't he break, what does it mean to love everybody? I know of a few accounts in scripture where Jesus broke laws, at least according to their interpretation at the time. So how is he perfect? Did he never get sick or bleed? Is that what it means to be the perfect human?

Here on out the answers to the questions become varied and garbled. Let me offer one idea I find rarely pondered. It starts with the creation of humans. God made Adam and Eve in the image of God and set them over the rest of creation. Humans, from the start were to be God's ambassadors to creation, reflecting God's will and his will alone. The first sin was to chose a human's will over that of God's will and ever since that has been humanity's default setting. Thus, a ton of consequences that I won't get into here, but the point is, to be a human creature as we were to created to be is to always follow God's will for his creation.

This is why Jesus was perfect and sinless. This is why even though it may have seemed that Jesus had broken laws, he in fact never went against the Father's will for his creation. Which happens to be his usual rebuttal to those who question him.

Jesus is more human than any other human because he lives the way humans were created to be. In an unbroken connection to the will of the Father.

What questions does this idea then raise?

Ramping it up for CX

Today I got out for my first real cx practice. If you look close at my bike you see that it now has 9 more gears, which I believe translates into 9 times faster, right?

It also means that I now have a barely used White Industries Eno Eccentric and 17/19 Dos freewheel that I hate to sell, but probably should. Let me know if you're interested. They have seen maybe 20 rides total. Marc dot Engelhardt at gmail dot com

The rest of these photos show where I am practicing cx. I think it would be a great venue for a real race--flats, lots of hills, off chamber and plenty of trees to dodge.

See my barriers way down there.

If the Miss n' Outs don't happen I will probably be out here every Tuesday night. Anyone is welcome to join me. Just let me know. I forgot them today, but I have flags to mark off corners and chicanes too.

On the trails

Well, I feel as though I am back in the swing of things finally. I'll be giving the blog some more attention again with my usually mix of riding, race reports, and theology. So if you like any of that stuff stay tuned.

Scott and I rode the Southern Kettles today and the weather was great.

I have my old frame set up as my winter/single speed bike. It has been a while since I rode real trails for 2.5 hours on a rigid, and I can feel it in my hands tonight.

Little did we know that it was Giant dealer day today. Funny how I think we saw maybe 3 people on the trail on Giants, but there were like 25 cars in the parking lot.

Here is a bonus pic I found on my camera. This is me eating a cheeseburger on a Krispy Kreme doughnut after waiting 15 minutes in the heat to get one at the State Fair. It was delicious, I love the WI State Fair!

I can breath!

Today it has been two weeks since my surgery and I can breath through my nose! I haven't been able to do that for a very long time.

I've done two real rides since the surgery, some intervals on Sunday and the Gun Show last night. It is hard to gauge how much being able to breath is helping. First, I am still healing, my nose is tender and there is still some swelling. Second, I haven't ridden hard for almost 2 weeks so I obviously lost some fitness. After factoring both of those in though, I think being able to breath does help. While my heart rate was a bit high for both rides, the outcome of both rides was the same or better than before the rest. And last night there were only 3 of us at the Gun Show.

Time to crank it up for cx!!!