Death of Individuality

What does it mean to be a person? God created us to be in a relationship defined by self-giving love. He forms and molds our being in accordance to His likeness. To love sacrificially, withholding nothing good from a beloved, is to express who God is within Himself. A person is otherness in loving relationship. Every human being is unique and different from all others. We cannot be a person without someone existing outside of us. However, we have severed and marred our relationship with God because of sin. Sin strangles and suffocates reciprocal love. The "individual" is manifested at the Fall. Mankind curves inward to his selfish desires, fearing and disdaining the uniqueness of others. Pain, suffering and loneliness enters front stage as our hearts yearn for love and cry out for justice. The incarnation is God's loving response. Jesus Christ kills the individual on the cross. We have died to self. God is restoring us to what we once were. This poem is about the gospel, about who we were created to be, who we became, and who Christ has made us to be.

Death of Individuality
I am a person,
created in the image and likeness of the Divine
in perfect relationship, beautifully intertwined.

I am a person,
unable to be exhaustively defined
to be categorized by the human mind.

I am an individual,
discontent as a creature
coveting the role of the Creator.

I am an individual,
seeped in hate and lies
primed to bargain to make one wise.

I am an individual,
disconnected and alone
craving for love, a place to call home.

God is a person,
otherness in loving communion
willing to crush His Son for union.

God is a person,
who suffers and mourns
while Christ's flesh was flogged and torn.

I am a person,
redeemed and made anew
dependent on God's love to carry me through.

I am a person,
in relationship with the One
who gave me a possession in His Son.

BY: Jon Aman