The first “prophecy” I received was in fourth grade. It wasn’t anything spiritual, just a teacher with experience and foresight (upcoming pun intended). As routine eye and dental checks were about to start, she told us that fourth grade is when a lot of students realize the need for glasses. Surely not me, though, I thought.

Well, thirty minutes later, I came back into the classroom, tears blurring my vision even more than my overly curved corneas. Back then, glasses weren’t fashionable or cool, and I thought my life as a preteen was over. Thirty-five years later, I have somehow survived, and I even choose glasses over contacts.

This morning, I’m sitting outside at an out-of-town café waiting for my daughter and wife to catch up with me from their window shopping. My now-and-then hobby of people-watching involves purposefully taking off my spectacles and observing the more abstract movements of the world around me. It’s like a living Monet or another impressionist painting seen up close: outlines and forms but no details. I notice the purple hair of that person and the silver hair of the other. There’s the pregnant lady in a sundress. A jogger zooms by in a blur, like a car going the opposite direction on the freeway. There is a playfulness and a beauty and an artistic flair that can be enjoyed in the moment. But a distant sadness also approaches. The physical blur connects with an ongoing philosophical concern I have for my life, our shared culture, and the people I pastor.

I’m afraid we are slowly losing our vision of humanity.

When Was the Last Time You Didn’t Feel like a Machine?

By far, my favorite gadget recently is a hand-me-down Garmin Forerunner watch. I go for runs and bike rides a few times a week for both physical and emotional upkeep. Musical accompaniment is my default companion as I imagine myself in a montage reminiscent of a ’90s flick. What I love most is that I don’t need to carry my phone anymore for the music.

But the disconnect from one device leads to a different attachment to another. My watch doesn’t have the neediness of my smartphone’s notifications, but it does have a plethora of data points measuring all sorts of things about me as I go about my day. It’s useful, but how is the saturation of information forming me in the long run (pun, once again, intended)? How is the constant evaluation of data teaching us as a society what to value about humanity and even what it means to be human?

Every now and then, I do the unthinkable. I unstrap my watch and go for a run, just me and the road. No looking at distance or pace or time or the need to share results. Nothing in my ears except the buzz of creation, the reality of soul, and the whisper of Jesus. I need reminded—we need reminded—that humanity can indeed thrive disconnected from tracking. Some of the most essential things in life can’t be measured.

Why Your Worth Can’t Be Measured

The Apostle Paul uses the Greek word hyperballō a handful of times in his letters. It means something like “to throw beyond.” It gets at a certain kind of goodness that transcends the ability to pinpoint and calculate an exact worth. It speaks of the surpassing glory of the ministry of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:8–10) and the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:19). It tells us of the immeasurable greatness of God’s power (Ephesians 1:19) and the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us (Ephesians 2:7).

Often we measure things to feel a sense of control. But the kindness, power, love, and Spirit of God can’t be regulated. Author and pastor Skye Jethani ties this temptation to track and compute our relationship with God to the way church work is often conducted:

[The] desire for measurable, controllable outcome in ministry, whether rooted in the values of our culture or the rebellion of our souls, betrays the essence of our faith. All the inexorable doctrines of the Christian faith [i.e., Trinity, sovereignty/free will, hypostatic union] are immeasurable, sometimes paradoxical, mysteries.¹

There is a mystery for us to believe through faith about our humanity as well. We know the sin and brokenness we deal with as individuals and as a society. But do we revel in the splendor of how God created us? Do we revel in being made in His image (Genesis 1:27), in the glory with which He crowns us (Psalm 8:5), and in His thoughts about us, too numerous to count (Psalm 139:17–18)? Do we revel in our God and Savior taking on flesh and becoming fully human (while still being fully God!) to bring us into union with Himself (John 1:1, 14)?

Used properly, digital tools can help us steward our personhood (body, mind, and spirit), but devices shouldn’t shape how we define humanity or what makes a person valuable. Our worth, my friends, isn’t in our weight, our fastest 5k, or where our body battery is at the moment. It’s not in how many notifications are vying for our attention or even in our ability to be reached and needed by anyone in the world at any time through the magic of smartphones.

Just as in the garden of Eden, we face a modern version of the temptation to be like God—to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than the Tree of Life. But if we give our attention over to hacks and tracks, trying to count and quantify our lives, we might lose the beauty and overwhelming nature of being simply human. And that is something God has not asked us to surrender.

How Jesus Brings Our Blurry Vision into Focus

The data points we have at our fingertips can be eye-opening, but not all eye-opening experiences are good—consider the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:5–7). There is a type of knowledge that can burden and blind, a kind of artificial light that can bring darkness, disguise, and deceit (Luke 11:33–36, 2 Corinthians 11:13–15). Our rescue and maturation are not rooted in special or even common knowledge but in the revelation of Jesus, who comes to us.

In Mark 8:22–26, Jesus takes a blind man, who had apparently once been able to see, by the hand and leads him outside the village. In one of the odder healings in the Gospels, Jesus spits on the man’s eyes. At first, the man’s sight returns only partially. His vision is blurry (like mine when I take my glasses off), and the people around him look like trees walking. But then Jesus puts His hands on the man’s eyes again, and this time his eyes are opened, his sight restored, and he sees everything clearly.

The Scriptures are like lenses, and the work of Jesus is like surgery. Together, they correct our view of God’s vision for humanity: its reality, value, redemption, and calling.

The Good News Is That Someone Is Looking for You

I see two women approaching my table outside the café. As I put on my glasses, it’s clear that they aren’t strangers but my wife and daughter. Details make all the difference in knowing a person and being known as a person. (I say this as a father of identical twins!) But it’s not the details of data points that reveal someone for who they really are.

A person’s face is a world unto itself. Culture commentator Andy Crouch writes that “recognition is the first human quest.”² Psychiatrist Curt Thompson extends that adventure: “We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.”³

The good news is that someone is looking for us, both as unique persons and as a collective humanity. Today, revel in the words from the priestly blessing found in Numbers 6:22–27: “May the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; may the LORD look with favor on you and give you peace” (verses 25–26).

Let’s put down our metrics and stop gazing at data points that blur our vision. God desires for you to see Him and to know He sees you. Seeking God’s face is the most human thing any of us will ever do.

If you liked this article, check out the related resources linked below!

Notes:

1. Skye Jethani, Immeasurable: Reflections on the Soul of Ministry in the Age of Church, Inc., 12.

2. Andy Crouch, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, 3.

3. Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves, 138.

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Author Bio

Justin Ryan Boyer is a pastor in Southeastern Pennsylvania and podcast producer of The Quiet Reformation from Netzer.org. He recently contributed to the book Mystery Revealed: A Collaborative Study on the Book of Ephesians, where he wrote about seeing other pastors and congregations as teammates rather than competitors.

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