I want to be a Human.”

I think I was at the younger grade in elementary school when the carton movies being shown on TV during early evening hours were very popular. Back then, not every household had a TV, so all the children in the neighborhood used get together at a house with TV to watch together. The main characters loved by the children were “Gold Bat”, “Atom – child of outer space”, “Tiger Mask”, “Bbabby”, etc. I still remember a program called “Ghosts”. There were three good ghosts named “Bam”, “Vera”, and “Vero”. They helped people who were being tormented by other bad ghosts and saved them. Now I think about it, I don’t think it was a healthy program for children.

This movie’s background idea was a very unbiblical one and it went like this. A certain scientist was experimenting when he accidentally spilled some chemical solutions and mixed them together. During this process, three ghosts were born. These ghosts had good hearts and wanted to become real humans. So they borrowed the bodies of dead people and helped other people while looking for a way to become real humans. The theme song started with words “We are living in darkness as ghosts” and finishes with the longing words “I want to be a human~”.

I am freshly reminded of this carton movie because as I become more like Jesus, I realize that I was that ghost. Losing the original image as God created in the beginning, living in sin with injury and conflict, but because I knew vaguely what the rightful way to live was, I discovered myself who were plaintively longing to become a real human.

How beautiful was the original image of humans right after God created them, each one of them would have a special characters and goodness, and all of these individuals would get together to create a beautiful harmony… But these were destroyed because of sin, and all the special characters were changed into individual sufferings for every one of them. So someone with a beautiful feeling became a person that were easily hurt and suffered and hid within himself. Someone with an ability to make clear decisions became one that hurt others so that they would not get hurt, and to throw away someone before he was thrown away. So we live by hurting others, getting hurt, refusing to forgive, hating, being envious, being jealous, being angry, and in denial.

But when we meet Jesus, we begin to open new eyes. We begin to understand others, and come to know our original image; God’s originally planned self, our images that God want to restore us to. I become a human by discovering these images. However when I think that I am recovered I find my sinful self; and I see the trash that was hidden when I open myself. But I am still very joyous of this life where I can dream of my beautiful true self. I think of us Christians as ghosts that want to become humans sooner or later. In this Easter Sunday morning, I create a mental picture of the day when the time comes; I will be standing in front of Our Lord in my beautiful image.