By Zdravko Plantak

“Who am I? Who am I? I am 24601!”, were the most reflective words of Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s provocative and deeply reflective novel Les Miserables. Besides reading this novel as a mid-teenager, the words became more striking after seeing the musical in several countries and continents in the last 20 years.

Am I a number or am I a name/person? How does naming me Zdravko or Zack differ? What do I bring with each of these to the cultural mix that has been rich and continually moving? In what way do I reflect all the cultures that I have adopted, from Croatia where I was born and lived for the first formative twenty-two years? Or England were I decidedly naturalized in and accepted as my own for the next 16 years, and now, America that I have chosen as the place of my life and work for the last 21 years?

I have always postulated for myself, my children, friends and students, that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and that meaning in life cannot be discovered by chance but that we ascertain it upon living and reflecting on this life, continually hoping for a modified, purified, improved, and hopeful life to embrace in all its abundance and, at times, in its struggles. With the Bible writers and Dostoyevsky, Ellen White and Niebuhr, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Tolstoy, and so many other thinkers before me, I continue searching and then investing my full energies into this purposeful existence.

The meaning of life is found in the relationships within the created and purposefully intended universe in which a good Divine Being loves and in the community of triune relationship cannot but create and spill the Supreme Love onto the image that is called Wo/Man. In that socially constructed community as a man and a woman, God poured Triune Image that is always and inevitably in relationship. This divine relationship is full of love and grace and cannot be expressed in any other way than deep care and supreme concern for the other. Even when the relationship between God and humanity is broken, God continues pursuing the created Imago Dei in us, endowing us with abilities that go beyond our sinful instincts. and making us loving and most fulfilled when we are acting God-like in our endeavors with each other. In other words, ontological humanness is actually to be in relationship and to centrifugally love and forgive

when it does not logically or even existentially make any sense. When we feel that we should be ruthless in order to endure [or better continue to exist such as at times like this terribly painful world pandemic], when we feel that we must pursue the “survival of the fittest” mode, the “Image of God” makes us give until it hurts, love until it does not make sense and forgive when it goes beyond “natural” human instinct. And when we do such extraordinary things, we label them heroism, or going beyond the call of duty, or a miraculous way of living exemplary lives.

The ancient thinkers would call this a Good Life, and by that, I assume, they would mean the Morally Upright and Fulfilling Life. The more modern thinkers would call it an authentic existence. And I would call it a meaningful or purposeful Christ-centered life.

To illustrate my single point, let me take an example of a fish. God created fish to live and thrive in water. The gills are adapted to absorb oxygen from water. Water is the only element in which fish can find freedom, can be free and fulfill itself, and find its fishness. That’s how it was created. It could exist in saltwater or fresh water, or in the case of salmon, it may go from one to the other. But that is the element in which it finds itself and is free as a fish. So, without a shadow of a doubt, water limits fish and its limitation is imposed on it by creation. But that limitation is the secret of its liberty. And the liberty of the fish is found in accepting the limitation that has been imposed on it by creation.

Let’s suppose one has a goldfish in a round bowl on the table. And the poor thing is swimming in circles until it is giddy. It finds its frustration unbearable. So, it decides to make a bid for freedom by leaping out of the bowl. Now, let us suppose for a moment that it lands in a pond in the gar- den and in such a way increases its freedom because it is still in the element it was created for—water. However, there is more of it so it does not swim in circles, but it can swim in squares instead. So, more freedom, but the same element. However, if instead it leaps to the carpet or the wooden floor, then we know that its bid for freedom spells not freedom but death. So, creation limits its liberty and its purposes.

Now, we apply this principle to human beings. If fish were made for water, what were human beings made for? What is the element in which human beings find their humanness, if water is the element in which fish find their fishiness? For me, the answer is love. Love is the major element in which human beings find their humanness, both in relationships of love with God and our fellow human beings. Love is the essential element within which human beings can live and thrive and find their meaning. And the reason is because God, who is love, made us in God’s image.

When God made human beings in God’s likeness, He gave them a capacity to love and to be loved, which is one of the basic ingredients of our humanness. So, we find our destiny as human beings in loving God and loving one another, which is why it’s not an accident that the first commandment that Jesus uplifts is to love your God, and the second, is to love your neighbor. The reasons for this is that it is in loving that we live. Living is loving. And without love we die. People who are turned on themselves are dead. I mean that is not life—life is loving. Even the Beatles presumably under- stood this when they sang: “All you need is love.” That’s what we were made for.

Michaelangelo said, “When I am yours, then I am at last completely myself.” I am only myself, when I am yours and only yours God. When I belong to you in love, then I am completely myself and truly fulfilled. When one understands this, it brings one to the most striking Christian paradox:

Freedom is freedom to be my true self—as God made me and meant me to be. God made me for loving. And loving is giving—self-giving. Therefore, in order to be myself I have to deny myself and give myself; in order to be free, I have to serve; in order to live I have to die to my own self-centeredness; in order to find myself, I have to lose myself.

That is the beautiful paradox of Christian living and freedom. Freedom under the authority of Christ, freedom of giving oneself to him and to one another which Jesus himself taught. True freedom is the exact opposite of what most people today aspire to: no responsibilities to God nor to any other human being in order to live for myself.

In the musical Les Miserables, Jean Valjean concludes in the previously quoted song, “Who am I?” with these words:

Who am I? Can I condemn this man to slavery?
Pretend I do not feel his agony
This innocent who wears my face
Who goes to judgment in my place
Who am I? Can I conceal myself for evermore?

Pretend I’m not the man I was before?
And must my name until I die
Be no more than an alibi?
Must I lie?
How can I ever face my fellow men?

How can I ever face myself again?
My soul belongs to God, I know
I made that bargain long ago
He gave me hope, when hope was gone
He gave me strength to journey on
Who am I? Who am I? I am Jean Valjean!

In loving and acting for the other, I discover myself and I uncover the purpose of life. In relationships with human beings and the Divine Being, I truly find that loving is living, and I find purpose in giving my selfishness to the higher causes. I love because God loved me. And in denying myself, I discover myself fully as I was intended to be.

Loving is living and living is loving and I know this as it was supremely illustrated in the life of the most exemplary human being as He kenotically emptied himself to become like me in order to give me another chance to be as He originally wanted me to be when He created Adam and Eve.

–Zdravko (Zack) Plantak, PhD, is professor of religion and ethics at the School of Religion at Loma Linda University. Email him at: [email protected]