Just saw your edit.
No offense at all. Technically your interpretation might be closest, but I still think humanist falls short. My (admittedly lacking) knowledge of humanism as a belief system leads me to believe it wholly places the person and our shared human experience above all else, that humanity is what there is without the possibility of a divinity, or that we are all effectively mini gods of sorts.
I'd argue that falls short of our capability to imagine. I don't for a second believe there's a god "out there" somewhere, some divine being in the sky or elsewhere separate from us. That probably aligns to humanism from my understanding. But while I don't believe there's a god out there or some singular god, I'm agnostic about the belief there's something divine in our shared humanity. It's that "breath of God" thing in the great mythopoetic creation fable in Genesis, that the very essence of the breath providing us life is something divine within us and connecting us all together in our shared world, shared experiences, and shared responsibility toward each other. It's too possible and too easy, in my opinion, to become overwhelmed with the perils of this world and lose sight of that, so I take the beauty of Jesus' teachings as a reminder that it already exists within us and we can find hope, purpose, vitality -- a true meaning of life itself -- by reconnecting to it.
And thinking like this is where it's a challenge for me. I'm not a part of any structured belief system or religion, but I know there are others out there who think like I do on this and use the language I do & there's a hunger for communities and liturgy (liturgy being used in the loosest sense one can imagine) that sound like this. It's hard, because I can tell you philosophically what I think I believe, but I also think in my truest self that to find out what I actually believe it's best to ask those around me what I practice in my life. And that's where I find myself falling short -- doing a lot of good in my community and the lives of those I'm connected with in friendship and family, but probably not even going to the edge yet of what I profess to believe. I hope the pushing deeper into practice pushes me to continue further. Or I could just do some shrooms and crack these thoughts open even wider. (Never have done shrooms, but I hear they can b helpful for this stuff.)
(And as I type this I hear this lyric from Bear's Den on my speaker, "Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart." Seems appropriate.)
ACE wrote:
Edited this to add I again did not mean to offend if you do not consider yourself a humanist, it was just my interpretation of your belief system.
Do you identify as a member of any certain religion or belief system? I honestly have not heard someone that quotes and relies on biblical stories and scripture the way you do with the meaning you give it.