Lent 4 with Moltmann

Here Moltmann considers mankind's aspirations to be god, how those aspirations dehumanize us, and how the cross restores our humanity.

Thus dehumanized man, who must exalt himself because he cannot endure himself as he is, in practice uses these religious insights only in the interest of his own self-deification. As a result, they do not help him to achieve humanity, but only give greater force to his inhumanity. The knowledge of the cross is the knowledge of the contrary of everything which dehumanized man seeks and tries to attain as the deity in him. Consequently, this knowledge (of God through his sufferings and cross) does not confirm him as what he is, but destroys him. It destroys the god, miserable in his pride, which we would like to be, and restores to us our abandoned and despised humanity. (Jurgen Moltmann in The Crucified God. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1993, p. 71)