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My Vow to Humanize Others

My Vow to Humanize Others

My Vow to Humanize Others.

“God spoke: ‘Let Us make human beings in Our image, reflecting Our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and yes, earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of the earth.God created human beings; He created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and femaleGod formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive – a living soul!”   (Genesis 1:26-27, and 2:7)

 

Every person you don’t like, or who is doing something you don’t like; every person you don’t understand, or you don’t want to understand; every person you look down on simply because she is beneath you… All of them have something in common:

  1. Every person is made in the image of God, a hand-crafted original, breathing with the very breath of the Creator, possessing a dignity above the rest of creation;
  2. Each person is individually loved by a personal God, who in fact died for that person. God in the flesh would have sacrificed himself for that person if he was the only living person on earth;
  3. Therefore each human being you see, anywhere and everywhere, is worthy of our compassion, respect and empathy.

I want to humanize every person before I ignore, demean or judge them.  I want to recognize God’s image, handiwork, and love attached to each person. I want to embrace the sublime humanity of:

The gay person if I’m straight;

The prisoner if I’m basically law-abiding;

The poor if I’m rich;

The person of color if I’m white;

The Muslim if I’m a Christian;

The woman if I’m a man;

The child if I’m an adult;

The disabled if I’m able-bodied;

The elderly if I’m young;

The uneducated if I’m well-schooled;

The rural if I’m urban;

The homeless if I’m in a home;

The mentally broken if I’m relatively whole;

The emotionally troubled if I’m at peace;

The servants of the world if I’m the one being served.

The progressive if I’m traditional;

The troublemaker if I’m a rule-follower;

The promiscuous if I’m chaste;

The dreamer if I’m a realist.

Look into the eyes of each person you dislike or disregard, and consider… This is a flesh and blood person with a soul, a human being of priceless value. Focus on this person’s eyes for a minute. Try to peer into those eyes. Those are a human’s eyes, same as yours. Isn’t it important to want that person to be blessed? To identify with those you don’t understand? To stand in human solidarity with the person with whom you have differences? I would like to look into those eyes clear through into their inner identity, their shared humanity.  There of course comes the time  for moral discernment of another’s behavior, but maybe we could delay the judgment of another for a moment until after we first accept their humanity.