15-8 A Dehumanized World

Our witnessing work is made harder by the fact that so few people value or realize their own personhood, who they are, what part they have to play in the body and purpose of Jesus. Decades of co-dependency, of some forms of abuse however mild, of being shamed for individuality, leave many people with no real sense of who they are or of their own value and worth. We all suffer from this probably. And yet by our treating others as if they matter, showing them that our heart bleeds for them, we will ennoble them and make them realize that they are worth something, that they do have a value as a person. And once they realize this, they will in their own way, in their circle of contact, pass on this message to yet more. All converts to the body of Jesus have an intended part to play in His purpose and in the manifestation of His personality and reality before the eyes of this world. The perception of what our role may be, or could be, doesn’t get clear to us immediately after our baptism. But be on the look out, perceive and feel that you are valued by your Lord, the Lord who bought you…and in seeking to bring others into the body of Jesus, we are eventually seeking to make them know their worth in His eyes. For you don’t give your life for women and men whom you don’t value.

We are preaching against a background of a world that increasingly devalues people; and our message should offer a radical focus on the value of the human person amidst a society that increasingly ignores it. Society reflects the basic fear which permeates individual human lives, and which is the very antithesis of true faith. It is the basic human fear of being crushed which leads to the globalization phenomena, whereby the global economy organizes itself into ever larger corporations and amalgams, and the workers combine in increasingly organized masses. The infinite variety of human persons is lost amidst this universal leveling process; people are dehumanized into cogs in a machine. True creativity and the expression of the person is mitigated against by a fear of being left alone in the battle of life. Members of communities, be it the corporations they work for or the denomination they belong to, fear to step outside the narrow limits of their society. The radical conversion of which Jesus spoke is militated against. The majority feel that they can move from department to department, from relationship to relationship, from denomination to denomination, but never ultimately stand alone with their Lord.

And yet a great paradox develops, which our witness should plug into. It is this: It is a fear of loneliness which drives people to seek refuge in the organizations they perceive to be ‘safe’, and yet the destruction of human personhood within those structures leaves them even more lonely and desperate. The solitude of modern man has resulted in a breakdown of community spirit. But one aspect of the call of Christ is to attain victory over individualism, and thereby to raise up a church so dominated by love that the witness of unity, of the community spirit, is enough to convert this lonely world. Victory over selfishness is related to victory over loneliness. So many remain isolated and alone, willing work-horses for others in the family or workplace, thinking that this is actually their calling from God, their self-sacrifice- when actually it’s more a case of inertia, of not allowing the power of grace and God’s affirmation of us as persons to set us free from our selfish complexes.

Much as the Western world has fought against Communism, they have imbibed the same essential spirit of loyalty to a party at all costs. The victor always runs the risk of being infected by the defeated, and this is what has happened. The way Israel worshipped the idols of those they defeated is classic proof of this. Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon is all about the tragedy of those within the system who step outside of it. The hero, Rubashov, becomes crushed by the same principles of loyalty to the party which he had once advocated and still believed in after a fashion: “All he had believed in, fought for and preached during the last forty years swept over his mind in an irresistible wave. The individual was nothing, the Party was all; the branch which broke from the tree must wither”. Capitalism, denominational Christianity, Communism, corporations…have all done the same thing. Communities, departments, offices, working groups, families, ecclesias, all intended to be living cells and freestanding communities, have become reduced to being mere administrative divisions. The message we preach must radically challenge this. A convert stands alone before his or her maker and Lord, with a personal responsibility to the Father and Son. Ecclesias comprised of those converts are to be genuinely autonomous, not mere administrative divisions. And yet increasingly the spirit of dehumanization of this world has eroded these Biblical ideals. The individual is not “nothing”, as Koestler wrote. He or she is everything to the Lord and Saviour who as Paul says “loved me and died for me”. The churches which those individuals quite rightly comprise are merely a means to an end; for salvation is in the end a personal matter. We are therefore to seek to win men and women one by one; and it can be that an overemphasis on tactics, strategies and statistics, much as they have their place, can lead us to be teaching a general ideology rather than earnestly seeking to save the individual. We are not preaching mere attachment to a church as a spiritual luxury, a refuge from a few storms, a social club…but rather the doctrine of the real and living Christ, as a reality which has more and more points of contact with real human life. Our goal is to bring individuals into a place where their whole existence is subject to the will of the Father and Son, not submission to any human organization.

It seems to me that there are an ever-increasing number of people in this world who feel they are non-persons, struggling with the feeling of being utterly insignificant. The nature of modern employment leads to this- employment that on one end demands the very soul of a person, and on the other offers low pay and no prospect of ever ‘making it’ in an increasingly competitive world. Likewise the world of ‘virtual relationships’, sitting at a computer pressing keys as the only form of acceptable creativity, only leads to the feeling of being a non-person, and ultimately insignificant. To this growing mass of people we present a radically different world-view, where the meaning and value of persons is one of the core values: for this is what we find in the teaching of Jesus.

Another outcome of not valuing individuals is a resignation of authority to leading individuals, or perceiving the body of Christ as an organization to the point of not valuing the individuals within it. Any attempt to consciously limit the individual intellectual freedom or individual integrity of each individual member of the body must surely be suspect. Even worse, the idea of ‘submission’ can be taken too far (as it has been in Islam) to encourage individuals to abdicate their personal responsibility to the authority of charismatic leaders or ‘committees’. The nature of how we identify ourselves as a group can lead too easily to dehumanizing the individuals both within and outside of the group. The Roman Catholic church, for example, has covered up the abuse of children by priests, on the basis that more glory to God would be given by preserving the image of their church. What has happened here is that transparency and integrity, and basic care for people and the children involved, have all been sacrificed for the sake of the institution. And in every Christian community, this can so easily happen. We can decide upon a particular goal or end [e.g. ‘keeping the truth pure’], and all else is subjected to achieving this. People are dehumanized and treated as objects, and no longer related to as we would wish others to relate to us.

Our technology mad, materialistic age has increasingly denied the meaning and value of persons. Science especially has depersonalized people. Everything has been objectified; relationships lack passion and personal meaning; people have become objects, things, rather than persons. The rampant spread of pornography is perhaps the most obvious example of this. And economically or in the work place it's also true. Marx was right when he suggested that capitalism reduces the proletariat to mere things rather than people. The corporate employment structure has reduced people to roles; and it is by these that they are defined, rather than by their personality. By this I mean that we relate to John as the office manager; rather than to John as the guy with a slight stutter he's very conscious of, the John who struggles in his marriage and secretly reads the Bible some lunchtimes, the John who sometimes gives a lot of money to charity when he feels bad about being quite wealthy... the John who fantasizes about being a poet and living in the countryside, and coming to understand God better. In order to manage people, a growing number of rules and regulations have been created, which leads to our avoiding the need to judge people according to their person. Rather do we submit them to the test of legalism, instead of evaluating them and their situation in personal terms. This is seen, e.g., in churches which adopt blanket policies regarding divorce and remarriage, rather than judging each case individually. The glorification of science has had the same result; nature, history, relationships are analyzed by science and reduced to cold cause and effect statements. But the essence of treating people as things rather than persons is to be seen everywhere, not least in the fickleness shown in personal relationships. These relationships tend to be sacrificed increasingly easily for the sake of material advantage. The Jewish theologian Martin Buber wrote of this at great length in a book well worth reading- he sees everything in the modern world being reduced to an 'I-it' relationship rather than the 'I-thou' relationship which it ought to be (1). Yet the capacity for personal relationships is what actually makes us human; it's what singles us out from the animals. By perceiving the world as a world of things rather than a world of persons, we're effectively denying our humanity as God intended us to have it. But once we adopt the Biblical and Christian perspective, our world becomes full of persons rather than people whom we treat as mere objects. Far too many live in a world devoid and empty of meaningful personal relationships. We are called to be lights in this darkness. This perception of the value and meaning of persons will be reflected in many small ways- e.g. writing clearly rather than scrawling messages to others in handwriting only we understand [I find it interesting that doctors have notoriously illegible handwriting!]. It will make us more patient with people- we will the more patiently hear them out, or explain things to them, because we have an interest in them as persons. And perceiving the value of persons will make us value ourselves more, not in pride, but in the way God intends.

This understanding of "the world" as a world of persons rather than the physical world of material "things" is reflected in the way that John uses the term kosmos. So many interpreters have assumed that kosmos refers to the physical, literal world; whereas deeper reflection surely indicates that it refers rather to the world of persons. Thus "the world was made on account of Him [Christ], and the world did not know him" (Jn. 1:10; 1 Jn. 3:1-3) doesn't mean that Jesus created the literal planet; but rather that the world of persons was made on account of Jesus, but that world didn't know or accept / recognize Him. It is this "world" into which 'every man comes' (Jn. 1:18); and it is the "sin of the world" (Jn. 1:29) which Christ bore- not the sin of the literal planet, but the sin of the world of persons. God sent His son into the world to save it, and loved this world through giving Christ for it (Jn. 3:16)- clearly referring to the world of persons rather than the physical planet. The Lord in Lk. 11:49-51 speaks of the creation of humanity as "the foundation of the world"- for He says that Abel was slain at "the foundation of the world"- i.e. of the world of persons. In the same way as these passages in John have been misread as referring to a literal, physical, concrete world, so we too tend to see this world more as a world of things than a world of persons. For seeing the world as a world of persons demands a huge amount from us, and the kind of sensitivity to humanity which leads ultimately to the death of the cross.

We’re surrounded by broken down relationships, and likely each reader participates in plenty in your personal experience. One of the major factors in the anger and hurt which breaks relationships is the way that expectations are dashed. The young woman realizes she was in love with an image of ‘my husband’ throughout her courtship; and now she finds she’s married to a man who doesn’t fit her expectations. But he is all the same a person. By appreciating his unique significance as a person, she need no longer be angry with him for not being the person she had imagined. But there’s no need to treat him as a non-person, just because he’s not the type of person she imagined. But she needs to realize that he is still a person, in God’s image, with all the meaning and value which accompanies that fact. It’s been repeatedly found that the battered child is often the favourite child; the one most longed for, upon such great hopes and expectations were placed. The child misbehaves, fails to achieve excellence at school… and so anger is unleashed. Again, perceiving the meaning of persons can change all this. The child may not be who the parents imagined or hoped; but s/he is still a wonderful, real, alive, unique person.

The Virtual Revolution
The dangers of the communications revolution are testing our perception of the value and meaning of persons to the fullest extent. To kill whatever is made in the image of God is clearly enough a crime before God. It’s the ultimate de-recognition of the human person. But the Lord Jesus taught that whoever hates his brother in his heart is a murderer. And so by sitting at home pressing buttons on a computer, sending emails of hate world-wide, we’ve done the same, at the press of a button. The communications revolution has placed us in temptation like this as never before. Not only does it enable such perpetration of evil in forms which the world would not think particularly bad. But the ease and sheer amount of communication we undertake can result in a person not having any personal ‘secrets’ which s/he hasn’t shared with someone else; and these personal matters of the heart are what make us individuals, and define our boundaries. There’s been nothing like the internet for taking away peoples’ sense of boundaries in just about every sense. Further, a ‘virtual’ world enables people to both indulge and cover their sins more easily; and I speak not so much of viewing pornography as the opportunities to slander, gossip, be inappropriately involved, have affairs of the heart… whilst hiding behind the middle class front of the serious Christian, who can pick up wise statements and deep Bible study from a few minutes surfing of the net. The ease of quickly reading good Bible study etc. not only discourages us from personal study of God’s words; but if reading others’ conclusions is all we spend our time doing, we soon join the huge ranks of those who no longer seem capable of independent thought. The vast amount of information floating around also encourages our natural tendency to be more interested in ideas than people as people. We become more concerned with correcting the false doctrinal conclusions of a person we meet online than we do about their welfare as a person.

Notes

(1) Martin Buber, I And Thou (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1966).