Whitney's Philosophical Ponderings of the Day

Currently Reading: The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey

Quote That Sparked This: "...Jesus honored the dignity of people, whether he agreed with them or not."

This concept is one of the most compelling cases to me for Jesus' divinity—or at least other worldness. It is true that he offered dignity to the social outcast, religious fraud, thief, traitor, and friend alike. Who else is capable of such? I am certainly not. I am quick to judgment, definitely more so than an offering of love. How do I change this about myself? How do I make my first reaction to someone a feeling of love, or honoring dignity instead of taking offense at whatever may strike me in an odd manner? Can I simply train myself? The reaction just seems so instinctual.

What if upon every meeting or encounter, I ask myself: How can I extend love or honor dignity to this person? While this quest may be somewhat easy with chance encounters with strangers (a smile, compliment, word of encouragement, or act of mercy when something inconveniences me), what about the social outcast, religious fraud, thief, or traitor in my life?

There are two thoughts that assist me in overlooking someone's current faults and flaws: 1) God created this person, and as God's creation, this person is worthy of love and admiration. 2) This person was once someone's child, who was pure, innocent, full of hope, and completely reliant on others' mercy and care (i.e. vulnerable). The latter thought is often what I think about when I see people begging for money on street corners. I wonder what happened in life to get them to this place. Some mother (hopefully) loved this person—and this person was, at some time, unblemished. That train of thought usually breaks my heart (as I am sure it breaks God's heart), and leaves me sad. But it does make me feel sympathy, and some sort of love for the person.

Of course, these thoughts are always from the shelter of my car with locked doors. While I may be conjuring feelings of love, my doors are still locked, and I offer no money or assistance as I believe that won't really help the person. And then I drive away, never to think of that person again. So, I have not offered love or honored dignity. I don't think "it's the thought that counts" here.

And then there are the people in my life whom I just don't like for one reason or another. I find him/her obnoxious, our politics or theology don't match up, they have done something I view as reprehensible. What then? With a stranger I can make up a past where they were once innocent and find that core to love. But with people we know whose cruelty, closed-mindedness, or arrogance blind-side us before we have a chance to try to center ourselves to offer love—what do we do with them?

And to take it to the extreme, what about Hitler... rapists... murderers? What of these persons who have imposed such evil upon other innocent people? How can we offer love in the face of such offenses? How can we offer love to a Hitler in the height of his power and pinnacle of his atrocities? And what role does justice play in this? My wise husband said, "Justice does not have to impart hatred." But can we truly "hate the sin and not the sinner"?

Is it possible to love everyone? Jesus offered the thief next to him on the cross a place in paradise. He even asked forgiveness for those who gruesomely nailed him to a hunk of wood—even as he painfully faced a horrifying and unjust death. How? How is that he did this? And how I am to emulate such a radical and gracious love?