Objectifying...

“I judge no man.” (Jn 8:15)

In our natural state, I wonder if we are not all potential terrorists.

We all attempt to understand what goes on around us and embrace a world view that strikes us as consistent. Unfortunately, the way that we go about it reflects our unregenerate ego-centrism, our driving need to prove ourselves a cut above the rest. Couple that with our incomplete knowledge (i.e., ignorance), and we have the ingredients for a consistent world view, but one that is grossly over-simplistic and potentially dangerous.

PIGEONHOLE - verb. to assign to a place in an orderly system, esp. in a narrow-minded way: pigeonholed the demonstrators as "commies and pinkos."

Don't you hate being pigeonholed? I cringe when meeting new people who see me with only one word on their mind: gringo, foreigner, tourist, senior, missionary... pick one. Yet I find in my own heart the propensity for doing the same thing to others.

Judging others is a favorite universal pastime. Anybody can play. It requires minimal intelligence. The problem is that we end up living in a deceived little world rife with mistaken perceptions. We don't see or know enough about others to avoid missing the mark with our grandiloquent observations. We err with staggering frequency. We dig our own grave. (Mat. 7:1-2)

What do you see in the picture? WWI, trench warfare, gloom, danger, vigilance, eliminate the threat or die... I was tempted to post it with the following caption: "Generic Church". Except that in churches, we tend to dig our trenches in a circle and go after one another.

If the wrongful judging of others is a prevailing battle in a church setting where the Holy Spirit is restraining, convicting and drawing to better things, how can we expect anything short of extreme behavior from sociopaths who do not know Him?

Pigeonholing grows into objectifying (dehumanizing, treating others as objects). Objectifying is for the lazy and the uninformed. We build our imaginary little world by extrapolating from isolated experiences. From those tiny moments, we assemble whole portraits of a person, of a family, people of a certain region, of a certain religion, or of a certain color.

Probably no one has a better handle on objectifying than ideological/religious fanatics and terrorists. They share certain characteristics in common:

• They don't know the one, true God.
• They let themselves be governed by the baser instincts: pride, insecurity, grievance, vengeance, religious zeal)
• They are cowards. They target people who are vulnerable, unable to defend themselves. When backed into a corner, they would rather die with guns blazing than face the consequences of their ignominy in a court of law. They choose death like a heroin addict chooses to shoot up again: pure escapism.
• They dehumanize their targets in order to justify the violence they intend to perpetrate against them.

Objectification is its own curse. It will make us superstitious, fearful, paranoid, insulated, conceited, blind, hateful and errant... all of which makes us unappealing to a world that we are supposed to be drawing to the love of Christ... it renders us useless as servants of God.

While God has provided for all of mankind a single solution for our universally shared sinful condition, He has never objectified us. No one metes out perfect, individualized treatment better than our Creator. He loves me as if I were the only believer on the planet, with the same care and attention to detail that you experience, and that all genuine believers experience.

God, in the person of Jesus Christ, in His role as the Grand Reconciler, judged no one (Jn 8:15). He had not come to condemn, but to find the lost and to save the sinner. (Read Jn 8, the whole chapter) In essence, we are earthly representatives of Jesus the Reconciler, not Jesus the future judge. He left an example for us to follow. (1Pe 2:21)

Maybe we should try that.

Greg's message this week to Greg:

Next Sunday morning, I should take a good look around me. Which of my freeze frame memories of the people I see defines a whole person or an entire life? Impossible. And yet, in my heart, have I not pigeonholed some people? Does not the fact that I have objectified them bleed through my preaching? Me vs. them? Preaching in second person plural (you) when first person plural (we) is what is called for?

Greg's message this week to believers:

Don't let phony judges tell you who you are. You are only frozen in time, encapsulated in a single frame, in the warped minds of imperfect people. You remain a whole person, someone who God is greatly interested in. You do not have to resign yourself to being only what other people think you are. It doesn't matter what your story line looks like up till now. That need not limit or predict your future. God means to judge you, but he will call you to account for your entire life... except for the parts where His forgiveness has been applied!

“Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in [his] brother’s way.” (Ro 14:13)

While the world gets harder, we get softer. While worldlings fortify their trenches, the people of God back-fill theirs and seek peace.

RECONCILERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

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