Treating People as Equals

As I've been reflecting on my time in Denison working with Shalom a lot lately. I just have all of these feelings bottled up inside of me that I'm having a hard time expressing or sorting out. One of the biggest things weighing on my mind is how people are treated. Psychology tells us that we attempt to place people into categories in order cut down on the stimuli around us. However, psychology also tells us that while we do this, most of our categories and assumptions based on those labels are wrong.

In Denison, there are so many beautiful people, and everyone has a God piece inside of them. Yet, for far too many people, that piece has been trampled on by years of being looked down upon or ignored. I was told several times when I was asking people about their town and their passions that they aren't qualified or worthy to answer the questions or worse, that no one has ever really paid attention to them before. It broke my heart.

Then I returned to school, hoping to escape for a while from the world of labeling people. I wanted to return to being able to see everyone as a precious child of God and be in a society where they are affirmed. But that doesn't even happen all the time in a seminary. We still pick out who is worthy for admissions and who is not. And we get more excited about the gifts and talents of some instead of seeing that each person is a blessing to this earth in their own way. We treat people differently based on the categories we put them, which marginalize the multitudes. When will we start seeing with Jesus' eyes.

"Give me your eyes for just one second, give me your eyes so I can see everything I keep missing. Give me your love for humanity, give me your arms for the broken hearted, the ones that are far beyond my reach, give me your heart for the ones forgotten. Lord give me your eyes so I can see." -Brendon Heath