“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
— C.S. Lewis
THE FOG THAT ROLLS IN
This past week has been heavy.
My wife and I could feel it early. By Sunday night and into Monday morning, it felt like a fog was rolling in. The kids were being terrors, my wife went down with the stomach flu, and it felt like we were losing steam by the time Monday afternoon hit. As if a thick spiritual resistance had settled over everything. The kind of atmosphere where it’s hard to pray, hard to be present, hard to remember what really matters.
Then like all of you experienced, the news came.
Another act of violence. More senseless death. More outrage. More division.
The cycle we all know too well.
Scroll. React. Share. Forget. Repeat.
But something about it seemed to hit differently this time.
More than anything I say the question being asked, “How did we get here?”
It made me reflect on how we, as a culture, have slowly lost our ability to truly see one another. We’re not just disagreeing anymore. We’re dehumanizing.
We no longer see people as people. We see them as problems.
As categories.
As caricatures.
As cliches.
And once someone is no longer fully human in your eyes, you can justify almost anything.
THE SLOW DRIFT TOWARD DEHUMANIZATION
Dehumanization doesn’t happen all at once.
It’s a slow drift.
A series of tiny steps away from connection, until one day, you look up and realize how far you’ve gone.
Connection, real connection, tends to follow a path.
And like many other areas of life, it has stages of depth:
Stage 1: Cliché - This is the surface level. You judge a book by its cover. You form a label, a tribe, a type.
Stage 2: Facts - You learn a few things. Where they live. What they do. What they believe. And then you sort them.
Stage 3: Opinion - You agree or disagree. Affirm or resist. And emotions start to surface.
Stage 4: Emotion - Based on your alignment or dissonance, you form an emotional posture toward them. Things like frustration, admiration, anger, indifference.
Stage 5: Vulnerability - This is where most of us stop. Because vulnerability is costly. It’s the risk of being wounded for the sake of connection. It’s the door to deep relationship, but it requires trust, humility, and courage.
But here’s the problem: most of us have been discipled by outrage culture. We’ve been trained to weaponize our emotions instead of investigate them. We’ve learned to shut people down instead of letting them in.
So when emotions rise, instead of moving towards the person in our emotions we retreat back up the cascade and we never reach true vulnerability.
We refuse to work through our emotions which then leads to us dismissing people for their opinions, reducing them to a set of facts, and ultimately turning them back into a cliché.
And once they’re a cliché, just another liberal, just another conservative, just another activist, just another religious nut, just another whatever, we can dehumanize them with little friction to our conscience.
And when someone is no longer human in your eyes,
you stop protecting them.
You stop praying for them.
You stop believing the image of God exists within them.
You just stop seeing them altogether.
THE IMAGE WE'VE FORGOTTEN
Genesis 1:27 declares a foundational truth:
“God created man in His own image.”
Not some people.
Not the people you agree with.
Not the people who vote like you or talk like you or believe what you believe.
Every person. Every soul. Every life.
Made in His image.
And that includes:
The people who have hurt you.
The people who have betrayed you.
The people who live lives that offend your values.
The people you’ve dismissed, unfollowed, blocked, rolled your eyes at.
They all bear His image.
And when we fail to see it, we fail to love as Christ has called us to love.
Dehumanization is a precursor to dismissal.
And dismissal is the first step toward violence, whether physical, emotional, or relational.
You can’t carry someone’s burdens if you don’t believe they have worth.
You won’t listen to someone’s story if you’ve already decided they’re not worth knowing.
You won’t love someone you’ve forgotten is an image-bearer.
MADE FOR MORE
God created you for connection.
Real, honest, vulnerable connection.
Not surface-level acquaintances.
Not highlight reel friendships.
Not shallow interactions laced with fear and posturing.
Deep, rooted, life-giving relationship.
The kind that holds you accountable.
The kind that draws you out of isolation.
The kind that doesn’t quit when you’re annoying or messy.
The kind that goes past cliché, past facts, past opinions, and sits in the discomfort of emotions long enough to reach the beauty of vulnerability.
You were made to be known.
To see and be seen.
To reflect God’s image and recognize it in others.
A FINAL CHARGE
This week, I’m not asking you to agree with everyone.
I’m not asking you to change your convictions or water down your beliefs.
But I am asking you to look again.
Look again at the people you’ve written off.
Look again at the faces you’ve scrolled past.
Look again at the ones you’ve judged, labeled, ignored.
And see the image of God in them.
Not the version of them you wish they were.
Not the political version. Not the social media version.
The human version.
They are not a project.
They are not a problem.
They are not a punchline.
They are people.
People made in the image of the God you say you follow.
People worthy of love, dignity, and compassion.
People Jesus gave His life for.
And if Jesus could step toward you in your mess, you can step toward them in theirs.
Do the difficult work of love this week.
Push past cliché. Move through the discomfort.
Fight for deeper connection.
And never forget…you’ve never met an ordinary person.
Everyone you meet bears the fingerprints of God.
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