In Spielberg’s monumental film, Schindler’s List, there is a scene where Amon Goeth, the brutal Nazi commander of Krakow, is having a one-sided conversation with Helen, his Jewish housekeeper. Goeth comments on the way Helen’s eyes make her appear “almost human”, and then—clearly disgusted by his obvious desire for her—Goeth violently lashes out at her.
That scene has become all too familiar down through the ages, as oppressors have momentarily disregarded their indoctrination, and like Goeth, they have been repulsed by it. I suggest that the inability to see the existential “other” as authentically human is at the heart of our post-post-modern angst. It is a spiritual problem, and it is as old as human history.
Dr. Bruce Rigdon was my church history mentor in seminary. In his lecture on the theology of Anselm of Canterbury, Rigdon would remind students that Anslem regarded the disobedience in the Garden of Eden, as the moment when the luminosity of Creation was rendered opaque by the hubris of Adam and Eve. I have always liked that imagery because it suggests the human capacity to blur the innate image of God that dwells in all creatures, and perhaps even the tendency to darken it.
And so, it seems to me that the killing of Trayvon Martin, the violence of UC-Santa Barbara shooter, Elliot Rodger, and the rants of Donald Sterling, all fall into the same spiritual category: when the other is less than human, it’s acceptable to mistreat—or destroy them. That was the mentality of America’s slave past, which operated on its own twisted morality based on race. One could also cite the misogyny that gave rise to witch hunts in Europe as being cut from the same cloth. And in our present day, the socially accepted objectification of women is no less reprehensible.
God forgive us when we so easily regard another human being as an avatar for own amusement or the object of our abuse. For every human—male or female, black or white—bears the image of God within them.
Raising Basileia 