deHUMANization: on ISIS and priviliege, gangs and the Bible

I have been thinking a lot about privilege lately, and Fox news, and Isis. I’ve been thinking about white people and black people, gay people and the Bible, Anne Lamott and Rachel Held Evans and Hooters girls and Ferguson, and I keep thinking that we have it all wrong, we get furious at the wrong things, and cheer for other wrong things.

I don’t know if I’m right all the time, but I understand that feeling right can get comfortable, so there are times when I can’t blame us. 

Just yesterday, I saw this post, called “Light ’em up.” It’s a video of what I am assuming is a US military strike. It’s surreal — like an X-Box video game, and the poster — a friend who is a Christian — wrote “So cool” in his description. And truth be told, in some ways, it is cool. Even I can admit that. Until you realize that what it’s showing is three or four people clearly being blown to bits.

Let me be clear: I think ISIS is evil. I believe they are a threat, and I believe that God would have us protect ourselves. There is nothing about Jesus that was a doormat, and I don’t think the whole turn the cheek thing was a command to ignore matters of international security. But I’m concerned for the heart of our nation — especially the church — when we cheer as we watch people die.

I don’t think God cheers. I don’t think he rejoices in the destruction of his own creation, even when they have royally pissed him off.  I think he grieves deeply for each soul who leaves this earth without knowing him. I think his big God stomach twists inside him and out of it comes a roar of agony and pain for each solitary soul that has chosen to turn away.

If we had the heart of God, I think instead of fist pumps and rejoicing, we would instead be grieving with God. We would mourn the loss of the ones we let get away, because we did not care for them more than we cared for being right.

But I get it — I do. It’s complicated, and they don’t want us to care for them. And they are stubborn and it’s far easier and more comfortable to cheer — it’s a simple slip of emotion, and shift in perspective from God’s heart to our own.

In this life, it’s so easy to forget that God is a radical. He is a radical lover of our souls, whether we choose to ignore him, choose to defile him, or choose to believe he has minions of virgins awaiting us should we kill the infidels. He loves us radically and he loves those men who got blown to bits radically, too. He also loves their mothers who are wailing now and their fathers who are beating their chests. Because that wasn’t an X-Box video game. Those were people. And God is not American.

I think the common thread that I have begun to notice here — the thing that disturbs me most of all — is how easily we dehumanize those we see as evil or different. How easy it becomes to cheer for their deaths. When we celebrate the blowing-to-bits of four human beings, how different are we, really, from the gloating ISIS executioner, holding high the heads of the people he has murdered for the world to YouTube?

Our gloating is just more high-tech, with its night vision and lit up missiles.

We are, after all, an advanced and civilized nation.

It’s not just ISIS.

I’ve written about the mentoring program I help run for my church. The youth we care for are on probation — some of them for very bad things. One of the children was involved in a knock-out game that ended in murder. He and two friends were walking in Hoboken and suddenly, his friend lashed out at a homeless person, hitting him for no reason, and the man fell onto a fence, where he died. It’s a horrible thing. Disgusting and horrible and needless, and it has the stench of the enemy all over it. And there was a time when I would have thought — those bastards need to fry. 

And I wouldn’t have been alone. You can see some of the comments this story produced here. People are enraged. In my humble opinion, some of those people are more intelligent than others, but that’s just me, and I don’t blame them for being enraged.

But what does bother me — a lot — is their complete dehumanization of these boys.

Savages! they are called.

Let them suffer the knockout game 100 times as punishment. If they’re still alive after that, nail them on a cross.

Toss them away! They are a waste of space!

Except I know one of them. I know he is not a savage. I’ve spoken with him and he is a shy, soft-spoken young man who had never been in trouble before. And while the world rages — rightfully — at the loss of the man they killed, where is the moral outrage over this boy’s loss of innocence?

Why are we not enraged over the fact that there are thousands of young men so disengaged from our society that they choose violence for fun and gangs for safety? You see, here’s the thing:

It’s so much easier to hate these boys because to love them would hold us responsible for our own negligence.

The privilege of feeling as though you land on the side of right makes the judgement seat super comfortable. When we are so sure we are right, we can dismiss the seemingly innocuous things as not so important.

The fact, for example, that there is a restaurant whose sole marketing plan is the objectification of the female body can go easily ignored by an entire country. Plenty of men — and women, for that matter — simply choose not to eat there and think they are doing their part.

Meanwhile, 50% of the population — some of whom have been so desensitized to their own demoralization that they don’t even notice and work and eat there — are being horrifically dehumanized while they eat wings and drink beer.

I’d never eaten at a Hooters until I found myself on vacation is some weird shipping yard (don’t ask) and it was the only restaurant nearby. I had a hungry family well aware of my feelings about the restaurant, but we had no choice (if you’ve ever been in a car for a long ride with two hungry children, you understand why I say that).

We sat at a table across from a sign that said, Hooters girls are flattery operated. 

What’s more offensive? That I can be manipulated into doing what you want just by paying me a compliment, because obviously my brain is too dull to notice? Or that I am merely your mechanical toy? Your plaything? Something to be operated by your manipulation?

Oh — and how to explain this to the curious six-year old boy just discovering the power of the written word, who reads everything and demands explanation of all he does not understand?

I sat at that table, alone in my anger.

And that is perhaps the worst part. A man told me the other day, when I recounted this story, “You know how many times I eat at Hooters? Never.”

And he said it as if I should pat him on the back and tell him, “Job well done!”

Except it’s not a job well done. Because just not eating there isn’t moral outrage. Just not eating there is tolerance of the objectification of women.

Show me how you use your privilege and power to influence others not to eat at a Hooters. Show me how you speak out against this blatant, disgusting over-sexualization of the female body, show me you notice it at least. Then maybe you can get your pat on the back. Until you move your patriarchy out of your own damn eyes, don’t come looking to me for kudos.

Something deep in my soul is at dis-ease.  A rumbling of discontent that young black men are shot and gay Christians can’t find churches to call their homes. That white men chuckle at the cute, feminst-leaning activists before they go about the “real” work of changing the world.

Dude: the disenfranchised are right in front of your door.

And if you think I’m not talking to you, think again.

I challenge each and every one of us: LOOK.

Look right before you, in your bed, in your office, on your sports teams and on your way to work. The tossed away and unwanted are all around you. They are on the news, on the street corner, they are are sitting across from you at the breakfast table. Especially if you are a white American male, open your eyes.

Once you’ve taken a good, long, look, consider joining your voice to ours. Try being human from our side of the privilege heap.

Then tell me what rocks your world, and why I should pat you on the back.