September
2022
We don’t notice how much we worship money, wealth and beauty. We adore the beautiful and successful, hanging posters on our walls or purchasing magazines that show us their glorious lives and beautiful faces. We pay actors and athletes amazing salaries for being talented, yes. But there are other talented people in our world who are not as beautiful.
I have my
students read a story called “Life in the Iron Mills” by Rebecca Harding Davis.
In the story, an iron mill worker makes beautiful art pieces out of the slag.
The owner and investors come one day to take a tour. They come upon this man,
and are amazed at his art. They talk about how it would stand against other art
they have seen and how well it would sell. They talk about the possibility of
setting up a studio for the man. This entire conversation is within the worker’s
hearing, and then it’s like they awaken to where they are. They see the rough,
dirty, tired man and the filth and darkness all around them, and shake off
their momentary vision. They leave without another word to the man. For a brief
moment he shared their dream as they talked, and then it was over, back to the
fires and back breaking work.
Like those
investors, we can convince ourselves that art (or beauty in general) can only
come from something that already looks pleasing. How much talent lies in either?
We don’t expect beauty from less pleasing places or people, and we don’t like
lingering and looking, almost fearing their situation will wear off on us. Our
city slums and homeless camps? We have no idea if talent is there, but we don’t
go looking
Ishiguro’s
book Never Let Me Go raises the
question ‘what makes a person human?’ What gives a person a soul? One character
believes it’s the ability to create art. But when the unexpected create art,
the masses are unwilling to see it. To them it is easier and better to believe
these are not wholly human. Not unlike how we look at people of color, or
people who are different from us – it’s easier to decry their color or differences
and believe that makes them lesser humans, if human at all. And that makes it
easy to despise and mistreat. So goes the history of mankind – you are not like
me, so I will kill you and be free of any who are not like me.
And
Christians are as guilty as the next person of this behavior. Skin color has
been one area, many slave owners believed their slaves had no souls. There was
the belief that the Bible taught this, something to do with God’s curse of
Noah’s son Ham. And yet, if you read the account in Genesis, God didn’t curse
Ham, Noah did. And Ham became the father of many nations, yes some south to
Africa, but also Canaan. God didn’t curse Black people.
When I was a
youth director, I had a pastor tell me I was teaching leadership in the wrong
way. I encouraged all the kids to try their hand at leading something. The
pastor informed me that this wasn’t the way. You take the most popular kids
(athletes, cheerleaders, most beautiful) and you put them up front, and all the
others will follow. So, if that worked, I’d just be training followers? No,
those followers would aspire to be like the upfront kids. So, somehow they
would become athletes and cheerleaders? The average kids would become
beautiful, just by watching the beautiful leaders? What I actually found was
that this pastor didn’t believe the average, plain, not classically popular
kids could become leaders; in fact, they shouldn’t. Those kids don’t make
Christianity attractive.
I didn’t
follow his advice. And I discovered a beauty far beyond what he imagined, as
kids found their gifts and used them, becoming leaders in their own way. Some
of those kids are now pastors themselves.
With our
incessant focus on the beautiful, the superficial, and becoming that ourselves,
we miss the point. We miss a lot of people. We fail to follow the pattern Jesus
modeled – the first shall be last, and the last first. Whom are we
overlooking? Whom are we blind to as we walk through our lives? All wear the
image of Christ, as there is nothing more beautiful.
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