While I’m sure there are people that don’t like the song “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman (and recently covered by Luke Combs) or feel it is overplayed --- but I really do. Over the years, myriads of people have written to her about how they identified with it. I know that Pat and I certainly did - complete with all the challenges and mistakes that youth makes when it latches on to a not-very-well-planned dream.
Anyway, lately I have sort of become fixated on the part where she is singing about driving with her partner, his arm around her and she sings, ““And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged/I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone.” How many of us feel we are “someone” because of a relationship or the type of job we have, on our education or on our level of wealth. And how many times do people who are missing one or more of these ingredients feel like they aren’t “someone” because of the missing elements? And how many times does society, or part of society, make “others” out of them and make them feel like they aren’t someone??? That they don’t belong?
Every single person is Imago Dei - bearing the image of God, filled with creative abilities, absolutely and undeniably embodied with value and worth. Here we are in this political season and I’m constantly seeing human beings reduced to inconsequence. This week I have seen so many nasty memes about “not giving our hard earned money to lazy people who didn’t work for it” or “help veterans and not immigrants.” It’s so easy to lump people into faceless masses, isn’t it? But they aren’t faceless - each and every category of people we hate on and want to deprive is made of of individuals who are Imago Dei. To assume that each person who receives public assistance is “lazy” and “on the take,” or that veterans want us to spit in the face of families trying to escape violence, oppression, persecution or poverty. Most American veterans worth their salt FIGHT for human dignity and don’t ask to be held up as a hammer to crush the hurting parts of humanity.
I want my students to KNOW, absolutely know that they have value - even if they screw up, make terrible mistakes. I want them to know that regardless of what society tells them they are missing, than they are valuable and worthy of dignity and respect. They are SOMEONE already. Sadly, I see people so battered down by life and lack, that initiative can be squeezed out of them - and this devaluing of humanity and lumping it into groups to hate makes me frustrated, angry, and…determined to try, try, try to shine light on this. (Those who claim Christ should feel shame for spreading these).
I’ve rapped with gangsters, I’ve sat and spoken to immigrants, legal and illegal, and heard stories that should make people wake up - but one of the most profound moments I had was in downtown Akron. A raggedy old man was out with his sign, panhandling for help. Pat had died a year before. I’d been through some major challenges and personal hells. Anyhow, I felt led to give him what I had (and no, I don’t give a damn how he spent it - that’s not my business after I give a gift). He started to speak to me and ask me how I was -- really ask me, look in my eyes. Now, I’d been crying earlier and my eyes were still puffy. That man prayed for me with genuine concern and treated my hardships, which weren’t nearly as profound as his own, as if they were monumental. He blessed me in a way that has impacted me eternally.
If you are posting memes hating ANY group, I hope you get the opportunity to sit down, eye to eye, human being to human being, and look for the light of Imago Dei. Desmond Tutu said that “If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” Whether you hate someone for rational or irrational reasons, you need to connect with them on a human level before any progress can be made -- and until then, remember, each is a someone.
