April 25th 2007

The Loss of Humanity

Read Exodus 1-2:10 (Yes Again)

"So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor,

and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. " v. 1:11

We look to the atrocities of the 20th Century and we ask ourselves questions like, "How could Hitler do what he did to other human beings?" "What would cause such agression between human beings in Rwanda?" For many of us, it seems nearly unfathomable to ever treat other humans with such indifference, violence or agression. What we fail to realize however is that in systems of dominance and oppression there is a distinct loss of humanity. The people brutalized are viewed as objects or commodities, helpful in some manner, a nuisance in others, but in most completely expendable. The people of Israel found themselves in such a brutal system of oppression in the beginning of the Exodus story. Mind you, it was from this system that God sought to liberate them.

Through dominance and oppression a person's dignity is stripped, their identity is redefined, and their worth is quantified. To Pharaoh, the people who would later become Israel had value only as slave labor--their numbers were a threat unless they could be manipulated to serve the economic system of the ruling class. In essence, these slaves had lost their "humanness." The ironic thing being, not only do the slaves lose their humanity but the oppressor is also stripped of his as well. In the eyes of the oppressed, the oppressor is seen as less than human...evil, an animal, an anomaly of sorts. That is why when the oppressed are liberated they often become the oppressor--for although freedom is given, humanity isn't restored.

It is easy for us to look to such situations as Nazi Germany, Pharaoh's Egypt, or Rwanda with great disdain and disgust. However, and rather unfortunately, we ignore the truth that many of us participate in systems of oppression and dominance that redefine the value of other human beings. In a consumer based society driven by the "almighty" dollar, workers in foreign countries are coerced and manipulated to work in slavelike conditions, swept away in systems determined to keep the wages as low as possible. Through our greed and over-consumption we prepare the shackles for those we strip of their humanity. Please understand, however, that despite our self-righteous egotism that defines our lives as civilized over and above the third world, because of our systems we have lost our humanity in their eyes as well. In Exodus we come to realize that both groups, the oppressed and the oppressor, are in need of God's liberating grace.