Seeing Monsters

My family was discussing Halloween, so I offered my daughter a chance to guest write this week's column:

 

"Halloween came around when my son was almost three.  Though I tried to steer him away from the monstrous aisles of masks in the grocery store, he caught glimpses of twisted, distorted faces, bloody eyeballs, and rotting fangs.  He was repulsed and fascinated, asking, "Mommy …what's THAT??!!"  He also developed a fascination with skeletons.

"Having tried to create a nourishing, positive environment for my children, I wasn't sure how to help them make sense of the grotesque depictions of the human form that saturate our environment at Halloween time.  I opted for Biblical truth:  Psalm 139 in the Bible declares that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made…. Your works are wonderful!"  And what is a skeleton, but a beautiful creation of God, designed to give our bodies strength and form?  We read books, built our own cardboard skeletons, and marvelled at how our bodies work.

"But the whole thing got me thinking… why monsters?  Why do we take something that God has made good and beautiful like a skeleton, twist it into ugliness, and abdicate it to the realm of Satan?

"Tom Fox, one of four members of the Christian Peacemaker Team who were kidnapped by terrorists in Baghdad near the beginning of the Iraq war, had some answers.  Before he was abducted, he wrote a blog on the power of evil that arises from dehumanizing our enemy.   'As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death….'   If we can see an enemy as subhuman, we can kill without remorse.

 

Looking at corpse-like mannequins and masks decorating stores and homes around town, I concluded that these "monsters" give us a paradigm for dehumanizing our enemy.  Rather than celebrate God's creation, monsters propagate cyclical violence and warfare.  Newspapers from post-Civil war times used labels such as "renegades" and "hostiles" to label plains Indians who resisted confinement on reservations.  Such labels justified the killing of women and children at Sand Creek in Colorado in November, 1864, and more.   The Sioux and Cheyenne felt completely justified in subsequently wiping out Custer and the 7th Calvary.   "Monster" slayers become monsters in their enemy's eyes, and the cycle perpetuates.

"Jesus's life and teaching strongly fought the evil power of dehumanization. 'Love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you,' wasn't just teaching us to be nice, but providing a powerful tool to stop the cycle of returning evil for evil.  St. Paul also admonishes, 'return good for evil...in doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head.'  Burning coals were mentioned as a means of purification (presumably painful) in Isaiah Ch. 1, and the head must signify the mind or thoughts.  If we treat our enemy with respect and compassion, reflecting humanity rather than monstrosity, we unleash a spiritual force of affirmation of life against the monsterization so attractive and repulsive at the same time.

Such was the outcome for many who put Jesus' teachings to the test in nonviolent resistance.  British police officers realized the power of beating down unarmed and nonresistant protesters in India didn't work, and eventually Britain granted India independence.  Police officers and store owners in the South could not hide their brutality attacking blacks seated peacefully in restaurants. The laws weren't changed because they recovered a godly conscience, but because the power of their violence was unmasked, and taken away.  Such nationwide change did not come without cost. Ghandi in India and Martin Luther King were both assassinated, and  Tom Fox was the only one of his four companions to be killed by his abductors. Like Jesus, he may have prayed, "Forgive them Father, for they don't know what they're doing."

"This Halloween, as we welcome our "monsters" onto our porches for trick-or-treats, we know deep down each one is a neighbor's child, and wouldn't think of harming or hating them. But other human beings in our world, even some in Big Horn County, have been labeled disrespectfully. Even our national media joins in turning certain people into expendable sub-humans because of religion, ethnicity, politics, economic status, addictions or livelihood. With some of this labeling comes an assumption we would be better off without them.

As Paul reminds us in Ephesians, our battle is not against flesh and blood (human beings) but against powers and principalities of dark forces in the heavenly realms.  Let those of us who would be Christians resist society's call to plop monster masks over people we see as our enemy in our community, nation and world.  Instead, let's clothe ourselves with Christ.  

Fox, Tom.  Christian Peacemaker Teams Chttp://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2005/12/03/iraq-most-recent-reflection-tom-fox-ampquotwhy-are-we-hereampquot. accessed 10/27/13  

"Jesus resisted this. Time and again he respected those labeled and dehumanized in his time. Usually he healed them. Always he showed them the Father's love. His words and deeds thus became controversial, as he met needs while defying human labels, laws and regulations. In the end, his ministry to the poor, rejected, and sinful in his time drew hatred and rejection from those who wanted to keep their biases firmly in place. In the Gospels, this is how he died, and those "least of these" are the ones who first recognized him resurrected."