Seeing with the Eyes of Christ

An old Talmudic riddle asks “why did the Tower of Babel fall?” The answer is because the builders cared more about the work than they did the workmen. A brick that fell to the ground and broke was more of a cause for grief than a worker who fell and lost his life. God destroyed the tower not because they tried to reach heaven but because they cared more for bricks than for bricklayers.

This still happens today. When we reduce people to categories rather than individuals, we sow the seeds for all hatred, prejudice, racism, rejection and persecution. This is what it means to objectify someone, to make them no longer a person, to make them into an object. And we are very good at creating categories that keep people at arms’ length and reduce them to a simple equation.

But Jesus is the way. He knows His sheep and calls them by name. We matter to Him personally, all people matter to Him, even those not of this fold. To overcome prejudice, and hatred, is to see as Jesus sees, to know as He knows, to call as He calls, and to forgive as He forgives.

To get past ignorance and assumptions about people we need to see them as people, with a name and a history. We must be more interested in people as individuals than in things that in the end to not matter at all. We must be more interested in bricklayers than in bricks.

Pax Vobiscum
4th Sunday of Easter