#dehumanize

We live in an age of labels.

A minute’s scroll through social media will give you an endless torrent of labels. Where people who have wronged the author – or maybe just people the author dislikes – are reduced to a derogatory label or two. Then belittled, demeaned, treated like things.

Maybe it’s done for a laugh – at their expense. Often it’s just vicious.

However it’s done, that kind of labeling loses sight of the labels that matter. The labels we see in today’s Gospel. Where Jesus says,

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.”

What we lose sight of is that there is no person we will ever meet who is not our sister, who is not our brother.

The person who sins against us, is our brother. The person we dislike, is our sister.

Those are the labels that matter.

Before someone is any of the labels that we throw around so easily. Labels we use to push away. To minimize. To dehumanize. To shore up our own fragile egos at their expense.

Before any of that, the person we are labelling is first and foremost our brother, our sister.

Those are the labels that matter. Because those are the labels that God uses.

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.”

And if he doesn’t? Love him anyway. Pray for him anyway. He is your brother.

But the real monster of NOPE is humanity's attraction to and tendency to exploit those we consider non-human.