Lately, because of certain events which occurred at work, at home and at church, I have been feeling like I am less that a person. Rather I feel that I have been treated as less than a person. I have been both protesting and reflecting on this experience. This has drawn me to reflect on Jesus and his experience of being like less than a person. Let me begin at the beginning.
In the beginning … “God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’ … So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:26-27). The fact that human beings are in the likeness of God is something very powerful. We were created to share the mutual love which is shared between the Father and the Son, mediated by the Holy Spirit, within the Trinity (John 3:35; 15:10). Since the Father always glorifies the Son and the Son does nothing but glorify the Father (John 17:1), the honour and dignity of the divine persons is never undermined. So too humans are created to treat one another as fully personal, valued without qualification and accorded mutual dignity and honour.
Yet the fall has changed the way in which humans treat one another from then onward. In their quest to be like God, Adam and Eve depersonalised one another. Adam blamed God for giving him, not a fellow person who was to be his helper, but “the woman” (Gen 3:12). In her response to God, Eve ignored the existence of Adam altogether (3:15). The subsequent relationship between men and women would become one of domination and co-dependence (3:16). The subsequent chapters of Genesis demonstrate that humans are depersonalised in multiple arenas. Cain treated his brother Abel, not as a brother to love and cherish, but as a competitor to be silenced through murder (4:1-8). Lamech had two wives, who he treated as possessions to be guarded through violence (4:23-24). Even the most righteous man on earth, Noah, turned made his sons into rivals who would oppress or be oppressed by one another (9:25-27).
In our culture we continually depersonalise others through the application of arbitrary rules of what makes a human valuable or not. Accordingly an individual is worth more or less depending on age, gender, beauty, wealth, possessions, power, place of abode, occupation, intelligence, fame etc. That these standards are arbitrary is evident in the changing face of what makes someone ‘beautiful’. So if an individual does not possess a particular quality they may be depersonalised by being treated as less significant or completely insignificant. The desire to possess a particular trait can depersonalise us as we constantly strive to become a person of worth. On the other hand the possession of a particular trait can depersonalise someone because that individual is now seen as a competitor who must be brought low. All these cultural values assume that humans must become persons, rather than that they are created as persons in the image of God.
In his ministry Jesus did not apply the arbitrary standards of culture to decide on an individual’s worth or personhood. Instead he ministered to the marginalised and the non-marginalised in ways which demonstrated their worth as humans made by God and valued without condition. But it is on the cross that Jesus transformed the devalued personhood of every human being by becoming less than a person in his humiliation. He was rejected by the religious establishment, turned on by those who had a week earlier proclaimed him king, unjustly sentenced to the death of a criminal and slave, beaten by brutal soldiers for the sake of political expediency, treated as cursed, and crucified naked while soldiers gambled over his clothes. Isaiah 53:2b-3 describes Jesus like this: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
But more than simply the way he was treated by humans, Jesus experienced the most dehumanising thing of all, the loss of what makes us ultimately human, his sure knowledge of God as Father. On the cross he cried out the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A little further on in Psalm 22 the psalmist describes how dehumanised he feels, “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people” (v 6). Thus Jesus experienced on the cross the loss of all things which make us human: the knowledge of who he is before God, that is, a loss of sonship, and the loss of human love and respect. The one who is the source of all personhood because he is the creator of all experienced the loss of personhood for our sakes.
But Jesus has been raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of God. His humanity and personhood are now complete. He can never be depersonalised again, since at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess his as lord (Phil 2:10-11). Since we have been united with Christ in baptism we have been united with his death and resurrection (Rom 6:3-4). What this means is that our personhood is firmly rooted in Christ and cannot be undone. No matter how we may be treated, no one can take away our personhood. However, in suffering the degradation of those who would depersonalise us by their actions, we can share in the work of Christ to restore the personhood of others (cf. Heb 13:12-13). But these experiences of being treated as less than a person can also be a catalyst to make sure that the way in which we treat others is always on the basis of that fact that they are created in Christ for personhood. People are to be dignified, valued and loved regardless of whether they match up to the socially prescribed qualifications of what makes someone ‘matter’ in our shallow culture. Indeed, Jesus said that the way in which we will be judged is based on the way we have treated those who are the least (Matt 25:31-46).