No More Yellow Stars

I spent the last several weeks teaching a book called Night.  This is a book that I staunchly believe everyone on this planet should read.  It's a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the tragedy we call the Holocaust.  Wiesel takes the reader on a numbing journey from his hometown in Hungary to Auschwitz, and beyond, revealing what went on inside of him.

He had a yellow star slapped onto his arm to show everyone that he was a Jew--that he was one of the "others."  He was forced into a tight little section of town called a ghetto, cast out of society.  He was thrown like an animal into a cattle car, where he spent days with other Jews, packed so tightly that few people could even take a seat.  And these things only scratch the surface.  They are only the introduction to this saddening and maddening story.  My students and I talked about humanity and the ways that these people slowly, systematically had theirs stripped from them.  By the time the Allied troops reached the camp, the few who survived were skinny shadows of their former selves--they barely looked like people.

There's a really little letter in the New Testament that Paul wrote to a friend and fellow Christian named Philemon.  The backstory:  Philemon had a slave whose name is Onesimus, who had run away and at some point, became a Christian, and found Paul.  Paul writes to Philemon to tell him that he has sent the slave back and implores Philemon to not only forgive him, but welcome him as a brother.

Paul's letters often display their author's literary prowess, as when Paul tells Philemon that Onesimus once was useless, but now is useful.  We understand this play on words when we learn that the name Onesimus is Greek for the word useful.  Slaves were commonplace in first-century Rome.  To have a slave, essentially, would be like having a piece of machinery that does work for you.  To be useful in completing tasks is the sole purpose of a slave's existence.  Humanity is out of the question when all you do is complete tasks.

But Paul asserts here that Onesimus was useless as a slave under the dominion of Philemon--such a role is not a use for a human being.  It is now that Onesimus, having pledged himself to Christ, is useful to Philemon, but not as a tool.  As a brother.  An equal.  A human.

This is why the Hebrew creation story is so significant.  Amidst so many other cultures with creation stories that paint our beginning as the product of some kind of divine conflict, Adam is carefully formed out of dust, then given a breath of life.  In the words of songwriter John Mark McMillan, "heaven meets earth with a sloppy wet kiss."  To be human means to be created in the image of a god who is love, and to have that breath flowing through our lungs.  So Onesimus is human, not because Paul tells him so or because Philemon accepts his return as a brother, but because of this act by God, represented in Genesis.

Yet, in both much more subtle and just as strong ways as the Nazis did, people strip others of their humanity every day.  The way we live has power to affirm others' humanity.  It also has power to tear it down.  So which way do we live?  Whose humanity are we affirming?  Whose are we denying?  And what are we doing to put an end to the dehumanization that is suffered today in our world?