Objectivity vs. the Image of God

One of the great spiritual truths that encapsulates relationships among us humans is found throughout Jewish, Christian, and Latter-day Saint traditions.

In Genesis 1:26-27, we read of God creating men and women in His image.  According to this idea, all of us, men and women, have divinity within, as do those that we interact with every day.

A modern way of speaking against this mode of understanding the divine heritage of the human is objectification.  Broadly speaking, objectification of an individual is treating them more as an object, something to be acted upon, rather than as a living person, or, from a spiritual perspective, our brother or sister created in the image of God.

There are many manifestations of how we can objectify someone else.  Pornography is perhaps an obvious and unfortunately pervasive one, but it is certainly not the only one.

An ambitious manager may be inclined to treat their "underlings" as mere tools to get the job done or colleagues as stepping stones to a higher profession.  It is easy for us to see many of the people we encounter as merely objects: servers in a restaurant are there to give us our food, checkout clerks are there to scan our groceries, tellers are there to give us our money, etc.

This is not to deny that each of these individuals are employed and filling that function.  But to see them exclusively as determined by their function could be considered a form of objectification.  Similarly, when a man sees his wife primarily as a maid, laundress, cook, or taxi driver, there is an element of objectification.

Perhaps we all confront this to one degree or another.  And perhaps we all must wrestle with this idea, with how to both engage people in their function considering limitations of time and space (we can't spend an hour at the checkout lane in the grocery store, and the dry cleaner has limited time for conversation, to name two examples) and how to acknowledge, even briefly, the spark of divinity within.

And so how can we avoid objectification, or move towards acknowledging the truth expressed by C.S. Lewis:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

There are many ways to implicitly evangelize the divinity and inherent worth of others, to act out this truth.  Many seem ridiculously simple.  Being polite and kind can show respect towards others. Striving to follow the golden rule implicitly acknowledges the inherent worth of another.  Saying "Thank You" for something simple shows effort and intention on our part and recognizes work done by another.  Saying "Hello" to a stranger as we pass each other can be, in many circumstances, a way of sharing and expressing a common human bond.  Even simply smiling at someone that's had a rough day can have an impact, pointing to better times ahead, and a friendly face in the crowd.

May each of us strive to move beyond objectivity and more fully strive to recognize the divinity that we swim in.