Many of us living in the western societies of North America and Europe are appalled when we learn of how those in the lower castes in countries like India are treated by their countrymen of the upper castes. Indeed those who have the misfortune of being born into one of the lower castes are still often referred to as the “untouchables” and are relegated to a life of poverty and are sometimes viewed as being “less than human” by their upper-caste counterparts.
Many of those who hail from the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism or Islam might tend to look at the caste systems as being backward or even abominable and might even point out how our faith does not allow for such a system of prejudice. But is that a true statement? Are there individuals that Christians or Jews or Muslims seperate as being “less than human” and therefore untouchable?
I’m sure that many Christians living with the aftermath of 9-11 are aware that extremist Muslims consider non-Muslims as “infidels”, but are they aware of what the term “infidel” even means or that the term originally was one that Christians used for non-Christians? The actual term that the Islamic clerics tend to use is “Kafir” and in some of the more extremist forms of Islam anyone who does not believe in Allah is a kafir and is not only ritually unclean but is considered to be less than human. Therefore killing a kafir or infidel is not considered to be murder in some Islamic circles. I must point out that not all Muslims believe this way.
Orthodox Judaism has their own form of infidels who are often called goyim. In some Talmudic and Kabbalist literature, non-Jews are referred to as having animal-souls and are therefore not afforded even basic human rights. The Kabbala goes so far as to call Jesus and Mohamed ‘dead dogs’ and as recently as recently as 2005 Rabbi Saadya Grama of New Jersey made a statement to the effect that Jews and non-Jews were in fact two different species and that goy were inherently evil. Again, I must point out that not all Jews believe this way.
But what about Christians? Surely there are no Christians who consider no-Christians as sub-human, right? Although Christianity has thankfully moved past the dark ages of the Inquisition, it wasn’t so very long ago that Catholics and Protestants were busy gunning each other down throughout Ireland and viewed each other as less than human. And there are a number of Christian hate-groups who hang out on the fringes, such as those associated with groups like the Christian Identity as well as hyper-Calvinist fundamentalists like those of Westboro Baptist Church.
But what about the moderate Christians? We don’t think of non-Christians as untouchables or sub-human, right?
Even moderate Calvinists will plainly tell you that Jesus Christ only died for the elect, it’s part of the TULIP of Calvinism: Limited Atonement. In other words, God created two types of humans at the beginning of time; those predestined for Heaven and those predestined to Hell. Of those predestined to Hell, no amount of Grace will ever reach them. In fact, some Calvinists will say that the reprobates misery in Hell is supposed to add to the enjoyment of Heaven for the elect. If that is not dehumanization then I don’t know what is.
Although non-Calvinist Christians will affirm that Christ died for all, there is still a tendency for some to limit God’s grace and power to certain people. I have seen some Christian bloggers who like to post what they call Total Depravity articles. In these articles they will scan the headlines to find an individual accused of some perversion and label them as Totally Depraved. To me, it’s the same thing as saying that these individuals are beyond the reach of God and cannot be saved or healed. This bothers me as I see it being no different than any other form of dehumanization.
If we have relegated any individual or group of individuals to whatever hell that we might believe in, isn’t this the same thing as saying that they are beyond the help or love of God and therefore should be shunned and shamed? Are these people not untouchables? What moral reason do we really have to extend the love of Christ to someone who we believe is already damned?
Even among the more generous and liberal minded Christians, is the specter of the existence of hell enough to cause us to deem some of those that we come across as being an untouchable? When we see in the headlines a mugshot of a person convicted of a perverse sex-crime or the image of a Taliban waving an automatic weapon do we automatically relegate that person as among the already damned? What about a Hindu woman in India or a Buddhist monk, do we view them as having already received their sentence to Hell?
As I pointed out for the Muslims and Jews, most Christians do not de-humanize those who they might see as unsaved. Most Calvinists will even point out that they do not know who is among the elect and therefore do not dehumanize anyone. Still though, I find myself wondering about how we look at those who we determine are not “of the faith”. Do we not tend to dehumanize them, if only in our own mind? As long as we have doctrines of hell and total depravity, isn’t dehumanization a fact of life? Is it not possible that God might indeed be bigger than hell and total depravity? I wonder…
Conversations Along The Road