We all remember that one kid in elementary school who always misbehaved in class. Maybe you were that kid. I recall my teacher telling us not to respond to Bill because “He’s just looking for attention.” It never worked. How could anyone expect 8-year-olds to ignore Bill when he removed his glass eye and put it in his mouth? You could love Bill or hate Bill, but ignoring Bill was not an option.
Our elementary school experiences reveal a truth that Jesus communicated in the Sermon on the Mount. Anger toward a person is wrong, he taught, but contempt for someone is even worse because it causes us to ignore the person altogether. Dallas Willard explained why this kind of contempt is worse than ordinary anger in The Heart of the Artist:
“In anger I want to hurt you. In contempt, I don’t care whether you are hurt or not. Or at least so I say. You are not worthy of consideration one way or the other. We can be angry at someone without denying their worth. But contempt makes it easier for us to hurt them or see them further degraded.”
This kind of contemptuous dehumanization precedes every terrible atrocity. For example, the Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen, or subhumans. In his exploration of the Holocaust, David Livingstone Smith concluded the Nazis “didn’t mean [Jews] were like subhumans. They meant they were literally subhumans.” Once Jews were excluded from the moral category of being human, any behavior toward them became acceptable.
When we carry contempt for another person, we believe they are unworthy of our attention, even our negative attention. Instead, they become invisible to us, mere background objects to be neither hated nor loved, and if they interfere with our goals, they should be eliminated like unwanted pests. Any heart that feels so indifferent toward those created in God’s image cannot be suitable for life in God’s kingdom because no one is ever invisible to our heavenly Father, and no one is unworthy of his attention.
Daily Scripture
Matthew 5:21-26
Mark 10:46–52
Weekly Prayer
From Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892)
To come to you is to come home from exile,
to come to land out of the raging storm,
to come to rest after long labor,
to come to the goal of my desires and the summit of my wishes.
But Lord, how can a stone rise,
how can a lump of clay come away from the horrible pit?
O raise me, draw me.
Your grace can do it.
Send for your Holy Spirit to kindle sacred flames of love in my heart,
and I will continue to rise until I leave life and time behind me,
and indeed come away.
Amen
