The humanity due every human being

I learned this in prison. As a visitor I must clarify. Through two very pleasant interactions. One with someone I was visiting; the other on the way out with an indigenous man, an elder, visiting his son.

Both men I had interacted with on this particular morning had a keen understanding of massive injustice in life, but both men, one in his mid-30s and the other in his late-50s had been seasoned by a grace that comes only through experience. Both their lives had been punctuated with abusive oppressions in their developmental years. One of the men is obviously still on his journey toward redemption, while the other is a custodian in his community in leading his kin toward the promised land of peace in this life.

What impressed me most about both men was how reasonable and affable they were toward me, the kind of person who might remind them of those who abused them. Yet I found honesty in one and humour in the other, a sweet reasonableness in both that said to me I was accepted.

I try not to take acceptance for granted with anyone.

In both conversations, short accounts of abuse suffered were shared.

Sharing isn’t always easy to do. For beginners, many people find that when they share, they get advice, and when people finally pluck up the courage to share, the thing they need least is advice. Now, in the advice we’re tempted to give we may feel justified, but what trumps the advice is the rapport being built. (And from that rapport there arrives a time where advice becomes relevant; usually when its sought.)

As these accounts of abuse where shared, I considered them through present-day eyes. They were abhorrent. Yet, what is saddest perhaps is, the accounts shared were representative of what goes on in our world all the time; and they were certainly thought ‘less of’ way back when.

To think that Australian aboriginals were once considered part of national flora-and-fauna. Less than human! And to think that the makeup of family might include individuals who would physically and verbally abuse children, and worse, that other family members would deny it! And still, there is a generational trauma involved in both accounts of the abuses shared.

And yet what rose up in both men was hope. For something different. For justice to arrive. That they might be propagators of such justice in how they loved others around them. That they might play their small or large part in arresting the generational flow of trauma through their ascendants.

Humanity is deserved of every human being.

We are each made preciously in the image of God. And especially where abuse is suffered, there needs to be stock taken; that generational rage and confusion is to be expected, as are the flow-on effects of drug and other addictions, criminal behaviour and the like, and especially the abuse, as the afflicted can often become the inflictors.

If we treat humans like garbage, very soon they believe they just that, and the effect is mind-blowingly tragic for all concerned, setting up a winter of generational trauma in its wake.

The opportunity before everyone who has ever endured abuse is to do their best as far as it depends on them to break the cycle for those in their influence in this generation.

Finally, I do believe this: each of these men, as examples of the beloved of God, are better than I am, for what they have endured. And I don’t say that out of some stupid sense of false pride; I am in awe of the suffering (abuse) any human being endures that was no fault of their own.

People who have been through so much injustice have so much to teach all of us if only they can be dignified enough to redeem hope for a future they deeply wish for. That future always involves a message of hope for, and redemption of, others.

Photo by Alessia Francischiello on Unsplash