In life we see colors. We are like our own eyes, we distinguish and compare things so as to draw conclusion that is capable of bringing out meaning for us. Unfortunately we bring this judgmental attitude into our dealings with people. We compartmentalize people as if they were things, and we judge them based on our comparison and our preconceive notions of who we think they are, wrong as we may be. But the evangelist Luke in his gospel 7:37 admonishes us to “stop judging and you will not be judged”. We judge all the same and with impunity. We just cannot help ourselves. Can we?
But how does God see us? I want to believe that God sees us as human beings. He sees the people he created in his image and likeness. The book of Genesis tells us about God’s decision before man was created. Listen! “Then God said: “let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground. God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them”, Genesis 1:25-27. The book of Genesis goes on to say in the 31st verse “God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.” From the aforementioned, it is obvious that God created us because he loved us. He loves us independently, personally and unconditionally. In John’s Gospel 3:16, we are told, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” God loves us because he knows us intelligently, empathically, compassionately, mercifully and intimately. Speaking through prophet Isaiah 49:15-16, he says, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palm of my hands I have written your name”. If God so loves us, why do we find it so hard and difficult to love one another? Speaking anthropomorphically, how does God feel when he sees us treating each other with contempt? Or when we judge people based on the color of their skin or the fact that they speak foreign language?
Life has taught me that most of the time we do not want to know people and so not knowing them, how can we love them? Once we are attentive to those around us and begin to see them as brothers and sisters, we will begin to treat them, as we would want to be treated ourselves. We will begin to see that we have many things in common. Fr. Edward Steiner in his homily backgrounds in the priest magazine shares an interesting story. “Alexander Schmemann, an Orthodox priest and theologian, told of being a young man living in Paris. He and his fiancée were riding a train when an old ugly woman sat next to them. Speaking in Russian so that the French woman could not understand them, they spoke of how ugly she was. As the elderly woman got up to detrain, she said to the couple in perfect Russian, “I wasn’t always ugly””. If the couple had looked at the woman with compassion and love, or may be if they had talked to her, they would not have seen her as an ugly woman, but as a child of God who was hurting.
I will like to conclude with a very familiar song titled “What color is God’s skin?”
“Good night I said to my little son, so tired out when the day was done, then he said, as I tucked him in, “Tell me daddy what color is God’s skin?” What color is God’s skin? What color is God’s skin? I said it’s black, brown, it’s yellow… it is red, it is white; every man’s the same in the good Lord’s sight. He looked at me with his shinning eyes, and then I knew I could tell no lies, He asked, “Daddy, why do the different races fight, if we’re the same in the good Lord’s sight?” “Son that’s part of our suffering past, but the whole of human race is learning at last the thing we missed on the road we trod, is walking as daughters and the sons of God”.
So to the question: How does God see us? My answer is simple, he sees us as his sons and daughters and he wants us to see everyone as such.
