Others or Objects?
02/20/22
It is hard to argue against the idea that the root of every single sin that we struggle with in our lives can be boiled down to an unhealthy love of “self”. Self-centeredness and/or selfish ambition is the fuel that drives us into sinful attitudes and behaviors.
It is no coincidence that Jesus summarizes our commands from scripture as “loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves”, because if loving ourselves is our only priority, even the good we do will not be motivated by the love of God, but by our own self-worship. Therefore, God may use our good deeds for His glory, but transformation and the joy of the Lord may continue to be lacking in our own lives, and we may continue to fall into the same cycles of sin.
If we look to the Bible to learn about the secret ingredient between unity and disunity within the Church, it is quite clearly selflessness.
“Let each of you look not only to their own interest, but also to the interest of others.” (Philippians 2:4)
“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees someone in need, yet closes their heart against them, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17)
“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to their own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4)
“For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” (James 4:1-2)
The love chapter: 1 Corinthians 13… and so on…
What does this have to do with objects? What does this have to do with things that divide us like the topic of human sexuality? How we understand ourselves and how we understand each other often determines our capacity to deny ourselves and love others.
We have an objectification problem that goes far beyond the discussion of sexuality.
The definition of “objectification” is “the action of degrading someone to the status of a mere object.”
The bottom line is that a “thing” can be the object of our affection, but we cannot selflessly love objects like we are called to love others. Culturally we are a bit obsessed with attraction, which causes us to think that sexuality or physicality is the only way objectifying people takes place. Based on the above definition, that is not the case.
When we become consumed with ourselves, we see people as “objects.” Things that we want or don’t want in our lives based on our interests and identities.
This is an anti-Christ way of viewing people. When we do this, we choose to love people based on who they are, how we might look, or what we might gain. That means that our actions are fueled by opportunity, not unity.
The phrase often thrown around is “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Sure, there is truth to that. But only if you are not identifying or basing your degree of love for that person based on the “sin”. Only if you are not basing your degree of love toward them based on how their identity may affect how people see you. That is when that objectification creeps in again.
There really is no justifiable reason to not show love to someone based on their sexual race, gender, sexual identity, politic, or faith. The only way this happens is when we lose the ability to see people, not as objects to build our identities with, but as fellow Image-bearers.
There really is no Kingdom value in identifying people and loving them based on their struggles, temptations, or sins unless we are only looking out for ourselves.
Do we only love God for what He can give us? Do we only love others for how it makes us look or feel? Do we try to give a God that we do not love to a people we don’t love, expecting Kingdom results?
People are not sin. People are not tools. People are not objects. People are created by God and designed by God to selflessly love Him and each other, in unity.