Are they not people?
In the midst of the 19th-century U.S. Civil War, a minister said to Abraham Lincoln something to the effect of “I hope the Lord is on our side,” to which Lincoln replied in essence, “I hope we are on the Lord’s side.”
When the Americas were freshly being conquered by European nations in the early 1500s, the colonists were convinced God’s divine aid was delivering this vast, resource-rich land into their hands.
As millions of Native Americans died in droves due to foreign diseases their bodies had no immunity to, European invaders took it as a sign—God’s hand willing that this Garden of Eden-like place become theirs.
As professing Christians, colonists and their leaders across the Atlantic paused to consider whether it was right to take land from the Native Americans and to rule over them. In 1504, the king of Spain sought counsel from a group of scholars and lawyers he selected to determine whether their conquest “was in agreement with human and divine law."
His advisors drew from Greek and Roman philosophy and law to reason whether the natives had rightful claim to the land and to their own sovereignty. In the end, the king’s ministers found the natives to be slaves by nature. To the crown, these people did not own their land nor could they rule themselves.
The conquests proceeded.
A few years later, a Dominican priest named Antonio de Montesinos cried out in protest against the conquistadors’ cruelty to the native people. In one December sermon, he asked, by what right did the king commit such unspeakable crimes against humanity, putting forth the crucial question, “Are they not men?” Are they not people too?
But his moral plea was no match for the greed-fueled momentum behind the King’s conquest. The Europeans conquered on.
This is the question at the heart of so many of history’s conflicts and wars, and how they are justified or not: Are they not people?
The worst things humans have done to each other have happened because the answer was decided, no—a decision too often made with assumed divine approval.
Throughout history, too many Christians (and those of other religions) have assumed their standing with God was superior to non-converts or those perceived as uncivilized.
Yet God does not seem to discriminate nearly as much as we do when it comes to who he has compassion for and who is considered “in” or “out.”
In the famous Bible story of Jonah and the Whale, God’s prophet Jonah runs from his assignment to preach to the Assyrian city of Ninevah.
Jonah had reason to avoid Ninevah. The Ninevites worshipped pagan gods and were notorious for their brutality, particularly toward Israelites. God was asking his prophet, an Israelite, to preach repentance so he could show them mercy.
After a drama-filled time at sea, Jonah eventually heads back toward Ninevah and preaches to the wicked city. To his disdain, his enemies do repent and receive God’s mercy.
In Jonah’s bitterness over God’s kindness to his enemies, God prods him, Should I not care for this great city too with so many people who are lost? (Jonah 4:11)
Are they not people too?
There is a famous line in Matthew where Jesus says, whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me (Matt 25:40).
He cites examples of people feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the imprisoned. The people who did these acts of kindness, without knowing it, were doing them for the King of Glory himself.
What if this applies in the opposite direction? That whatever atrocities we commit against the least of these, we are really committing against the God who is with us, the God who is with them?
Is it a stretch? Maybe. But maybe the question is still worth asking.
When my country launches a missile that obliterates a school of innocent children, is it not his body we are crushing?
When we drop explosives that kill civilians in their homes and workplaces, is it not his heart we are blowing to pieces?
Aren’t the bombs we throw at “the other” bombs we are throwing at him? The God who is with us is not sitting on a throne absent from our world affairs. He has been bruised and battered by our sins (Isaiah 53).
And it doesn't seem to be our place to decide who God considers the least of these. Our definition is usually too narrow (Luke 10:36-37).
How we treat the vulnerable, exposed, needy people of this earth—is, dare I say, how we treat God himself. The suffering we bring about is not unseen or easily excused by God, whether or not it is proclaimed in his name.
Our world is dark, and the times look bleak, but God has not given up on humanity, just as he had compassion even for wicked Ninevah.
The call to us now is not to convince the world God is on our side, but to ask if we are on his.
Notes
The opening anecdotes were from Lincoln's Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk and These Truths by Jill Lepore