Yesterday, kind of on a whim, my friend and I took a walk to Capitol Hill to observe the culture of that part of our city. Not like a person would "observe" animals in a zoo, gawking and tapping on other people's (metaphorical) glass, but to be present. We wanted to see people who (generally) think very differently than us, not just do a quick drive by. There is something about walking someone else's streets to begin to understand their hearts.
It takes emotional energy to enter into an area full of people who might think me to be the enemy. Being a follower of Jesus and walking down Broadway can be intimidating because of the difference in our views of the world and that there is so much openly celebrated that I do not want to celebrate. Though the emotional weariness is real, it is worth it to see people and be with them on their terms.
That's the issue though. I am not bent towards valuing people who are different than me. I tend to be subtly prejudiced; not only making judgments (Read: "decisions") about people without knowing all of the facts in their lives, but condemning them for that I think about them. I become a blind judge and then a way-too-eager executioner. That is a human failure. One we are all born with and then our society encourages it.
While I am acting as an ignorant judge of another and then writing them off as a failure, I am missing something important. While walking down the street past the woman who smells like the streets she lives on or the man proudly wearing the Antifa symbol on his t-shirt, I can easily walk by unaware of the glory of God that they still reflect.
C.S. Lewis described who we walk by unaware in his sermon, The Weight of Glory: "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
Our neighbors are made in God's image...and that means much, much more than I can understand. I can walk within feet of another person, look them in the eye, and not know the beauty of God's image that makes up their soul's DNA.*
Though we are capable of living a life of a degree of goodness and (at the same time) harboring the ability to creatively commit new, terrible forms of evil to each other, each person is inherently valuable. The poor, the sick, the weak, the mentally broken, those that destroy lives, the the unborn, the aged, and those who don't give anything to society are just as valuable as those who are high performers, wealthy, polite, young, privileged, intelligent, and well-put-together.
This "value" is nothing that we have earned. It is a very marred reflection of the ultimate Valuable One who crafted each of us to mirror to the world the beauty of his character.
So, though I know our God does not value everything we are, everything we do, and everything we create, (and is often opposed to what we produced from the overflow of our hearts) even still each person we walked by deserves not to be falsely judged and joyfully condemned. Though it is not loving to simply condone every action that comes from our wandering hearts (mine or my neighbor's) Jesus' heart is for all of us to be redeemed to our full humanity, restored fully back to his own image.
This shows the beauty of Jesus' heart: that even though as he walked our streets, smelled our smells, and saw our hearts, his love still took him to a place where he walked by us to the cross fully aware of the depth of what our failure (my prejudice included) would cost him there.
Jesus doesn't walk by us unaware. He is aware of everything we are and can make true, wise judgments based on all that we are. He can see that though we are valuable because of his image in us, we are worthy of condemnation because of how we marred that image. Even so, He did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17)
*I have to note here that this does take into account the deep rebellion and damnable wickedness that we live out before we are made alive in Jesus, but it doesn't change the fact that the people we live by, walk by, work with, are still in some ways still like our God.