A time to reflect on seeing God in other people
WHAT do we see when we look out of our car windows while waiting at the traffic lights?
Notice I said “what” rather than “who” – since the temptation is to answer the question by using words that are far from human: a beggar, a vagrant, a tramp, a tsotsi, a druggie, the homeless. If I asked “who do we see?” we might even have said “I see nobody” since the people out there are often written off as “nobodies”.
The Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions all honour the Book of Genesis in which the creation of human beings is held up as the highest achievement of the Creator. At the end of each “day” of creation we are told God looked at the handiwork and pronounced that “it was good”; but on the sixth day, when human beings were created, God reflects “it was very good”. Genesis tells us that this is because God created human beings in God’s own image, going on to add – just in case we make the mistake of denying that later – “in God’s likeness God created them, male and female God created them”.
This is a fundamental insight of Abrahamic religions, and other faiths as well. That human beings stand in a special relationship to the rest of creation – with all that that entails in terms of rights and responsibilities – because we are all made in God’s image and likeness. Each and every one of us: “male and female”, but also black, white and brown, young and old, able-bodied and disabled, all faiths and none, rich and poor. So that even includes “the beggar”, “the vagrant”, “the druggie” you see as you look out of your car window. In fact, in a sense, as we look at each person standing at the traffic lights, we are looking at the face of God.
Of course it sometimes harder to see others as being made in God’s image and we choose not to make the effort. But South Africans of all peoples should be aware of the importance of resisting that temptation: we know where that slippery path leads.
The edifice of apartheid was built on denying the essential equality of human beings, an equality underwritten by the fact of all beings made in God’s likeness.
Two recent excellent performances at the Playhouse Theatre – ‘/’Fri:Dem/!’ and We are Marching – used the arts to remind us of how apartheid systematically encouraged us, and justified us, to fail to see God in other people simply because their skin was darker (or lighter). The journey towards liberation portrayed in those shows is a journey towards a growing awareness of our shared humanity.
Similarly, Neil Coppen, Dylan McGarry and the Big Brotherhood Theatre Group created Ulwembu, a work at the Denis Hurley Centre which asked what would happen if we were willing to see “druggies” as fellow human beings. The police officer, who night after night is arresting and harassing guys on the street, is confronted with stark humanity when one night a young man rolls over and is revealed to be her own son. In that encounter, she begins to realise that each person she has arrested is someone’s son, someone’s daughter.
That is why The Mercury is giving its readers a chance today to look beyond “the beggar” to the human reality of the people on our streets. And that is why the Paper Money project, described elsewhere in today’s paper, is taking on a major task. The aim is not just to provide access to work for people on the streets – though it will do that for some. Nor is it to regularise who has permission to solicit at traffic lights and who not – though it will do that as well. Its key goal is to humanise the people who, for whatever reason, are forced to make a living by relying on the kindness of strangers.
So more important than their newspapers, or their neon green reflective vests, is their name badges: in naming someone we assert their humanity and show them to be someone’s son, someone’s daughter. Over time the Paper Money Facebook page will show the faces and the names of those selling (with their permission) and will share some of their stories.
An older, middle-class white woman who has been volunteering to feed homeless people at the Denis Hurley Centre confessed to me after a few weeks that she had initially been anxious. I asked her why and she explained that she was nervous of “the homeless at the traffic lights”. “But are you,” I asked her, “nervous of Vusi?” (a young guy from the streets who had been working alongside her that morning). “Of course not,” she immediately replied. “I don’t see him as homeless, I see him as Vusi.”
This is the challenge that we give to all of you (and your friends) who might become Paper Money customers over the next few months. Not just to buy your newspapers from the guys in the neon green vests as they pop up round the city. But, whether or not you buy a paper, to change your attitude to the people standing there. To see them as Vusi, or Kobus, or Jimmy, or Raj. To see them as someone’s son, someone’s daughter, made in the image of God.
This is also a challenge to the Paper Money vendors themselves. Some of them will have to re-discover what it is to see themselves as made in the image of God. After months living on the streets, being picked up by the police as if you were litter, or ignored by passers-by as if you do not exist, you begin to lose your own sense of dignity. Drugs themselves rob the addict of their human dignity, whether or not they are on the streets. And if you resort to begging to make some money, then you have to dehumanise yourself to be able to face the insults or indifference of motorists.
You might even consciously make yourself less than human for fear that potential customers conclude you are “not poor enough” and so do not throw their coins at you.
The Paper Money vendors will succeed by doing the very opposite. They will be encouraged by our co-ordinator to see themselves as entrepreneurs, not as beggars; as citizens who are providing a service, not as vagrants imploring for tolerance.
That will require them to clean up, to sober up, to present themselves differently, and to see themselves differently.
As we grow the relationship – and that is not too strong a word – between the Paper Money vendors and their regular customers we hope this will help us all to re-discover our shared humanity.
That will really be “good news” for all in the city.
Perrier is the director of the Hurley Centre