I recently made a visit to India. I visited the cities, and I visited the countryside. I spent time with high profile people like the Archbishop of Bangalore who live in places that look like palaces, and I also visited very poor people who live far out on tiny strips of land in rice fields, in a tiny room that floods when it rains, and even snakes may find their way into your room. India is so diverse—wealthy and poor, urban and rural, westernized and native—that it can be challenging to figure out people and figure out things.
One popular joke in India is that people in different Indian cities have developed a system of how to assign “value” or “worth” to a person. If you go to New Delhi, which is the political capital of India, to assign value, people ask you which government minister you know. In Bengaluru (Bangalore), which is the tech capital, people measure your worth by the computer products you sell or the software company you work for. In Mumbai, known for its entertainment industry (home of Bollywood), your weight depends on the entertainment star you know or the movie distribution company you work for. In the city of Kolkata, known for its long cultural and religious history, your worth depends on your great-great-grandfather. In Chennai, which is known for its medical and pharmaceutical industries, your worth depends on the pharmaceutical industry or chain of hospitals you work for.
In the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus being sized up, being weighed, trying to figure out whether He was the Messiah. The people in Jerusalem used the criteria of the region where He was born to assign value to Him and to determine whether He was worth listening to. To them, Jesus could not be the Messiah because they knew where He came from! He was from Galilee, and to them the Messiah could not come from such a region that was rural and known for its thick accent. So, they tuned Him out, ignored His message, and simply dismissed Him.
The mistake of assigning value to people based on external circumstances is one that we all easily fall into. We can be guilty of judging people based on their family background, the schools they attended, their ethnicity, their appearance, their dress, their language, their accent, their neighborhood, their age, their economic status, or their medical conditions. The gospel reminds us that the dignity, the worth, the competence, or the value of every individual goes beyond all these circumstances. It cautions us about imputing value on someone simply based on these elements.
Is there someone I have judged based on externalities before I even came to know them well? Who was that person? What were the circumstances? In what ways can I train myself to see the worth and dignity of every person beyond the externalities?
May the grace of God help us to understand that the value and worth of every person is rooted in God, that it is based on the fact that they are created in His image and likeness.
Father Fred Jenga, C.S.C. is the President of Holy Cross Family Ministries. Father Fred, a native of Uganda, has multiple degrees including theology, philosophy, and communications. His native language is Lusoga and he speaks English, Luganda, Kiswahili, and Rutooro. He has been a teacher, researcher, author and family minister. Father Fred is committed to helping build God’s masterpiece one family at a time.
