TURNING HUMANS INTO MONSTERS

image:  TETrebbien on unsplash.com

TRIGGER WARNING! The subject is human trafficking.

The following description is graphic. No photos, just words. Either prepare yourself, or scroll to the bolded heading "How Can One Human Abuse Another". 

"DISGUSTING" ISN'T A STRONG ENOUGH WORD

In my recent research into human trafficking, I’ve come across photos that I can’t un-see. 

Children with panda eyes. Young ones in compromising poses posted online for sale like so much merchandise. And the one that haunts me – naked children of all ages, limbs folded up against their torsos and bound with wide cello tape and stacked in heaps on top of each other. Some of these children plead silently with wild eyes. With others, it was apparent they’d been abused repeatedly – resignation was evident in their eyes. They’d lost all hope of being rescued. (Thankfully, some of these photos are of children who indeed were rescued.) 

I couldn’t bring myself to use any of the shocking photos for this post. It most certainly would have gotten your attention, but I just couldn’t savage them again.

Then there were the reports of children being sacrificed and their blood drained, to be used in satanic rituals. Or their other organs harvested for...well, I’m not going to defile you any more with the reasons. They’re hideous. Beyond the imagination of some of us who have led sheltered lives. 

I knew stuff like this was happening, but to see actual images was sickening. 

HOW CAN ONE HUMAN ABUSE ANOTHER? 

“Lord, how on earth can one human do something so hideous to a fellow human?!” was my cry. 

I can be unkind and selfish, but I could never have come up with the ideas of inflicting such pain and suffering on another being made in the Creator’s image.

MADE IN THE IMAGO DEI

Because each human being is made in the Imago Dei (image of God), it used to bother me when I heard someone refer to another person as a monster. “No,” I’d argue, “that name is so demeaning. These people - they are precious in His sight too because they also were made in His image. Jesus died for them as well.”

It is true: they are so precious to their Maker that He came to earth to die for them, in order for them to be able to live for eternity with Him in a place full of joy and heavy light! But they have chosen to reject that most-valuable of all gifts.

I’ve viewed the wickedness I’ve witnessed in my research as being committed by intelligent people. Surely, they can see that their way of doing things is harmful to others. There must be some kind of conspiracy where they get together and plan how to control others for selfish reasons.

But over the last few months, as I’ve learned more about the corruption and pure evil practiced among humanity in this world, I see that there doesn't need to be meetings in smoke-filled secret rooms. They are serving a Mastermind - the enemy of our souls - the Satan. They allow him to control their thoughts anywhere they are in the world, regardless of human interaction. 

RIPE FOR CHANGE OF MIND

I was ripe for a change of mind. Our Creator's desire is that we live like His original "and it was very good" creation - that we become more and more like Christ.  I've come to see that some people repeatedly choose their own sovereignty over submission to the Lord's authority.  It seems that as they use their God-given intelligence for purposes that go against God's design their brain-power diminishes. They become less like Jesus, less human. Instead of growing more and more like Jesus, they become smaller and smaller. Alarmingly, they believe what they do is actually for the greater good, when in fact the results are confusion, chaos, theft, poverty, mutilation, murder - the destruction of God's good creation. I have come to understand my friends and their reasons for such demeaning labels as “monster”.

When I heard Tim Mackie of Bible Project explain this process, it began to make sense. And now I agree that those humans-made-in-God’s-image have consistently chosen to reject God’s love and design for their lives and have slid backwards on the scale of becoming more like Jesus.

FROM HUMANS TO BRUTE BEASTS

Here’s what Mackie said that helped me understand.

“In the book of Daniel, this cycle of kingdoms that keep elevating themselves and then abusing their own power – they get turned into a metaphor in the book of Daniel as beasts. Instead of ruling over the beasts, like page one of the Bible, when human beings don’t submit to God as King, they actually become beasts. They become less than human. We become animals that tear and rip each other apart, as we redefine good and evil in our own interests.” 1

(Tim Mackie – Bible Project, “Lecture on the Early Church & Politics”, published on YouTube, August 14, 2017)

The whole second chapter of 2 Peter addresses this issue. This section jumps out at me: 

"...the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

Such punishment is specially reserved for those who indulge the corrupt desires of the flesh and despise authority. Bold and self-willed, they are unafraid to slander glorious beings. Yet not even angels, though greater in strength and power, dare to bring such slanderous charges against them before the Lord.

"These men are like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be captured and destroyed. They blaspheme in matters they do not understand, and like such creatures, they too will be destroyed. The harm they will suffer is the wages of their wickedness.

"They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deception as they feast with you. Their eyes are full of adultery; their desire for sin is never satisfied; they seduce the unstable. They are accursed children with hearts trained in greed.

"They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness." (2 Peter 2:9-15)

Jude also mentions the human-to-beast digression:  "Yet in the same way these people also, dreaming, defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak abusively of angelic majesties. .... But these people disparage all the things that they do not understand; and all the things that they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have given themselves up to the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah." (verses 8-11).

Tragically, these precious people - made in God's image, and for whom Jesus lovingly suffered and died - have deteriorated from humans into monsters. Lord God, have mercy! They don't know what they do.