imago dei

I've been reading a book called "We Can't Teach What We Don't Know" for my educational Diverse Populations class this weekend, and last night I read a section on a social theory called "Minimal Group Paradigm." I don't know if you've heard of this idea, but it's a secular social theory based on several studies that basically asserts that human beings are prone to discriminate against each other, essentially creating invisible social hierarchies in which one group is superior to another. In this book, this theory is applied mostly in the context of racism and racial dominance, as difference in skin color is an easy difference to recognize, making it easier for people to separate into groups based on appearance.

However, the author gave another example of a time when he went to a small town in rural New York to give a multicultural seminar to the student bodies of the two public high schools there. According to the author, the two schools were "virtually indistinguishable demographically, [but] the students from one seemed to invest a great deal of energy in perpetuating a stereotype of students from the other school as 'a bunch of hicks.'" The author decided to play on this during his seminar, and soon found the students in heated arguments concerning the "degrees of hickness" of each group. Here, minimal group paradigm holds true even without the help of skin color to distinguish between the groups -- we humans are "pre-disposed" to discriminate, and if there is no basis for racial discrimination (as in this example), we will find another way!

Why do we revert to this?

I honestly believe Don Miller was right when he proposed that this problem goes back to the Fall and something that happened to our "humanness" in the severing of our relationship from our Creator when Adam and Eve first disobeyed God. Don Miller believes that humans were originally created to receive their affirmation from God -- it was their Creator who named them and walked with them and confirmed their beauty and purpose, and they were originally so connected and so confident in their purpose that there was no such thing as "low self-esteem" (to the point that Adam and Eve walked around naked and knew no shame). Humans were not originally created to compare themselves to one another -- comparison has only come about as a result of the broken connection between us and God and people's need to find their worth in how they measure up to others. And it is this hole in each of us -- this need to be affirmed and valued and loved -- that we somehow twist, not to fill with God's love, but with finding our value by our ranking in our social ladder.

So we create these invisible social hierarchies to validate ourselves and fill our "God-shaped holes." We are drawn to "fashionable" clothes to fit in, we play sports to determine the "best" teams, we align ourselves with social stereotypes (nerds, athletes, drama people, etc) to find community, and we work literally around the clock to quench our insatiable greed and desire buy our way to fame and popularity. Everything we do stems from our deep-rooted desire to be loved and accepted, and yet once we reach that point, it seems that we turn around and degrade the next person, separating ourselves from him or her for the mere purpose of raising ourselves higher.

It all makes me SO angry, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how embarrassingly guilty I am of perpetuating this sickness.... God, have mercy!

I'm just fascinated that what I thought to be a "Christian sociological hypothesis" formulated by Don Miller actually has an existing parallel theory in secular sociology -- even non-Christians recognize this aspect of human brokenness!! They just don't know the whole picture...

I know that I've written about this before, but I just find this whole idea so compelling, because it truly is a sickness, not only of humanity as a whole, but especially in the Western world -- the same Western world that cries "Freedom! Progress! Education!" as the saving ideals for humanity -- the same Western (and might I add "Christianized"??) world that looks down on (again with the comparisons!) cultures with actual social hierarchies in place, like that of India, and see ourselves as culturally advanced and supreme as a result. But then I think of what Jesus said in the gospels -- "If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light within you is really darkness, how great is that darkness!" Because that is the thing about self-deception -- you don't know that you are being deceived...

Are we really any better off than the Indian culture, then, simply because we have not legitimized the invisible hierarchies we have already set in place in our culture? I realize that the hierarchical system in India is a HUGE evil and great tragedy, and I do not mean to trivialize it by comparing it to our invisible hierarchies in the Western world, but I simply mean to point out that we are no better off! We are just as lost, just as sick, and embarrassingly, twice as hypocritical, because I am afraid that our "light" is actually darkness in disguise...

God, have mercy on us... Root your children in your perfect love, so that we will be "complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God." May your love overflow in us and through us into the broken lives of the people around us, so that you will be given glory in all things -- in our lives and in our world.