One of the comments I received on “Our Nation” referenced the question, “How do we reclaim our humanity?” The commenter reflected that the breadth of humanity includes all the ways we are destructive and demeaning, that in our politics we show the entirety of what it means to be human. That post was a reflection on the ways I’ve noticed we ignore the humanity of our fellow citizens. It was a lament of the dehumanizing language that increasingly colors public and private discourse.

The notion of a humane society is an ideal. We will in reality continue to act from our woundedness more often than we’d like. We will continue to show through our actions the entirety of what it means to be human. Cooperation for the good of the majority of people is a far enough stretch from here. In order to cooperate, we have to see one another as people with something to contribute. When we lose sight of the other and they become a symbol, we move closer to injustice and violence. How do we nurture the image of the other as human?

Ruby Sales, in an interview with Krista Tippett, quotes a spiritual, “I love everybody. I love everybody in my heart, and you can’t make me hate you, and you can’t make me hate you in my heart.” The singer declares they will not be coerced into hating.

Whether I see an individual as human, whether I seed hatred in my heart, this is my own choice. May we all choose well.