In Search of Dignity

So many roads, so much at stake
So many dead ends, I’m at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take
To find dignity.
Bob Dylan

A small group of children see me taking photos of their school building and scamper to jump in front of the camera. Seven of them altogether, four boys and three girls. They giggle, hop about, squeeze in, arms around shoulders, to get in the frame. Each flashes a broad smile, one boy with a large gap where two front teeth used to be. Their school uniforms include navy blue shorts, blue gingham shirts, and white and blue striped ties. And how they laugh when I show them the digital images of them on the back of the camera.

These are a few fortunate children who are being helped to escape the troublesome ditch of their social class–the Dalits, the outcasts, the untouchables of India. The untouchables drink from clay cups that no one in another class will have to touch. They have no access to medical care. The best job available may be nothing more than pushing a broom. Here in the school in the city of Secunderabad these fortunate children from Dalit homes benefit from a mission school where they learn English and other basic subjects, and they learn something about themselves that they did not get in their upbringing: a view of themselves as valuable, as having worth. Across India the vast majority of the 250 million Dalits lead lives of endless uncertainty.

EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE

Dignity is the word we use for this. Summed up in this one word is a truth embedded in the creation account:

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27).

“Inalienable rights” is the way some national constitutions and declarations of human rights define dignity. The Abrahamic faiths see in “the image of God” far more: purpose, design, beauty, intelligence, intentionality, self-awareness, spirituality, morality. This is life with value. Inestimable value. Yet the indignities of life–those imposed on us and those we bring on ourselves–undermine the value of life.

Everything is at stake regarding our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding dignity.

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Are we outraged by the bullying many kids are subjected to in their schools every day? Is anyone there for the woman who is raped and who needs to know that the violation of her body and her personhood has not lessened her worth? Will the perpetrators and victims in a tribal conflict come to a place or recognizing the mutual violation of their dignity which perhaps may have been going on for generations? Will they see indignity as the class wound that keeps them wounding each other? Are there ways for criminal justice systems to help convicts rehabilitate their lives instead of just punishing and discarding? What will it take for husbands to stop belittling their wives or wives their husbands? Why do some parents worship their children and others abuse them–in either scenario foiling any proper development of dignity?

Dignity is not just about people being victimized, it is the shape of a higher way of life, an honorable way of living. Dignity affirms worth while at the same time requiring responsibility. Dignity is how we figure out our roles in our communities and in the wider society. It is how we want to be treated by our physicians, our bosses, our parents, our spouses, our politicians, our neighbors. We also know, deep down, that we want dignity to be a quality in our own lives. How we long to be treated with respect, and to believe that we have dignity which prompts us to behave in dignified ways.

Do we treat our enemies better than they treat us?

Are we repulsed when we catch ourselves taking advantage of others?

Do we aspire to something higher than consumption and greed?

Are we speaking to each other with respect, courtesy, and kindness?

Do we care to comprehend when we listen to others?

None of this comes easy–especially in a world where human value is a commodity some people, groups, corporations, and governments trade on. One of the most terrifying tactics people can use against others is to steal away dignity.

Dignity is why we fight for good causes. It is why–on our better days–we really care about those who are diminished and unseen. When any of us take the opportunity to elevate some poor soul who is bent over–that is a good day.

Dignity is the foundation of all healthy human relationships. It is also at the core of any stable civilization. Our institutions can be founded on the ideal of dignity, but they can also shred the dignity of ordinary people. Hospitals can heal, but they can also humiliate. Businesses can produce value, but they can also systematically steal. Churches can be oases of grace and truth, but they can also be pockets of bigotry and small-mindedness.

THE SEARCH FOR DIGNITY

How do we claim dignity without being presumptuous or arrogant? Honesty requires that we admit how flawed, broken, and sinful we are. Dignity, at one level, should seem a ridiculous claim. But then we receive–as a gift–the truth that our inherent worth is not our invention. We didn’t create it, and we can’t deny it. We can, through undignified behavior, sully it, violate it, complicate it, undermine it, pollute it–but we cannot destroy it. A dollar bill that is dirty, torn, faded, and wrinkled has the same value as one just issued from the printing presses of the treasury. A dollar bill does not decide its own worth, and nobody holding a dollar bill has the power or authority to cut its worth in half.

To believe in dignity is to walk in that safe space between presumption on one side and self-loathing on the other. Dignity is about worth, and about being considered worthy of respect. Dignity means walking upright, but not strutting; looking people in the eye, not staring at the ground; standing, instead of slouching. Dignity’s foundation is in the creation–the universal reality that we were made, with care, by God, for certain purposes. The human race has stumbled so badly, yet there is reason to hope for dignity restored.

We call it different things, but we are all on a search for dignity. And what is at stake in the 21st century could not be more significant. The cohesion of the family. The value of work. The effectiveness of industry. The purpose of government. The integrity of churches.

How does a person age with grace and dignity when there is diminishing respect for the elderly, at least in Western cultures? What does it mean to “die with dignity”? Is suicide a violation of dignity, or the right of an individual to hold onto dignity? Do the unborn have a value that ought to prevent them from being aborted, or not?

A RISKY TOPIC

There are risks in opening up a serious discussion about dignity today.

The whole topic could be dismissed as sounding too formal, too Victorian, too stuffy. Does anybody talk about “dignity” anymore? Perhaps very little. That may be because we’ve reduced the idea of dignity to matters of style. But dignity is not about the intonation of your voice or the lines of your clothing. Dignity includes dignified behavior, but its foundation lies in a deeper place.

Another risk is that raising the issue of dignity today will be seen as a throwback to the days when we talked much about the psychology of self-worth. A search for dignity today certainly includes personal issues of worth, but it is much more than that. For one thing, we will never have a stable and satisfying psychological sense of self-worth if it is not based on a solid foundation. We do not make ourselves valuable. That comes from without.

There are risks that in discussing a concept as idealistic as dignity we will be so philosophical that we will not be practically helpful. The risk on the opposite side is that if we are not studied in our search for dignity we will miss the wisdom of the ages. The search for dignity has been happening across human history. If we look carefully we’ll find revelations and experiments, failures and breakthroughs. We’ll find people who have given their lives for dignity, and, the opposite, people who have denied and ridiculed the idea of dignity.

It is easy to assume that dignity is a self-evident truth. Americans, for instance, are well-aware of the premise of The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” But because dignity typically leads to questions of God, there are plenty of people who think dignity buys one a world view that has all the dangers and slipperiness of religion or spirituality–and they are unwilling to take one step down that road. Recent articles by learned social scientists including “The Stupidity of Dignity,” and “Dignity is a Useless Concept,” resurrect the devastating idea put forth by B. F. Skinner in Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

Their theory is that groups of people will get along better without any assertion of or contest over dignity. Or, if anything like dignity is allowed, it simply means autonomy. In this view advocating for dignity amounts to defending people’s right to be left alone–nothing more.

Christian theology pulls in two different directions. The goodness and value of the creation–and humanity at the apex of the creation–is clearly the loud shout of the Genesis account. But on the other hand is sin which has despoiled humanity. Pride, envy, murder–each a violation of dignity–is the normative rhythm of life. The whole of Scripture describes the indignities of a fractured world. And so Christian theological discussions necessarily take up the issue of sin and fallenness, but the ideal of the creation and the promise of a new creation preserve the value of the human race and compel us to seek the dignity of all who get savaged by the misbehavior of individuals and groups.

WHAT IS DIGNITY, THEN?

Over the centuries dignity as been spoken of with three different senses: dignity as status; dignity as value; and dignity as behavior.

If we understand the assumptions of each idea, how they differ, and how they may work together, we will be able to see how dignity and indignity shape so much of life.

Dignity as status is an idea that goes back to the classical age where a person’s value was rooted in social relations. An emperor has a kind of life that is utterly distinct from the citizen or the slave. Social rank defines life. The elite have dignity, people living in lower social strata simply have less dignity. And it is likely that will not change.

Dignity as value is rooted in the biblical account of the story of humanity.

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Man and woman, created in the image of God, enjoy a rank that is at the summit of the creation. This kind of value–inherent, not utilitarian–breaks down distinctions of status. This, in turn, becomes the basis for affirming the essential equality of all people.

And then there is dignity as behavior. This view sees the ethical or well-mannered life as dignified. We bring value into our own lives if we choose to behave with dignity, in other words.

Now it is obvious that the push and pull of status, and the upswings and downturns of good and bad behavior are everyday realities. Dignity as value, on the other hand, is more an article of faith. One has to choose to believe in the inherent worth of all human beings because there is so much in real life that contradicts it.

Is there a way in which all three meanings may hold together in a comprehensive view of life? Is it possible, for instance, that believing in the inherent value of human life will inspire us to more dignified living, and that will result in an improvement in status–if not in social rank or financial advantage, then at least in the “status” of respectability and honor? There certainly are biblical connections between the doctrine of creation (from which we get value), reconciliation (which addresses the corruptions of status), and sanctification (which includes the reformation of behavior). We need to explore those connections because nobody needs, and nobody is moved by platitudes about dignity and equality.

There is another way to conceive of the greatness and comprehensiveness of dignity. In Jesus we find the revelation of the perfect image of God which humanity was supposed to be (value). In his revolutionary teaching Jesus overturned human obsession with power, wealth, position, and rank (status). And Jesus introduced a comprehensive ethic of life that demands that we act with honor, grace, and integrity (behavior). Jesus is Savior precisely because he embodies the ideal condition of humanity and entered the world on a mission to save human beings from the indignities they bring on themselves and that others impose on them. Jesus mission “to seek and to save the lost,” makes sense only if the lost have value, and are capable of the restoration of full value.

And lest we forget this, we understand Jesus best when we look at him crucified. Humiliated, mocked, constricted, beaten, killed–Jesus suffered the worst forms of indignity and became the Savior of all who suffer indignity. We will never understand dignity until we have an honest assessment of indignity. As P. T. Forsyth put it: “You do not understand Christ til you understand his cross.”

Blue and white letters above the entry door mark an outpost in the middle of Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya: The Salvation Army Community Center. In a large room fifty or so children dressed in a rainbow of colors of hand-me-down clothes from relief organizations are listening to a teacher read a story. I’m introduced to a young girl who volunteers there. Shamim lives in the slum herself and takes us on a walk through the narrow alleys of this, the largest urban slum in Africa where there is no electricity, no running water, home to hundreds of thousands. The pathway is either dirt or mud with narrow ditches coursing throughout that are open sewers. The air is thick with the blended smell of heaps of garbage in the alleys, the waste in the sewers, and charcoal fires everywhere where people are outside cooking modest portions of food. It is overpowering. People are everywhere. Cooking, hanging laundry, cutting hair, selling vegetables, selling coal. Like many others, Shamim’s home is a small six foot by eight foot room, corrugated metal for a roof and front wall. Shamim takes two of us inside where we sit on the edge of a bench. Plastic bags line the walls–the only storage space available. Shamim’s hair is cut short. She wears a faded red sweater emblazoned with the logo: Hard Rock Cafe–Aspen–Save the Planet. She tells us about her life.

I find myself admiring this girl though I know hardly anything about her. Just surviving all this–that must count for something. What are the nights like in this place, I wonder, with the darkness, the random sounds, staggered footsteps, uncertainty.

Through a friend I have heard parts of Shamim’s life in the years since that visit. At one point a fire ravaged a whole section of the slum. When a local leader saw Shamim working hard to clean up the rubble, he gave her a small plot of land. She built a small house on it which she rents out to support herself and her five siblings. They make a little money by washing clothes for neighbors, making popsicles in a used freezer they found and selling them at soccer games. She has also taken classes in filmmaking, eventually being given a chance to be assistant director on a local film. She has other ideas for small businesses. Shamim is intent on surviving, and getting her younger siblings some schooling.

By the standards of any modern prosperous society Shamim’s life today is no success story. Except that, in her mind, and in her experience, at her lowest point she would not give up hope. The slum does not define her, but in small ways she takes small patches of the slum and makes it what she believes it should be.

Dignity is sometimes a small light deep in the smoke and the fog.

What do you think?

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