Do you see others as a means for your own gain?

I am a horror fan – I will admit it. I know Christians have mixed views on horror, but there it is, my confession.

Recently, I saw the film Obsession; the story of a shy young man, Bear, who wishes that his attractive, outgoing friend, Nikki, will love him "more than anyone else in the world". In classic horror fashion, she then becomes obsessed with him and increasingly disturbing mayhem follows.

The film itself is… okay; it became a bit predictable and repetitive in the second half, but I’m not a film reviewer so I"ll leave my amateur opinion there!

What the film does really well, though, is to speak about the objectification of people. It causes us to ask some uncomfortable questions of our relationships with those around us.

When Bear looks at Nikki, he sees his own desire reflected back at him. His desire to be loved by Nikki results in her will being subverted and subordinated to an external will, with increasingly disastrous consequences. Ultimately, this is what Bear thinks he wants – he wishes that she would desire him, even though she does not and, in that moment, he instrumentalises her as opposed to seeing her as a human.

Objectification

There are many ways in which we instrumentalise and ultimately dehumanise others. Perhaps the most obvious example is lust, where we project fantasies onto someone as though they were an empty vessel for our desires.

But there are less obvious ways we do this too – using others as stepping stones for our careers or using friends to satisfy a desire for distraction.

Since watching Obsession, I have been noticing the ways that I subtly dehumanise those around me; when I see a police officer, I see a uniform not a father; when I see a young man wearing a balaclava in 35-degree heat, I see a potential threat rather than a hurting young person; I barely notice the cleaners and security guards at Waitrose.

To a certain extent, threat perception and status indicators are important and, in some ways, these are frivolous examples – but what if viewing people in this way stops us being effective communicators of the gospel?

What happens when we start seeing categories instead of neighbours?

Division

C.S. Lewis wrote the following: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations… There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal.”

We live in a time that is incredibly divided. It is easier now more than at any time in most of our lives to see ourselves as groups and to "otherise" or even villainise those who aren’t in our "group".

I do not have in mind here one political party or another, one wing or another – we are susceptible to this no matter how sophisticated we may think ourselves to be. But we are living through a time of great division, and division breeds greater objectification.

Seeing fellow image-bearers

One of the radical things that Jesus did was to see people – to really see them; not to dismiss them because of their racial or religious identity, not to demonise them because they had made bad life choices or had a "dodgy" career, but to see people as people, as sheep without a shepherd, desperately searching and constantly misled.

For any form of evangelism, this is essential.

People are people – they may have the trappings of a tribe, but they are, like the rest of us, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.

The real horror in Obsession is not the murders or the magic, but a person being stripped of what makes them human. One of the dangers for Christians in this increasingly divided world is that we subtly fall into doing exactly this – ceasing to see people as neighbours and beginning to see them as categories.

Jesus never objectified anyone, He saw people – fully – and unless we learn to do the same, we will not be effective evangelists or faithful disciples.