Imago Dei & The Emergency Room

I understand why emergency room doctors and staff become calloused over the years! I have completed five shifts or so in the emergency room and I must confess the deep theological problems that this has created within my soul - problems more of praxis (actually doing what Jesus called us to) than anything else.

The ER is one of those unique locales where the frailty of humanity is encountered at all places on the spectrum - coughs and colds, suicide attempts, high-speed car accidents, heart attacks, and drunks...many, many, many drunks!! ER staff have a front row seat at one of the most interesting shows in the world. Noone knows who is about to walk through that door, what problem they will present with, or what or who caused their predicament. It could be the "Drinking Olympics" and the subsequent foot-race that went awry. Or maybe it's the guy who was stabbed by his ex-wife with a pair of scissors. Or maybe it's the lady who punched her garage door!

The crux of the matter is this: What does it mean to be a Christ-follower in the face of tremendous stupidity and self-inflicted harm done repeatedly with no perceived end in sight?

ER docs (and staff) call them frequent flyers and other less complimentary names. And yet God calls them good...he created them and deemed them good. They as much as I are created with the divine imprint of the creator of the universe and deemed worthy of intrinsic inesteemable value! And yet I must admit I struggle with this tension. Jesus came to create a new humanity with a new lens through which to view the world in which we live and the people we cohabitate this planet with. And though I confess Jesus as Lord and know his way to be a way of love, peace, compassion, and justice, I struggle to keep this lens on all the time, especially with the drunks who seem to have nothing better to do than be stupid, hurt themselves, and come to the ER.

How do I continually, consistently, and compassionately care for those who seem to have no interest in their own well-being? How does a Christ-follower maintaina Christ-formed lens and avoid the judgmental, hateful, and arrogant spirit so prevalent and so easy to adopt?

One of the words we (all Christ-followers) must avoid is just. Such a short, simple word that is so insignificant on the surface...until the word is more fully examined and understood. In the ER we say things like "He's just a drunk bum" or "She's just a druggie and a pillseeker." Just is such an inherently reductionistic word because it takes a good creation of God - a human being created in the image of God - and instantaneously robs them of their dignity. When someone is just a drunk, they are no longer fully human but now defined by their fault and pigeon-holed into a certain class of people that are substandard. Though I understand they have robbed themselves of their own dignity with their own decisions, this is no excuse for people like to me to treat them as such and affirm their often self-proclaimed and society-labeled status.

God has called us to be just people - people who love His justice and His mercy; He has not called us to dehumanize people with our rhetoric and to rob them of what he has placed within them. Though I understand the calloused hearts, it is exactly those impulses that the cross calls me to reject!

This is hard. I confess my participation in this and seek forgiveness for where I have been a accomplice.