Simply Human

My first year of college, I attended Covenant Bible College in Strathmore, Alberta. This place formed the base on which my further college years would follow and now into the time after. There are a few things that stick out from that year. One of these things was the importance that the verse from Genesis 1:27 became to my view of others and the world. This verse says: “So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” In God’s Image. All human beings are created in God’s Image. This means that all humans have equal value and are equally loved by God. Nothing speaks to the ultimate unity and equality of humanity more than this verse.

Now that I am finished with University I have begun the next stage of life, which involves living in Bethlehem, Palestine, experiencing all this place has to offer, and learning more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. I have come a long way from the rural land of Alberta, Canada, to Israel-Palestine, but still this basic truth still rings in my ears. The one thing I am constantly struck by is that everyone here is equally human and equally created by God. This will hit me at different times. When I am walking through the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and see a women slowly walking home after a long day. This checkpoint has just become another part of her day. For the men standing in line in front of me at the checkpoint; their ID’s are examined, their permits surveyed, their handprints taken, sometimes they are yelled at by the soldiers half or one-third their age. They are just as human as me, yet I merely show my United States passport and I get a slight wave of the hand through, and I am on my way.

It is not just the humanity of the oppressed that I acknowledge, it is for the oppressors. I look at the soldiers sitting at the checkpoints. They have just finished high school. They are supposed to be living the best years of their lives, and yet they sit in a glass booth at the checkpoint waving people through. They have been fed by fear for the other their entire lives. They have become part of the system that sees those walking through the checkpoints as those of whom they are afraid and must now try to show some of their power over them to compensate for this fear or as a mere inconvenience to their eight hour shift sitting in a glass booth. I think that they should also not have to be in this position in life. They too are part of a conflict that was started by others and is looming before them. I am nearly the same age, and I wish they too had the opportunity to travel and see new places, as I have been so fortunate to have.

I was talking to a friend the other day and he said that the Germans have a saying that goes like this: “mauer im kopf”. It means a “wall in the head”. Before the Berlin wall was built, people in Germany were united. They were the same country, the same people. Once the Berlin wall was built, they began to build up stereotypes of the other. Even now that the wall is gone, these stereotypes still exist in the heads of many of the people. It is as if the wall still exists in the heads of its people.

I now live in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is located in Palestine, on the other side of the separation wall from Jerusalem. The separation wall is a five-minute walk from my house. Many times the wall here is compared to that in Berlin. Stereotyping rings true here as well. Although, in this place, the stereotypes existed long before the wall was built. It is as if the reverse happened here. There was a wall in the heads of the people and they built a physical wall to represent the already existing stereotypes.

Unfortunately this wall only makes these stereotypes stronger. It has made interaction between both sides more difficult and more limited. It has made it easier to dehumanize the other side and harder to realize that we are all created in the Image of the same God.

I believe that the stereotypes existing in this land will be harder to overcome than in Berlin once the wall falls. It can only be done by realizing the common humanity of everyone. With this realization comes respect for the other and also an awareness that we must listen to each other, because we all have equal amounts to offer and to learn. I pray that this kind of reconciliation will one day be allowed to happen and will bear fruit for all.