Beauty through God's Eyes
There's a joke I know, and lately it's been stuck in my head. It's a sign of the situation I'm in that it gets less funny and more relevant as the days go by, but I can't get it out of my head. The joke goes like this:
What's the difference between a junkie and a thief?
A junkie will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.
It chews a person up, consumes everything about them that makes them who they were, and leaves you with this husk of jitters, theft, and lies. I have seen addiction swallow people I knew - slowly destroying everything that I liked about the person. And I have seen what it does to the families of people who are addicts. There is no doubt, addiction is ugly, and it makes everything it touches ugly, too.
I will not deny, it is incredibly painful and indescribably difficult to watch somebody you love disappear into an addiction, but what about when you meet someone who is already an addict? What about when somebody who is beloved by the people you love, somebody you want to love, somebody you ought to love - - just isn't there anymore?
This is something I've been struggling with lately.
Sarah* is a part of my extended family now. She has been an addict for close to nine years, and I only met her two years ago. Members of her immediate family tell stories, they talk about her dreams and hopes, but the Sarah I know bears no resemblance to the girl they remember.
She is a pile of hollow-eyed mumbles who falls asleep at the dinner table, a constant victim who always has a novel-long story about how they wound up in this mess and why they need twenty bucks from you. You have to watch your purse around her, and you never let her borrow anything. She tells lies upon lies upon lies, refuses to take responsibility for her actions, and seems to be emotionally stalled out at about the age she started using.
She is not so much a person as she is a walking addiction. I imagine it like the scene from The Shining, Sarah turning to her mother, crooking her finger and saying, "Sarah isn't here right now."
But the people I love love Sarah, and God loves Sarah. Deep down inside, under layers of deception, self-loathing, and fear, I have to believe that there is good. My faith informs me that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God, and that every human being has infinite value and worth. This much I know. But I seem to hit a wall when it comes to remembering that Sarah is made in the image and likeness of God. Sarah has infinite value and worth.
Yes, Jesus loved and healed and welcomed prostitutes, tax collectors, and lepers - and so of course He would welcome this mumbling, gaunt wreck of a person into His arms. He would hug her and kiss her face and tell her how very much He loved her. In order for me to see Sarah as she really is, I have to try to see her as God sees her. I have to cobble together a real person from the stories her family tells, and the trophies on the wall in her parents' den. For her sake and for my sake, I must strive to see her as a full human being, and not as a walking addiction.
And here's the part of Christianity that gets uncomfortable, and this is the part of love that isn't all sunshine & roses. Sarah is beautiful. And the fact that I can't see it is my problem, not hers. If I am truly striving to live my life in imitation of Christ, I must keep this intrinsic beauty in the front of my mind - even when we all know she's using, even when she steals from us and pawns it so she can score, even when she lies, denies, and makes excuses.
This doesn't mean that we don't hold her accountable, or that we don't allow her to face the consequences of her actions. It doesn't mean that we rescue her, or (ever) give her a key to our house. But it does mean that we seek to love her as Christ loves her. It means I have to break down the wall I have built between us, I have to see her as the radiant soul, the irreplaceable person for whom Christ died.
Because He didn't just die for upstanding people who drive sedans and mow their lawn. He didn't say, "This is the cup of my blood, shed for you and some of the other decent people" - he died for junkies, too.
Sarah is made in the image and likeness of God, and so she shines with the beauty of His handiwork. Through the dirty fingernails, the sunken eyes, the sores on her face, Sarah's beauty radiates. It's up to me to find a way to see it.
Kate is sinner who eats too many carbs and curses too much, and is very glad that she might someday get to heaven anyway. She lives with her husband in Arizona, and they are expecting their first child in December. She blogs at Imperfect Kate.
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