麻豆社

The papers are full of analysis of the contribution of Nelson Mandela to not only South Africa but to the whole world. But however fine the prose of the journalists, it is the man鈥檚 own words which sum up his thinking best. There鈥檚 this wisdom from him: 鈥淎s we let our own light shine鈥�, he said, 鈥渨e unconsciously give other people permission to shine.鈥�
The apartheid regime kept millions upon millions from shining, with its insistence that people of colour should be separated from whites and that they were distinctly inferior to them. Once the battle to end apartheid was won, Mandela played the greatest role of his life: to bring South Africans together to see that they shared in a common humanity.
Humanity, though, is something we take so much for granted that it is hard to define. What is it that makes us human so that we recognise that humanity in others? How do we start to see that people who are not like us are still the same, even if the colour of their skin is different, their religion, their gender, their sexual orientation are not ours. What is the common bond?
The French philosopher Descartes thought it was the existence of the mind that makes one a person: I think therefore I am. But in an era of medical technology which can keep someone alive whose cognitive abilities are profoundly impaired, I鈥檓 not sure that is quite right. Is the man in a coma really no longer a person?
Perhaps it is love, then, that makes a difference: that it is the very act of recognition by someone else, the empathy they have for you that makes you, regardless of who you are, fully human. In other words they are giving you dignity and respect.
As we celebrate the contribution that Nelson Mandela made, there is a temptation to be complacent, to assume that apartheid is over. But plenty of people today suffer from exclusion, segregation and a lack of dignity: women who are trafficked and kept virtual prisoners, or the old suffering from dementia, rarely visited, living in a fog of confusion.
Perhaps God can be helpful here. If we see each one of us as made in God鈥檚 image, then we recognise everyone鈥檚 equal value. It is easy to see God in the face of your own children, but to see him in the face of someone different from you, as Abraham did when he invited three strangers into his tent, is much harder. But that way lies the road to true freedom, what Mandela describes as living in such a way that you too respect and enhance the freedom of others.