What does dignity mean and how can we exemplify it as Jesus followers?
A lot of people know what dignity means, but very few people actually practice showing dignity to others — all others. Dignity means “having a state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.” In theory, most people would agree that all humans are born with dignity. And, most people show dignity to others on a day-to-day basis. So, I guess you could say that treating each other with dignity and respect is pretty simple and most people do it.
Except, we don’t. Not really. Not all the time.
True dignity — dignity the way Jesus describes it — looks a lot like unconditional love and respect, regardless of someone’s political views, actions, belief system or really anything else about them. You see, we like to put caveats on “dignity” and reserve our actual respect for people who agree with us on our political and social beliefs. We equate people’s value to how well they align with the things that we have assigned value to; the more we disagree with them, the less of a person they become in our mind. We belittle them internally, and while we may never act on it, we do lose the idea that that specific person is worthy of honor or respect.
Side note: This is how we all fall into our own echo chambers. If you don’t respect anyone who disagrees with you, then eventually the only voices you will listen to are the ones who are only echoing the things you think are right. That’s incredibly dangerous and intellectually dishonest.
What does Jesus say about dignity?
That whole message that Jesus says about “love others as you love yourself” (see Matthew 22:36-40) actually has everything to do with dignity. Most of us believe that we have inherent value. And while we may beat ourselves up sometimes when we make mistakes, we usually give ourselves ample grace and leeway. And we never really remove our value from ourselves when things go wrong.
So, when we love others the way we love ourselves, it means more than just treating someone kindly. Treating someone well is the outflow of believing they have inherent value and dignity.
Each human is made in the “imago dei” — the image of God. John confirms this in I John 4:16 when he writes that God lives in us. Genesis tells us that God breathed His breath of life into humans. We are living temples of God, and therefore each human has inherent value — from your best friend, to your neighbor with the offensive political sign, to the homeless man who sits outside your favorite fast-food place. Dignity is unconditional, and once we start seeing people through the lens of inherent worth and value — the way God designed them — we can start loving people unconditionally.
You can listen to some of our messages here about how to truly love people and show them the dignity that Jesus describes: