Maintaining Human Dignity in Real Life Situations ------------------------------------------------- A home invasion; an 8-year-old kid manages to sleep through it. A teenaged criminal enters a home and commits several crimes, not least of which is shooting and injuring the father. The young son is asleep and doesn't wake up until the criminal is gone and the emergency services have been summoned. But later, when the chaos is under control, the police are working the crime scene. They are questioning everyone who was present, so they want to know what, if anything, the 8-year-old heard. Based on what you can imagine plus anything you've seen in police shows and crime movies, how can the detective in charge of the case preserve the human dignity of the 8-year-old? What really happened: Sgt. Matthews came into the room and introduced himself and his colleague. He sat on the bed and showed me his gold badge, and also had the other detective show his (less impressive) badge. Then he asked some simple questions, the kind which a sleepy 8-year-old could answer. (Except the kid had no answers. He slept through it all.) A high school student calls 911 about an altercation at home. The student's story is that the kid and his aunt had a dispute about his gaming system. His aunt's husband intervened and hit the kid in the nose; the kid retaliated with a punch to the face and there was more fighting. Then the kid walked away, went to his friend's house, and called the police. The police talked to all the people and decided to arrest the student. They handcuffed him and took him to the county jail. He stayed there over the weekend (eating stale Cheerios for breakfast) but was released on Monday, pending appearing in court on Wednesday. For Tuesday, though, he was free and so he went to school. If you were at school that Tuesday, how could you support the dignity and personal worth of the student who had been in jail? What really happened: The student came into the tutoring room saying, "I had the worst weekend of my life." Another student, another adult, and I spent the class period letting this student talk about what had happened to him, sometimes asking questions, but also sharing our own experiences with jail and the police. A father is jailed for not paying a fine. A man had been convicted some years earlier for a minor crime and had been assessed a fine. (This was in another county.) Since then he had become unemployed for about 5 years during which time he was unable to pay the bill. This resulted in an arrest warrant being issued, although the man wasn't aware of that. Later the man moved to Brown County and still later got a new job. Just about that time, the man was stopped for a traffic issue, the police officer found the warrant, and he was taken to jail -- where he sat, because it was the weekend. The plan was that a deputy from the other county would drive here on Monday and transport him back to the other county's jail and, eventually, a court appearance. But this put his job and his family's income in jeopardy (which also means his ability to ever pay the fine). What could be done to protect this father's self-worth, his family, and his income? What really happened: The mother searched for someone who could help. Because it was a weekend and the banks are all closed, it had to be someone with plastic and a high enough card limit. She was able to find someone (through her church) and this person paid the original fine, plus the jail fees and the card fee and the extra fee for the company that processes the card for the county. After this, the father was released to his family and his new job. A person does something not quite right. A friend has an experience in which she does something she knows was not the right thing to do. We won't say what it was. Had she not realized what she was doing and stopped, it could have turned into a serious sin for both her and a second person -- but in fact she did stop. She felt very bad about the whole event, and weeks later she approaches a friend when they are alone and begins confessing the sin. If you were that friend, how could you respect her feeling of sinfulness and also the value she still has in the eyes of God? What really happened: The friend who was hearing the confession had no idea what to do and so quickly turned the whole problem to God. God provided an answer which the listening friend passed along to the confessing friend. (It was specific to the person and the action, but the essence of the answer was, "As far as your relationship with God, God loves and forgives you. As for your relationship with that other person, you should apologize for offering an invitation to sin.") Passing along an answer from God felt like being a lighting rod in a thunderstorm. An office employee sits under a desk. Life as an adult isn't always any easier that life as a child. At best, you may have more tools to help to deal with the problems that come up. Office workers today often have only cubicles within large shared office space, meaning that you have no private space to go when life around you is getting stressful. One person dealt with a highly stressful time by crawling under the desk. Suppose that you shared a cubicle with this person and when you came back to your desk you noticed your colleague hiding. What would be a response that honors the dignity of this person who feels overwhelmed by life and work at that moment? Would it change anything to know your coworker is a woman? That she is a black woman? What really happened: I saw her and realized that she was hiding there because she didn't want to talk to anyone for a while, so I went to my own desk and continued to work without disturbing her. This wouldn't have been the right response for every person or every situation, but it seemed right for her. And later she came over to me and thanked me for accepting her behavior without making a big deal about it. Logic eludes the math professor. A college student made a logical argument to his math professor. The professor thought the argument was wrong; the student was adamant that it was correct. After several minutes of trying to convince each other, it was obvious that neither person could agree with the other. What would be a way of resolving this dispute while still respecting both the professor and the student? What really happened: The professor suggested that the student bring the problem to a second professor, whom he described as the campus expert on logic. The student, still convinced he was right, did so. After hearing the student's explanation, the logic expert volunteered to talk with the math professor. (Besides being respectful to the math professor, this allowed the second professor to determine whether the student had missed any part of the problem.) At the next math class, the math professor agreed that the student was right; the other professor had explained his mistake in logic. April 27, 2016