Another interesting commment on the Chinese factory pictures

Comment from this post.

Mike, what makes “these people” any different from other people in the world? If God made us all and loves us all, does he draw the arbitrary distinctions based on race and income that we do?

Just curious as to what you think,
Laurel

Hi Laurel! Let me be first to welcome you with a hardy handshake. Thanks for the comment.

Aside from the fact that a large proportion of the people in China are Asian, the term wasn’t racial. It also wasn’t based on income per se, as the definitions and implications of income are different in China (more along those lines in a half second).

For the purposes of that post, “these people” were the people in the photo essay. And “these people” live in China. So the term wasn’t an arbitrary distinction at all.

In short, “these people” have lives that are much different than ours, and that difference is revealing if we look at it. What is revealed is what makes it moving to me. It reveals the very sameness that you are implying.

China is a very large nation, with much different demographics. It has a completely different social, political, and economic systems. Yet you can see the similarities in those pictures. We were all put on this world to work, but work for what? And work for who? And to what end?

God did create them just like us. And we’re all under the same condemnation/grace/redemption/etc. that every human has been under. The differentness demonstrated in these pictures reveal the commonalities, and further make us question differentness revealed in similar pictures of ourselves.

We like to think that the U.S. is a much better place to live than China. In many ways we’re right, but probably not in the ways we think. As we sit in traffic on the way home tonight, what would a Chinese worker see in a quick snapshot of us?

What would God Himself see in a snapshot of us? If we were “these people” would we be living the life God intended?