He’s not a Problem; He’s a Person.

On Saturday sister-in-law Geneviève took us to the train station for our return trip from France. Seven soldiers entered the station, each carrying a gun. Scary! We guessed this was a response to the school stabbing in Arras earlier in the week.

I looked more closely at the soldiers. They were people, little more than boys – a mother’s son, a child’s brother, a teacher’s recent student…

I’ve been reading ‘A Boy made of Blocks’, a beautifully told story of an autistic eight-year-old, Sam, and his dad Alex. To Sam the world’s a frightening place; Alex loves Sam but doesn’t understand him and struggles, with daily battles over school, food, clothing…

Alex takes Sam on a camping trip:

 ‘I have this strange, shocking moment of clarity: Sam is a human being… He’s not a problem to be solved… He’s a person, and somewhere in his head are his own ideas, his own priorities, his own ambitions for the future. It’s amazing how easy it has been to overlook all of that… He’s a person. He wants things, he wants to understand his place in the world…’

I was thinking of Alex as I looked round church yesterday… Cathy’s in debt and struggles with her money… Bill’s dementia makes his apparent grumpiness worse… Mick has various health issues and is waiting for test results… Debbie’s a struggling single parent with a teenage daughter… Steve’s an unreliable recovering addict…

It’s easy to define each of them by their problems. Some folks want to solve their problems, some are critical of them because of their problems, some find it easier to ignore them and their problems…

I can see the French soldiers, the world’s ‘Sams’, my friends… and jump to quick, easy, judgemental conclusions.

Alex reminds me that these are people, who see the world with different eyes, different perspectives, from me. It’s often me than needs to change – not them. And, like Alex, as I start to change… those around me are helped and changed too.