Remembering Who To Care About: A Life Hack From Jesus

Nomen oblitum!  No, it is not a lost spell from Hogwarts. It’s Latin for “forgotten name”, and it’s my social curse. I am embarrassingly terrible at remembering faces and names. Sociology and a little math tells me I will probably meet between 50,000 and 100,000 people in my lifetime (1). That’s a lot of potential awkward pauses as I scour my memory for names, but only muster a weak, “Hey…You!”. 

While my case may be extreme, even the most gifted memories have their limits. A typical person in their lifetime will only really get to know perhaps 150 people well enough to understand multiple aspects of their personality and motivations. 

While humans are social creatures designed to connect with others, establishing and maintaining those connections creates a cognitive load that is difficult to manage. To cope, our brains categorize people into groups based on single factors that seem important. I might group people into old and young, liberal and conservative, citizen and immigrant, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. I try not to group people into worthy and unworthy, but sometimes I cannot help but let judgment seep in. 

It was the same in the first century Mediterranean world where Jesus lived. Huge social chasms separated groups of people. Men versus women. Children versus adults. Rich versus poor. Foreigner versus local. Educated versus uneducated. Oppressors (Romans) vs oppressed (everyone else). 

Placing people into groups makes things easier on my brain, but that cognitive relief comes with a human cost. Defining a group creates an emotional distance from the individuals within it. 

Complex humans, shaped by a personalized cocktail of genetics and experience, are flattened into a two dimensional thumbnail sketch. While I remain my fully nuanced self, the other group is reduced to a simple bullet point. 

But Jesus did not see people as a collection of groups. He continually pierced through group definitions to connect with individuals, in all their complex and flawed detail. 

• Religious leaders continuously antagonized Jesus. Yet, he had an ongoing, respectful relationship with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. In fact, the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, was shared during a late night private conversation with Nicodemus (3). 

• The Roman government, especially its military, was reviled as an oppressor. Yet, Jesus took time to listen to a Roman centurion, and heal a servant in that household. He even said the centurion’s faith was greater than anything Jesus had encountered in Israel (4).

• In that time and place, women were second class citizens with few rights. And sexual impropriety was a sin punishable by death. Yet, Jesus took the time to personally engage with a woman caught in adultery, advocate for her with powerful men, and then refuse to condemn her (5).

• Foreigners and those from other faiths were often viewed as heretics, unclean people, or avoided altogether by Israelites in those days. Yet, Jesus made someone from one of the most despised heretical groups, a Samaritan, the moral star of a parable about helping others (6). 

• Tax collectors were politically aligned with the Roman government, were hated by devout jews, even considered religiously unclean. Yet while walking with a large crowd of admirers, Jesus stopped in the middle of a road, singled out a tax collector named Zaccheaus, and made time to join him for dinner (7).

Jesus did not endorse the Roman occupation of Israel, sanction adultery, or confirm the teachings of the Samaritans. But he did take time to genuinely see, understand, and love the humans within those groups. 

The example of Jesus challenges me to fight the natural instincts of my brain to divide and classify, to look past the shorthand of group identity to see individual complicated humans. 

That person who voted differently

Is deeply afraid of the future

That person who posted angrily on Facebook

Doesn’t know how they will pay their mortgage next month

That little boy in Haiti

Has no idea why the food aid stopped

That angry person with the protest sign

Carries the scars of abuse

That park ranger who was laid off

Has a baby on the way

That small business owner yelling at the town hall

Cannot afford to pay her taxes

Groups are simple, people are complicated. And relating to individuals takes a lot of work, mentally and emotionally. So why bother?

If you believe in a world where life is us versus them, and you think ‘us’ has all the power, then perhaps it does not matter. The groups we are not a part of become an enemy to be dominated, and that is all. But that was not how Jesus saw the world. Jesus saw a world full of individuals, all of whom had things in common. 

• We are all imperfect - “They continued to question him, so he stood up and replied, “Whoever hasn’t sinned should throw the first stone.””(8)

• We all have basic needs - “…Don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ …Your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” (9)

• We all sometimes need forgiveness - “Forgive us for the ways we have wronged you, just as we also forgive those who have wronged us.” (10)

• We are all capable of doing good - “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart…”(11)

• We are all connected - “…all of you are brothers and sisters…you have one Father, who is heavenly.” (12)

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Everyone is afraid of something. Everyone is in need of something. Every group has children who suffer through no fault of their own. Most importantly, and most central to the teachings of Jesus, is this: All of us, each individual human among us, is loved by God (13)

This may be the greatest truth Jesus offers - and it exposes the most insidious harm of viewing humanity exclusively through group labels. If I only see an anonymous monolithic group, and I refuse to see individual humans, then I deny the individualized love God has for each of those humans. That provides license for damaging words and damaging deeds, cracks in the soul where hate can form. 

I may dislike or disagree with an aspect of a person’s identity, but Jesus calls me to still love the individual, to see the person. 

But, if my “nomen oblitum” condition makes it impossible for me to remember more than a few hundred names, how can I possibly have the capacity to really see and know all the people in all the groups?

Fortunately, Jesus provided the perfect tool. He gave us one simple classification that will tell us which people to care about. For each person, all we need to ask is the following:

Is this person loved by God or not loved by God?

It’s not a trick question, and the answer is easy. And he gave that answer to his supposed enemy, the Pharisee Nicodemus. “God loved the people of this world so much…” There is only one group that matters, and everyone qualifies. Jesus made no exception for whether I agree with someone, whether they are an adversary, even whether they are doing right or wrong. 

I must look past any other group category they fall into, and remember this:

They are made in the image of God, loved unconditionally by God. 

And if I see them through the eyes of God, then I must always strive to love, and never fail to care.

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(1)There are lots of sources for this type of information, but the most straightforward calculation I found is here: https://carolynsonlinemagazine.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/how-many-people-will-you-interact-with-in-your-lifetime/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

(2) Dunbar’s Number: Psychologist Robin Dunbar suggested that humans can maintain about 150 meaningful relationships. That’s the number of people you’d recognize and have some kind of social tie with.(3) John 3:1-21

(4) Matthew 8:5-15

(5) John 8:1-11

(6) John 4:9, Luke 10:25-37

(7) Luke 19:1-10

(8) John 8-7 

(9) Matthew 6:31-32

(10) Matthew 6:12

(11) Matthew‬ ‭12‬:‭35‬ ‭NLT‬‬

(12) Matthew‬ ‭23‬:‭8‬-‭9‬ ‭CEB

(13) ‭‭John‬ ‭3‬:‭16‬ ‭CEV‬‬