Are we all Elephant Men?

I sat curled up on the couch watching the deformed face of a 22 year-old male flicker across my T.V. screen. Women screamed when they saw him. You could tell doctors were uncomfortable when they examined him. Its true. He was ugly.

I pulled the blanket closer. I didn't want to watch. He scared me and it wasn't just fear because he was weired or strange, it was fear because he was ugly. This man on the screen was ugly and I was afraid of him. Why?

I sipped my hot tea, filling my lungs with the smell of peppermint as I breathed in the steam. His sunken eyes stared back into mine, I couldn't look at him though. Yet there was some morbid part of me that said I must. Feelings of anger, depression, and pity streamed up inside of me like the steam that steadily blew out of my cup. Anger... anger at the world for being so cruel to someone so deformed, and anger at myself for identifying with them. Depression because I too have treated those who were not blessed with the gift of beauty with less humanity than that of my neighbors. Pity because beneath a face that seems completely incapable of all expression, sadness was written all over it. Yet, I could not watch. Why?

Its odd to think that one man's ugliness can be the subject for so much ridicule. The Elephant Man. I remember now, thats what they used to call him. They never thought of him as a man... he was a beast, a creature, an elephant to be more precise. And so thats how they treated him. They put him in a Circus and locked him in a dungeon when they didn't need him. Why? Because he was ugly? We are just as ugly.

Yes.... we are just as ugly. If you don't fit the mold or if you're not as pretty as everyone else on the street, are you not shut away from that society? Are you not shunned and sent to be with other people of your sort? Are you not laughed at and ridiculed? Admit it, we've all done this, and we've all had this happen. We don't care about a person's character is like. If he or she is not like us, if they are in any way different, we don't like them. The Elephant man - no, I can't call him that, Joseph, yes... thats his name. Joseph Merrick was smart. He didn't look smart, but they say he continually read, he read the bible many times, and had most of it memorized. He built and imagined things and was loving and friendly too. Yet, they hated him. (Think about this, this was done to our Savior too). So what does this show? Nothing except that our souls can turn black and cold as hell very quickly. It shows nothing except that when we laugh at someone who is ugly and deformed, our souls are becoming deformed and ugly as well - as ugly and deformed as the Elephant Man.

But I was still afraid. His words were practically incomprehensible, and yet they seemed to seep from the speakers and slid into my ears. "You see" he said "we always fear what we do not understand." We cannot understand how someone could be so ugly, and so the women screamed and the doctors were uncomfortable and I was afraid and he.... he was beaten and scorned. But there is something more to this fear. There is fear because we know we have been in both situations and we didn't like either one. Fear because we know there is some sort of measure for beauty and we are afraid when we loose sight of that vision. We forget, when we see ugliness and evil that there is such a thing as beauty and we become afraid that we might never see it again. And so we think we can make it disappear by beating it back and pushing it into the shadows where no one can see it.

So I sit on my couch, with my tea and blankets, and the million comforts of the world, pondering... pondering... aren't we all just elephant men then?