What Do You See?

I love The Equalizer movies.  Aside from being a big Denzel Washington fan, I really connect with the themes in the trilogy.  Robert McCall, played by Denzel, looks like a harmless middle-aged black man.  People underestimate him.  I can identify with that.  In the first movie, there’s a scene where McCall sits across the table from the menacing villain, a Russian henchman, and asks him, “What do you see when you look at me?”  It’s an interesting question.  The movies involve McCall seeing other people – average everyday people, and he is drawn to their need – the hooker who is being exploited by the Russian mob; the overweight co-worker who needs to lose weight to get a promotion; the elderly holocaust survivor who is searching for his long lost sister; the talented black teenager being sucked into gang life.  Behind the violence, the premise of the movies is that McCall looks at those who are marginalized and uses his deadly skills to help them all – to equalize things.

The question we should all grapple with is “what do you see” when you look at other people.  While I imagine myself being the guy who is underestimated then surprise people with my incomparable talents, there’s a deeper theme here.  Most of us think a lot about what people see when they look at us.  That drives us to develop (or receive) a vision of what we want people to see when they look at us.  We work diligently on our appearance and our image.  Some of us spend significant time working on our presentation on social media.  We want people to see us as beautiful, smart, talented, maybe even rich.  In our head we are asking others, “what do you see when you look at me?”  But the Equalizer is different.  He is focused on seeing others and determining if he can meet their needs. 

I think this is the focus that God prefers us to have.  I think God asks us, what do you see when you look at others.  Do you look at people to determine whether they can help you?  Do you look at people and try to determine how they can contribute to achieving your personal vision?  Or, do you look at people and determine how you can meet their need – without regard for how then can help you?  The answer to what you see when you look at people may have eternal consequences. 

In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus preaches about the criteria the King will use on the day of judgment.  The King’s priority will be what do you see when you look at others and how you respond to it.  Jesus says the King will accept those who saw him in need – hungry, naked, oppressed, etc. – and helped him.  Both the accepted and the rejected ones respond by asking, “when did we see you hungry, naked, oppressed, etc. and we helped you?”, and his answer is, to the extent that you helped “the least of these” you helped me.  This Biblical exchange made me wonder.  Neither those who are rejected or those who are accepted recognized that they were seeing Jesus when they looked at other people.  So what made the difference in how they responded?  I think the difference is beyond what they saw, it is what they focused on.  Maybe those who are rejected see other people and focus on their own needs and desires rather than the other person’s.  Maybe our personal vision for our life can obscure what God wants us to do.  Maybe our laser focus on what we want – even on what we believe is the life God wants us to have – can blind us to the divine calling we all have.  Jesus says the most important thing is to love God and love others as ourselves.  Perhaps we should consider whether that means we should be as attentive to the need of others as we are to our own.  Maybe we are called to be the real-life equalizers.