People Count

       The other day, as I rode up the metro escalator the same way I had many times before, I witnessed something I won't likely forget.  As I rose from the depths of the underground tunnels, I saw what looked like a man laying on the floor of the metro.  I figured he must have had a heart-attack or had fainted.  As I walked past him I looked down at his figure, and immediately my head started reeling.  I looked away instinctively, and in a daze moved on.  But the glance was enough.  The memory was stamped in my mind like a picture frame on a wall.  The young man lay sprawled on the hard floor, limbs unmoving.  I saw his exposed belly first, with blood running from a hole in his chest to his navel.  My mind's eye moved up to his face, where his eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling, and his mouth hung open.  The picture throbbed behind my eyes the whole way home. It was as if I was looking through it to see the moving world around me.

       I couldn't get the picture out of my mind, so I decided to let it there.  I was struck by the fact that there were very few people staying by the man's side at the scene of the crime, and no police or emergency vehicles anywhere close.  People, like me, just glanced at it and walked by.  There were a couple of women standing nearby looking at him, but the rest of the station moved on with business as usual.  The more I reflected on it, the more disturbed I became.  I went to our balcony, opened the windows, and played guitar - playing and praying for the young victim, his family, and the killer.  I felt much better after twenty minutes of music and God, and was able to move on with the day. 

       Later that evening, John took me shopping, and we discussed what I had seen.  He wasn't surprised by the fact that the dead stranger was unattended, and asked me my thoughts on why no one seemed to care.  John had asked a taxi driver a similar question years ago, after he had been forced to walk over a dead body laying on the side walk of a main street one afternoon.  The taxi driver said a peculiar thing.  "Russia doesn't count people."  You can choose two ways to interpret this statement, but I think it's obvious that he meant that in Russia, people don't count.

       Then John asked me why the taxi driver's words were as true as they were.  I couldn't for the life of me think of why people wouldn't count, so John explained.  It comes down to the underlying beliefs of the country.  The reformation of Christianity basically was kept from Russia, so the Russian Orthodox church has reigned since the year 325.  The basic Anabaptist principals are lost to the majority of Russians.  The idea that humans are made in the very image of God and God loves every one of us equally is nearly nonexistent.  Inequality is engrained in their culture.  John told me it is understandable that "normal" people could feel un-important in God's eyes.  They are constantly confessing their sins to the priests, bishops, and deacons who dress in fancy robes and light scented candles in the otherwise off-limits Holy of Holies.  This is a logical reason for the general sense of uncaring the "higher-ups" show towards the normal folk.

       This experience has strengthened my Anabaptist beliefs, and I realize again how thankful I am that God loves me even if no one else does, and I will always be worth something with Christ.