In 1885, the King of Belgium, Leopold II, was granted sole ownership of the Congo Free State. He immediately enslaved the people and plundered the Congo of its natural resources. By the end of his rule, Leopold was responsible for the death of more than 10 million Congolese.
That death toll is on par with the Holocaust.
How can people be capable of such heinous crimes? History consistently teaches that atrocities like these are made possible through dehumanization, the process by which a person is seen as less than human, such as an object or an animal.
Just like our eyesight can fail over time, our worldview can slowly become blind to the truth. It’s imperative we not only recognize worldviews that dehumanize, but also implement an effective humanizing treatment.
If you could go back in time and ask King Leopold if it’s wrong to kill people, his answer would have likely been, “Yes! Of course, killing people is wrong.” However, he would have explained that the Congolese were not people—they were animals. This was taught in universities such as Harvard and Princeton and clearly illustrated in 1906 when a native of the Congo, Ota Benga, was placed in a cage at the Bronx zoo with an orangutan.
Dehumanization affects one’s ability to enslave or kill by changing what they perceive to be enslaving or killing. People around the world are still impacted by this skewed perspective every day.
The goal of The Human Project is to discuss worldviews that dehumanize people in our culture today. The hope is to clearly see where our perspectives are distorted, make needed corrections, and avoid repeating the horrific mistakes of our past.
For this reason, The Human Project was created.
Just like our eyesight can fail over time, our worldview can slowly become blind to the truth. It’s imperative we not only recognize worldviews that dehumanize, but also implement an effective humanizing treatment.
The truth is found in the humanizing gospel of Jesus Christ.
Can I purchase the human project on dvd. let me know
Charles Austin
Hi Austin,
Yes, you will be able to purchase it on DVD. We are in the filming stage of The Human Project. It will be launching on March 2, 2018 at our conference.
We, as believers in a Risen Lord and finding our faith enabled by the love of God through the shed blood in Jesus Christ, are a peculiar people in that we do not defend this world’s fallen state, yet ‘request’ that those that come to Him (and through Him to the Father) do so on the basis of forever giving up the parameters of what we see from this world and let Jesus find healing being poured into our lives, thereby -into an eternal dimension- becoming more like Him beyond any human-ness (so to speak) this world could ever offer or hold us to…. Eternally bound in glory is not a human dimension, as the Kingdom _carries_ forward into the eternal walk with our Risen King…into whatever there lies ahead; most gloriously.
~-Apologies for my supposed haste (:Is it that obvious?? !!!) I don’t think I always like the ‘unreal time’ in the ebb and flow of the internet, in that some sites post the portion until reviewed and others do not allow the post to be read until reviewed and this can keep the interested persons whom post at odds with their patience in waiting to see if the post is acceptable or not, etc. So I will take my foot out of my mouth (Is even this the right metaphor?) and request that you overlook my internet hastiness….”Sorry.”
-On the topic of our testimony in Christ via the given gospel from His life testimony to and for us for eternity: I still stand quite favourably towards never bending this gospel into the world around us -as we are new peculiar people and heed the call for all to come out of this world, where blessing -one could say- is toward the newly born (you and I) Hebrew and very little to do with the human element we started from…
‘The truth is, to my mind’s eye, in the spiritually compassionate gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ.’ (The ‘less the focus’ on His bearing our sins and wounds and ‘more the emphasis’ on the His light shining through us into eternity of work; service and praise.)
– I’ll confess here, since thinking about this project in our current age, that I’ve had second thoughts about my (sort of) matter-a-fact evangelical theological position as I have given some credence to in what you’ve allowed printed above…
-Perhaps in this time of life and the love of God and the love of Christ, one should see more of Jesus’ passion for the world and people therein, which obviously leads us into places we never really have been before as believers _on_ His word, trusting Him in the Spirit to complete the journey in them and in us: For we all find ourselves readily dependent on Him, especially at the beginning when all we had was our very being before Him.
Thank you, truly, for your work. God bless…