When We Call Each Other Demons

A pastoral reflection on dignity, demonization, and where we go from here

Saturday night, a man armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives rushed a security checkpoint outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton. He opened fire. People ran. The President and his cabinet were rushed to safety. An officer was shot — and survived, thank God. The suspect, a 31-year-old teacher from California, had sent a note to his family ten minutes before the attack apologizing for what he was about to do. He believed, apparently, that violence was his duty.

I sat with that for a long time Saturday night.

Not in anger. In grief.

Because here is what I know about this moment: it is not the first. It will not be the last. Not as long as we keep doing what we are doing to each other — not as long as we keep treating the people on the other side of our political divide as something less than human.

The next morning, I opened Facebook and saw a post from a friend. A real friend. Someone I care about and respect, even when we disagree — and we disagree about a lot. He was expressing something I actually understood: fear. Horror. A sense that the country is coming apart. He believed the rhetoric of the left had contributed to what happened the night before. I don't share that diagnosis. But I heard the pain underneath it.

And then, in the very next breath, he referred to liberals, to those who oppose the current administration, as "demons." As "demon-possessed."

Without a pause. Without a hint of irony. Without any apparent awareness that he had just done the very thing he was condemning.

That word. Demons.

I am a pastor. I take that word seriously. And when I read it aimed at millions of my neighbors — at people I love, at members of this church — I felt something break a little.

Not because he is a bad person. But because we have arrived somewhere very dangerous.

I have been writing about this danger for a while.

My book Resist names it directly: the call of the Gospel is to "refuse to mirror the brutality, lies, and fear that shape our moment — and choose instead the Way of truth-telling, radical hospitality, peacemaking, and healing." The book is grounded in the Way of Jesus as we see it in Luke and Acts — a way that confronts power without becoming what it resists. That refuses contempt as a tool, even righteous contempt. That refuses, specifically, to strip anyone of their humanity.

That is not a left-wing idea. That is not a right-wing idea. It is a Gospel idea. And people of faith have been among the most enthusiastic violators of it — on both sides of every divide.

Weaponizing Jesus is not new. But it is always a betrayal.

This past Sunday, fourteen of us from Riverfront sat together in a workshop on Healing Conversations led by Dr. Michael Minch, a scholar and practitioner who has done peace-building work around the world. We opened with a quote from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it's done."

We talked about the geography of conflict — how divisions aren't just ideological, they are spatial, historical, embodied. We talked about South Africa, and the extraordinary, agonizing, holy work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: people sitting across from those who had harmed them, choosing to see each other as human beings, finding — inch by inch — a way forward. We talked about imagination: the capacity to picture a world that does not yet exist. Not as naivety. As spiritual discipline. As resistance.

And I kept thinking about the man with the guns. And the man on Facebook. And the miles between where we are and where we need to be.

It always seems impossible until it's done.

I want to introduce you to something. Not as a political tool. As a mirror. It's called the Dignity Index.

I didn't encounter it at a pastor's conference. I didn't hear about it in a theology class or a church leadership retreat. I first came across it at a Bank of America conference for nonprofit leaders. A room full of executives, directors, and community organizers — and someone stood up and said: here is a tool we think every leader needs right now.

That stopped me. When a major financial institution looks at the state of our public life and decides that teaching people how to disagree with dignity is part of what they need to offer — that tells you something. The hunger for a better way is not just a church problem. It's not just a political problem. It's a human problem. And people across every sector are starting to feel the urgency of it.

Developed by Tami Pyfer, Tim Shriver, and colleagues at UNITE, the Dignity Index is an eight-point scale that measures what we actually do when we disagree. Not what we believe. Not what party we belong to. What we do — specifically, how we speak about the people on the other side.

The scale runs from 1 to 8. At a 1, you see no dignity at all in the other side. At an 8, you see the dignity in everyone. Here's how each level sounds:

1 — Dehumanization. The other side is less than human. They should be eliminated. "They don't deserve to live." Language here escalates toward violence.

2 — Existential threat. The other side is evil and will ruin everything. "Those people are a danger to everything we value." Us or them.

3 — Moral attack. They're not just wrong — they're bad people. "We're the good people. They're the bad people."

4 — Dismissal. They don't really belong. They don't share our values. "We're better than those people."

5 — Respectful disagreement. Willing to speak openly, listen, and criticize based on facts rather than insults. "The other side has a right to be here and to be heard. It's their country too."

6 — Active common ground. It's a duty to work with the other side. "We have more in common than we think."

7 — Humility. Willing to be challenged. Willing to ask: Am I part of the problem? Willing to defend someone else's dignity even when it costs you belonging on your own side.

8 — Full dignity. No moral superiority. No contempt. Able to absorb the pain of being hated without passing it on. "Everyone is born with inherent worth. I treat everyone with dignity, no matter what."

Our disagreements aren't causing the divisions in our country. It's what we do when we disagree. Contempt is the accelerant. And contempt lives at the bottom of this scale.

When my friend called political opponents "demons," he was somewhere between a 1 and a 2. The man who drove across the country with a shotgun was at a 1. And before anyone on either side of the aisle gets comfortable — the contempt runs in multiple directions. The demonization is not exclusive to any tribe. I see it everywhere. I have felt it pulling at me, too.

None of us gets to stand on high ground here.

This is where faith has something essential to say — and something essential to confess.

Imago Dei. The image of God. It is the first and most foundational claim the Hebrew scriptures make about human beings: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them." (Genesis 1:27)

Every human being. Without exception. Without qualification. It is not a reward for right behavior. It is not something you can vote away, shout away, or sin away. It is given. It is constitutive. It is what makes someone a person.

That includes the people who frighten you. The people whose policies have caused real harm. The person who just called you a demon. The man who drove to Washington with a gun. The image of God does not disappear because someone has done a terrible thing. That would be a very convenient theology — and a very dangerous one.

Jesus pressed further than most of us are comfortable going: "Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you." (Matthew 5:44) And in Resist, I keep returning to what Luke shows us in the early church — that this love was not sentiment, it was strategy. It was "disciplined, public mercy that can face batons without becoming what it resists."

I am not asking anyone to pretend their enemies are their friends. Or that harm isn't harm. Or that accountability doesn't matter.

But here is what I am saying: treating someone with dignity is the floor, not the ceiling. It is the minimum the Gospel requires of us — not the achievement. It is where we start, not where we finish. And for most of us, myself absolutely included, even the floor feels impossibly high right now.

That is why the Dignity Index matters. Not as a ceiling to aspire to. As a floor to stand on.

Here is my ask for you this week.

Take the Dignity Index — you can find it at dignity.us — and use it on yourself. Not on the politician you can't stand. Not on the pundit who makes your blood boil. Not on the friend who posted something infuriating.

On yourself.

Score your last political post. Score your last dinner table conversation. Score the monologue running in your head when you see someone you profoundly disagree with.

This is not about becoming a pushover. It is not about false unity or pretending the stakes aren't real. The stakes are very real. A man is in custody today because he decided that what he believed justified picking up a gun.

We are not going to fix that with another round of contempt.

But if we can imagine — in the spirit of those fourteen people in a room on Sunday, in the spirit of South Africa, in the spirit of a man who spent 27 years in prison and came out without hate — if we can dare to imagine a better way, we have to start somewhere.

And that somewhere is here: refusing to strip anyone of their humanity. Even when they have stripped you of yours. Even when it is hard. Even when they call you a demon.

That is not weakness. In the Way of Jesus, that is the hardest and most radical thing there is.

It always seems impossible until it's done.

Let's begin.