I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I … am … a … man.
(Joseph Merrick)
The 1980 film The Elephant Man chronicled the life of Joseph Merrick, a young Englishman who suffered from the severely disfiguring disease neurofibromatosis. He lived his short adult life as the main attraction in a Victorian freak show that traveled throughout Europe. At one point in the film, he tried to escape the show but was found by an angry mob that unmasked and taunted him. In his despair, he cried out the classic line, “I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I … am … a … man!” This touching film directed by David Lynch and starring John Hurt was a critical and commercial success. In dark theaters across America, steam rose from our tears as they passed over the moral furnaces of disgust stoked by the fuel of our collective human cruelty. While this story may seem remote, played out in a distant place at another time, it has been revived and now plays daily on our world stage. Instead of a story of one man’s struggle for significance, it has become a global narrative performed by a cast of millions.
The anguished cry of the Elephant Man is now our cry. The finest evolutionary scientists we have at our disposal have declared that we are mere animals infected with a pernicious religion virus that forces us to pursue delusional significance. They diagnose us with a bad case of biological schizophrenia causing us to hear voices from another world that tell us we have been created in a divine image. Joseph Merrick spent his whole life trying to prove he was a man, but in an ironic twist of fate, we seem committed to proving that we are mere animals. Instead of refusing to drink the cultural potion that turns us into a beast, we raise a toast to our evolutionary animality. Instead of looking for the kiss that turns the frog into a prince, we drink the poison that transforms us into Mr. Hyde. The real tragedy is that we have forgotten what it means to be created in the image of God — a tragedy because failure to grasp such a basic concept unleashes the beast within. We make ourselves into animals that have no higher calling—a species that measures success by survival and finds personal pleasure the only verifiable purpose in life. What has happened? How did we get here?
If you want to reclaim your place as God’s image-bearer, check out my new book, Cry Of The Elephant Man: Listening For Man’s Voice Above The Herd.
Cry Of The Elephant Man – Westbow Press
Cry Of The Elephant Man – Amazon