The dehumanization of hell, Part 1

If anyone is in hell, I, too, am partly in hell.

Mark Shrime, MD, PhD

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“It’s been hell,” he told me. In his thirties, Amadou had been living with multiple, expanding masses in his neck for a decade. They were firm, rubbery, painful, large, and they’d scattered themselves across both sides of his neck.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

No surgeon’s knife could have saved him from the hell he was living in. He had a type of cancer that wasn’t amenable to surgical resection, and the chemo-plus-radiation regimen he needed didn’t exist in Liberia.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I occasionally think about Amadou in a slightly dehumanizing way—thankful that I grew up in a country where I have access to care.

But most of the time, across the decade and a half that separates us, I can still see his lips tense as he’s told that there’s nothing we can do, his shoulders weaken under the knowledge that he’s never getting out of his hell.

Today, I want to talk about this interconnectedness—and about the dehumanization that is its opposite.

Before I do, a disclaimer and some background.

The disclaimer: in this post, I discuss Evangelical Christian responses to current events. In doing so, I necessarily have to paint with a broad brush, so I focus on public statements from prominent Evangelical sources.

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Mark Shrime, MD, PhD

Author, SOLVING FOR WHY | Global surgeon | Decision analyst | Climber | 3x American Ninja Warrior Competitor