Do All People Deserve Respect?

Gary Pollard

This week’s question is, “Do all people deserve respect?”

We’re going to have to talk about respect to answer this question adequately. From the believer’s perspective all people are owed selfless love — friends, family, enemies, everyone. Respect, though, is something earned by actions others deem valuable or owed because of position. This can be arbitrarily defined depending on culture. Actions considered worthy of respect in some places are actions most people would condemn anywhere else.

For example, God wants believers to honor everyone in political positions (cf. Rom 13, I Tim 2, I Pt 2, Titus 3). This is from a word that means something like “assigning high value to someone”. This is closer to our idea of respect, though not as involuntary. We automatically respect someone who does something great, selfless, and beneficial to society. We don’t have to force ourselves to respect them, it just happens. Believers may have to manually override their natural feelings about political figures in order to show them respect the way God wants.

Romans 13.7 says, “Give everyone what you owe them. If you owe them any kind of tax, then pay it. Show fear to those you should fear. Show honor to those you should honor.” Most translations will have, “Honor to whom honor is due/owed.” Not everyone is entitled to fear, respect, or honor. In context, as mentioned above, God expects us to honor, respect, and fear anyone with authority over us. That’s not easy or fun. Most of them have way too much worldly ambition — but that was also true of politicians in Jesus’s day and afterward.

A soldier who sacrifices life or limbs to protect his country automatically has our respect. An addict who steals your catalytic converter is probably not owed respect. Parents who raise good kids who give back to society deserve respect. Someone who scams an old lady out of her pension absolutely does not. What seems to separate those we respect and those we don’t? We respect someone who thinks about others above self and sacrifices for the good of someone else. We don’t respect people who think primarily about self and sacrifice others for their own benefit.

So to answer this question: Those who put others first generally deserve respect. Those who think only about themselves generally do not. All people deserve our selfless love, defined as “providing for their physical needs no matter who they are.” To behave like Christ, we should show respect and deference to others by default in the absence of very good reasons not to. Those good reasons do not give us a license to hate.

Remind your people that they should always be under the authority of rulers and government leaders. They should obey these leaders and be ready to do good. Tell them not to speak evil of anyone but to live in peace with others. They should be gentle and polite to everyone (Titus 3.1-2).