In both the New and Old Testament, the divine presence defines itself and is experienced as a persistent thrust towards liberation from all that frustrates the goodness of creation. The people of Israel encounter God in their own experience of liberation from bondage. Beyond its historical specificity, the bondage of Israel is also the story of those in every age and nation who are bent beneath their full stature and forced to make bricks out of straw. The covenant of the righteous community is glimpse and foretaste of the way the world was always meant to be and, one day, will become. If the foundation for human dignity lies in God's purpose for his creation, its scope extends to wherever people live together.
Individual dignity is established only by the affirmation of the dignity of others.
If a man says, 'I love God' while hating his brother, he is a liar. Those who were condemned in Jesus' parable of the Last Judgment were not those who had been bad, but those who had been absent. A further dimension of the dignity of those who are not accorded dignity in the world's terms is uncovered in the affirmation that they are not simply the object of God's concern, they are the place where, in this world, his presence can be found. In Jesus' parable, the verbs of feeding, caring, welcoming and visiting are not ways of pleasing some far-off God. They are roads to his presence who is already in the hurting place and is expecting us to come.