God does not make NPCs

Every person we see is a main character. And knowing that changes us.

I’m in New York for business this week. I have meetings in an office close to Times Square, so I’m spending my time in the busiest, most touristy parts of the city. There’s really no better place in the United States to observe our common humanity, the melting pot of cultures, and overall just a ton more people crammed into a space than normal. Plus, good pizza.

When I’m surrounded by so many people, my default mode is to flatten people into stereotypes and caricatures. I think we all do this. There’s a man in a turban. A young woman in a fancy dress (at 9am on a Monday, inexplicably). A business woman in a pants suit. A family on vacation. Cops, sanitation workers, food cart owners. I automatically reduce every person to one thing, because I have to. There’s just so many people.

“an issue of blood,” by Brian Kershisnik. Cropped for space. See it, and his other amazing work, on his website here. Buy art from living artists.

But I can also acknowledge that flattening people like this is hazardous. From my perspective, these are all just people that are in the way of me getting to a bagel with scallion cream cheese. But to them, I’m just in their way. No matter how cool and handsome I think I am, I’m just another guy, another flattened stereotype (probably “clean-cut white guy, must be a Mormon”).

And I’m struck by the reality that every person I see is a main character. Every single person around me (and around you) is in a story where they’re the hero. They have a complex background, deep feelings, and goals and dreams. Each one of them was born because of two people, each of whom had their own incredible depth and background and amazing lives. On the street they’re just people, they’re just stereotypes. But every person out there is changing the world as much as you or I ever will.

And more importantly? Each one of those people is a beloved child of heavenly parents. In the words of C. S. Lewis, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”¹

There are no ordinary people in the kingdom of God. God doesn’t make NPCs.

“NPC,” if you’re unfamiliar, is a term that comes from video games; it stands for “non-playable character.” NPCs are faceless, generic characters that are there to populate the game and fill the space. You can sometimes interact with them a little bit, and they’ll respond with pre-programmed phrases; but they’re not major players. They’re just on the side.

I’m talking about the villagers in Minecraft, who mostly say “Hmmm.” It’s the nurse who heals your injured Pokémon. It’s the old man in Zelda who says, “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this.” If you’re more of a gamer, it’s the town guards in Skyrim who repeatedly say, “I used to be an adventurer like you…”. Or, if you know the movie “Free Guy,” starring Ryan Reynolds, it’s about an NPC who breaks out of his shallow NPC mold and becomes a main character.

Human beings are never that simple. You simply can’t say anything about “all Black people” or “all LGBTQ+ people” or “all Latter-day Saints” and have it be true, because no person is just one thing. I used to not be able to see this. Hopefully you’ve been able to see this depth in all your life’s side characters for a long time. But this is new to me, and every time I catch a glimpse of the depth of another person it feels sacred. It feels like I have encountered something holy.

Jesus loved the background characters. The woman with the issue of blood is often portrayed this way: sitting in a lonely corner, all by herself, invisible to all the people walking by. But she made herself a main character—she reached out. And while He could have continued walking past, Jesus stopped. He saw her. We don’t get much of her story in the New Testament, but we know that she’d been incurably ill for twelve years. And even amongst all the hurriedness and the crowdedness of all the people around Him, He stopped. He stopped and He saw not just a woman on the street, but a complete and whole human being and a daughter of God.

Later, Jesus died for her. And for you and me, of course. But also for every person you see on the street or on the subway or at your kid’s band concert.

This sensation has a name, sort of. John Koenig coined the term “sonder” to mean (noun or verb) the awareness that everyone has a story. He references that outside ourselves, and outside our immediate circle of friends and family, there are the “extras,” like extras in a movie. And to sonder, then, is to realize that every person has that same rich history, texture, and depth of feeling.

As Valarie Kaur said, in her tremendous book See No Stranger:

When we choose to wonder about people we don't know, when we imagine their lives and listen for their stories, we begin to expand the circle of those we see as part of us. We prepare ourselves to love beyond what evolution requires.²

People come to life when I realize that each one of them woke up somewhere this morning. The clothes they’re wearing, that I can see, are the result of choices they made today. They picked out that shirt, those pants, those shoes. They picked those clothes out of a closet, or maybe out of a suitcase like I did, or maybe they were thrown over a chair. And, maybe next, they ate breakfast. Just the simple act of thinking about what someone might have eaten for breakfast, and imagining them doing it, turns people into real, three-dimensional human beings for me. All of a sudden, they have a story.

Wonder is where love begins, but the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence. Once people stop wondering about others, once they no longer see others as part of them, they disable their instinct for empathy. And once they lose empathy, they can do anything to them, or allow anything to be done to them.³

Each person we cross paths with—whether literally on the street, or in any other context—is a beautiful home being built. Wood floors are going in, vaulted ceilings, and beautiful balconies are going in piece by piece. It means each of us is always under construction, and always a little dusty. But it also means we’re always in the process of becoming something greater, until eventually we become mansions in the eternal presence of our Heavenly Parents.

I have to think the world would be a kinder, more peaceful place if we could see people this way. When someone drives erratically on the freeway, we can assume they’re a terrible driver or we can be curious about what’s going on. When someone we don’t know snaps at us in line at a fast food restaurant, we can assume they’re an a-hole or we can wonder what pain they’re feeling today.

Being Christ-like means seeing a stranger and sensing their sacred story.

God doesn’t make NPCs. There are no ordinary people. Nobody is just one thing. And if we can just glimpse that, we can see through the eyes of divinity.

1. C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” (HarperOne, 2001).

2. Valarie Kaur, “See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love,” (One World, 2021), 10-11.

3. Kaur, 11-12.