Let’s say that you are meeting a friend for lunch, but you happen to arrive at the restaurant a few minutes late. You assume that your friend may have already taken a seat, so you begin surveying the crowd. Your eyes quickly scan across the room—first, one direction, and then the other. Finally, you spot your friend and walk over to the table.

What I have just described is a fairly common experience. But have you ever wondered how it works? How is it that we are able to look across a crowded restaurant and recognize so quickly, and so precisely, the face of someone we know?

We certainly don’t have that ability with everything we see. For example, can you imagine recognizing a particular Granny Smith apple in someone’s shopping cart that you had just seen in the produce pile? Evidentially, apples do not appear as distinctive to us as faces do. But why?

Psychologists and neuroscientists have long debated the biological origins of our incredible ability to distinguish faces. Some theorize that we are hardwired with a so-called “face place”—a small cluster of specialized neurons, located in the region of the brain that controls vision—which responds with particular sensitivity to the human countenance. Others argue that we are able to be more discriminating with faces simply because we have more experience looking at them. After all, it’s probably been a while since you had a “face-to-face” with a Granny Smith apple!

Because I am neither a neuroscientist nor a trained psychologist, I am happy to let them continue debating the matter. However, as a theologian, I would like to raise a different question. If we are so adept at recognizing faces, why do we seem to have such trouble seeing the image of God in one another?

I believe that the key to improving our vision in this regard is love. Have you ever noticed that when you truly love someone that person becomes more beautiful to you? The blemishes and imperfections that stood out before like a billboard now begin to fade away, hence, the age-old axiom—“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

What Christ asks is that we see everyone that way. Mind you, He didn’t say it would be easy. It takes practice and patience. It requires forgiveness and mercy. But given that we already possess this incredible ability to recognize faces, maybe it’s not too much of a stretch for us to look a little deeper, and begin to recognize that we are all children of God.