"She said, 'Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.'"(Matthew 13:27)
Prejudice. We never want to be told we have them. Yet somehow engrained in our culture is always some kind of prejudice. Usually it is towards people who are different from us. We may never have actually encountered such folk, but somehow we've figured out that they aren't like us, and something strange is always a little frightening.
Even Jesus of Nazareth, seems to have had a bias. This encounter with a Caananite woman shows it. She asks for help and Jesus' first response is to basically call her a dog. Not worth his time. Now she could have gone away just like a kicked dog, but instead she fired back about even dogs get some crumbs. That response was an aha moment for Jesus. And he saw her faith, a faith that at first the who she was had blocked him from seeing.
What would it take for us to have that kind of aha moment? I know for me it has always been in encountering someone who doesn't fit my poorly conceived biases. I choose to make that positive encounter with someone different from the norm rather than the exception. But make no mistake without choosing to go that way, I could also take the lazy way of stereotyping every non white, straight male so that I don't actually have to listen or deal with them. Thank you God for not letting me get away with that.
Blessings,
Ed
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment