Yesterday
was Martin Luther King Day, one day out of each 365 to honor the work and
mentalities of a godly man used by God to shine a spotlight on inequities and
injustices done against human beings for having the audacity to be born
different from the ones perpetuating the injustices.
In 1957,
nine high school black kids were bused to integrate the schools of Little Rock.
I was too young to remember that particular time in history but I am old enough
to have felt the sting of isolation and disassociation in the late 1960’s for
having black friends in high school. Social and racial unrest was alive and
well in those days. It was as alive in my time as much as it was in the days
Jesus walked the earth and Jews and Gentiles did not mix, talk, or accept one
another as equals. It is alive and thriving today when racial, religious or
even economic differences separate one group from another. Have we learned
nothing?
Sometimes it
looks like it on a surface level but dig just a bit deeper and prejudices can
be found multiplying like worms in the dung of ignorance. Sadly, Christians are
not immune to such insidious thinking. We claim we aspire to emulate Jesus yet
His interaction, treatment and acceptance of all people looks nothing like our
so-called enlightened status. I doubt He would share any claims of ‘progress’ made.
Bearing prejudices in any form is not in keeping His command to love one
another, to love your neighbor as yourself.
We all have ghosts
of prejudices living in our lives, minds and spirits. Deny it if you must but
you deceive only yourself. People tend to fear what they do not understand and,
typically, we do not try to understand that which we fear…it is easier to maintain
our comfort zone of ignorance than to open our minds to possibilities that
challenge our status quo. Sweeping generalizations make it less cumbersome than
thinking of a people group as individuals that happen to have history and
bloodlines in common. None of us get to ‘pick’ where, when or to whom we were
born, yet we act as if it were a personal assault on our sensibilities when
people are different. How dare they be ‘wrong’ in such a blatant way as to be
born different than you or me? Surely that is reason enough to be suspect.
Jesus didn’t think so…………..I'm just saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment