Do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? If a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, 'Have a seat here, please,' while to the one who is poor you say, 'Stand there,' or, 'Sit at my feet,' have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?
My first job out of graduate school was to work for the Iowa Legislature. The job description included some line about working overtime. Yeah, yeah. In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to the description given, as these kinds of explanations are very enlightening. It turns out during the five month legislative session, we worked an insane amount of overtime. This was offset with an insane amount of time off – almost as much as we worked – during the interim, when the legislators were not in session.
I mention this because I think there’s always so much to learn from advisory comments. When people offer feedback or criticism of another person, the comments often say more about the person offering the feedback than the recipient. When a job announcement is crafted, the description of what’s especially needed often says more about what was lacking in the last person. When a chastisement is offered to a group of people that we read and understand thousands of years later, it often says more about all of the ways we are not so different than they were.
Some scholars believe this letter was written by James, brother of Jesus, and written the year of Jesus’ death. The letter is designed to encourage and remind people of what Jesus had taught and to keep them from reverting back to the ways before Jesus.
In this single little sentence from one of many letters, it feels to me that James is speaking to our modern-day culture, and he nailed it on the head. Whatever the distinction, we do this all the time, don’t we? It’s a three-step trap, and we fall into both.
In the first place, we note differences between people. As in James’ case, we too note wealth, class and attire. We note skin color, language, country of origin, political belief. And while these descriptions may be accurate for one attribute, we mistakenly turn the person into that one attribute. She’s poor. He’s Mexican. They’re conservative.
Once we’ve flattened these complex, multi-faceted people into one attribute, then the second trap is easier. We judge based on that one thing. Because someone is one-dimensionally poor, or solely conservative, we can ascribe all of the judgment and dislike, and inappropriate judgments on them, because we know everything about them. He’s homeless. Of course I know everything. He’s a rich banker. I can judge everything about them because of that one thing.
Finally, we treat people differently, based on our observation and our flattening one-dimensional judgment. It looks like this in our minds, but occurs in a flash so it’s hard to see. Slowed down, it looks like this:
- I see a dirty, unkept man shuffling along the street with a bag of cans.
- He is a homeless, taking bottles to make money to hopefully eat, but maybe buy drugs.
- I should walk on the other side of the street, or at least avoid eye contact.
This three-step process, I think is the root of all of our mis-judgment. Observe. Flatten. React.
James is reminding the people very soon after Jesus’ death that when they make these judgments and encourage some to sit or others stand, let some in or keep others out, respect some or disrespect others, that all of this judgement is based on making distinctions between each other, and judging with evil thoughts.
This morning, I’m thinking about how to notice differences between people, but to refrain from letting those descriptions become one-dimensional, judgment-inducing pronouncements on others. Yes, some people have fine clothing and others do not. But that says nothing about their beliefs, or their heart. More important, they are all beloved children of God, regardless of belief, heart, skin color, language, country of origin, housing status. Today, I want to notice and celebrate the differences in all of us, not judge.
No comments:
Post a Comment