Prejudice All Dressed Up

Prejudice all Dressed-Up
Learning to Recognizing an Unseen Evil
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10-10-10 / 08-31-11
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There used to be a time when Sunday came around and it was time for Church, the family would put on what was called their ‘Sunday best,’ with shoes shined, clothes crisp and ironed and Mother got to ‘show off’ her new dress, etc. To some degree, that still exists in different parts of the Country and Church cultures. There is also the ‘seeker sensitive’ model where you simply come as you are. Both models are perfectly fine.

Regardless the area of the Country or the Church culture represented, there is ‘someone’ that shows up in far too many Churches all dressed up but finds a way to blend in no matter the model or paradigm. That would be the ‘Prejudice Family.’

Prejudice - sometimes it is so very covert with unabashed disply and then sometimes so very subtle that it is almost inperceptible. When it is the latter or we are blinded to its presence, someone must poke us and give us a nudge that it is present - it is showing.

Prejudice can be found in great variety but for sure, it loves to get dressed up in religious garb and is pretty hard to detect or admit to and is too often denied. In other instances, it has almost become venerable and worshipped.

Prejudice is like lobster-red sunburn on the backs of those who are infected with it or affected by it because it is so, so stinging and abrasive. We grimice and recoil when we encounter it because it is genuinely painful.

For instance, in some cases the younger folk don’t like the ways of the older folk. Sometimes those who are very image conscious (I’ll call them the ‘Haves’) do not like the ‘have-nots.’ In the very, very challenging high school environment where ‘image’ is a matter of life-and-death, the preppies do not like the emos or the athletic types just can’t hang with the academic nerds. Here in Chicago, fan loyalty is almost a sacred thing and for sure, the Cubs fans have no care for the Sox fans and vice-versa. It is a mind-spinning, mind-splitting affair if one tries to keep up with it and measure one’s reactions to each nuance.

There are not too many institutions wracked with more prejudice than the church. Keep in mind that Jesus said that if anyone ‘hates’ his brother he is in danger of judgment. The Greek word that is translated ‘hate’ in this particular verse speaks of ‘having a disregard for’ another. Prejudice does just that: it causes people to either be adversarial and confrontational or completely disassociated from other believers if they are not of our particular flavor.

Prejudice is terrible but if there can be lower levels of prejudice, it is seen in the prejudice that one church or believer has for another church or believer because their faith and dogmas are not absolutely identical.

When the Apostle Paul confronted this issue, he asked the question: is Christ divided? Then he said that we are to make sure there are no schisms and divisions among us because they are absolutely contrary to the covenant connectedness that Jesus preached concerning His kingdom.

The margins of acceptance or tolerance are so narrow church-to-church or believer-to-believer that there is no room for imagining that God’s family could actually be larger than our narrow, exclusive concepts of God and His forgiveness. The church (believers) has not sufficiently wrapped their minds around the fact that God loves each and every believer and each and every doctrinally sound (ie. Nicene Creed) church as much as He does us. We like the idea that we are so right-on and thoroughly correct in our understanding of God and His Word that we are His ‘favorites.’ However, just cannot imagine or be secure enough in His love to see Him ‘feeling’ the same for another group that is not a part of our direct ‘vine’ as He does feel about us. To consider such a thought kind of takes away our religious / spiritual pride that we like to wear like a badge of honor.

You see, we want 'our side' or 'our team' to win. Consequently, we believe that God is on 'our’ side and if He is, that means that He is not on ‘their’ side. It sounds rediculous when you put it out there on paper or in conversation, but it is what it is. In reality, you are not His favorite and neither am I His favorite by some kind of assumed right or privilege. We all are His favorites and that is just fine with me!

What constitutes grounds for mutual-respect and acceptance? Too often we want the criteria to be ‘Exactness.’ However, the grounds for mutual respect and acceptance rests in the fact that every human being is created and given life by God intentionally and holds the same hope and promises for experiencing His life-altering grace as we have. God has honored and elevated every human being (by faith) by giving the life of His Son to be the ransom and price paid for our soul. What honor!

I like to engage people wherever I go hoping that I will get an open door to minister to them. People are 90+ % of the time gracious and respond in kind. However, there is one exception that I run into every once in a while – in a Christian bookstore. That is the one place (not all of the Christian bookstores but the one I visit) where I do not find open, warm and friendly greetings. It feels like I have walked into a high security area where the workers that are present are the guards who are just waiting for our infraction of some kind. I know that sounds hard, but it is my experience.

Another observation is that when faith starts becoming institutional and is no longer organic, everything exists for the maintenance and perpetuation of the ‘institution.’ The ideas is that ‘we’ must keep everyone that we can from our particular form of faith and religion and churches become cloistered, exclusive and their own stardard by which everyone else is measured. Thus, we create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality.

The religious ritual works like this. When religious prejudice is present, one begins to gather data and information about the person we are engaging for the first time. In such situations, you can either look for commonalities as a means of putting a value on the person in order to establish acceptance. Or, we can look for differences using them as a means of eliminating any possibility of acceptance. Or, we can be like Jesus and accept them with open arms just as He did us.

The place we give people in our hearts is where prejudice begins or ceases to exist. That is why it is such a serious issue to Christ. When Jesus saw the ‘people,’ which included the people who would turn against Him and crucify Him, He saw them through the eyes of His Father and was moved with compassion for them and their needs. He was in Galilee of the Gentiles when He saw the multitudes and was moved with compassion. These were people whom a Jew should have disdained and abhorred from a religious / faith standpoint. However, He saw them through the eyes of His Father.

God existed long before any church and faith tradition began. He lived and continues to live outside any boundaries erected by man or otherwise. He cannot be contained. If you feel that you are exclusive in your claim on God and His affections, I’m here to let you know that your dogma can’t contain Him. If you believe that you are outside the commonwealth of His love, acceptance and forgiveness, even those boundaries cannot contain Him. If you think you are the only church or faith that is right, then you serve a very small, predictable god.

God’s love extends without parameters far beyond the walls of separation and isolation that dogma and tradition have erected. He reaches past our prejudice and idiotic small-mindedness to meet those who are like the Biblical ‘woman at the well’ who discovered that His love and forgiveness know no barriers.

Yes, I believe that I am ‘right’. However, I also believe that every believer who has found Life in the vicarious death, burial and resurrection of Christ are also right – as are their particular church which holds to the same. I see it, then, that if I am ‘against’ them just because they aren’t my ‘brand,’ I am actually against THE Body of Christ and have unjust, unfounded prejudice that hurts Him and His ministry.

I do not necessarily agree with everything that I hear being preached on Christian television. However, God IS using these soldiers of the Cross to reach people that I could never reach in ten lifetimes. God is using many of them to reach the un-saved at their point of knowledge and faith. And, the bottom line is a ‘net gain’ for the Kingdom of God as God takes their ‘foolish preaching’ to convince multitudes of His reality. In this, I rejoice and covenant never to impede their credibility with the platforms of influence and speaking God has afforded me.

What I do mind, are the ministers who take the valuable Harvest-reaching time to discredit another harvester who is helping to see that the Father’s house is filled. It is a waste of time and akin to sabotage to spend limited, valuable public time to discredit the work and ministry of another laborer in the field (unless the laborers infractions are absolute and undeniable). If they are preaching Christ and Him crucified, buried and raised from the dead, leave them alone and be certain not to help eradicate their platform and influence while they are de-populating hell and populating Heaven. I’m just sayin . . . .
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Bishop Freddie Steel – Life Church of Chicagoland – www.lifeinchicago.org - revfts@usa.net
6600 W. 127th Street – Palos Heights, IL 60463 - 708-824-1501